Immigration in Canada - Essay Example

Current paper focuses on the discrimination faced by immigrants who arrive in Canada. Particular emphasis is given to the weak language skills and the low economic recognition of foreign work experience as factors that lead to the discrimination against immigrants in Canada. The study of Preston et al. (2011) is used as the basis for exploring the above phenomenon. In general, discrimination is related to ‘the unfair treatment of people due to ethnicity, race, skin colour, language, accent or religion’ (Preston et al. 2011, p.3).

According to the study of Preston et al. (2011) for immigrants in Canada discrimination is highly related to the workplace. The specific problem seems to be intense during the job application process (Preston et al 2011). Indeed, at this level, employers seem to ignore the past work experience of immigrants, a fact that results to the delegation to them of tasks that are quite lower from the immigrants’ professional background (Preston et al. 2011). In a relevant survey it has been proved that those applicants who have English-name and those who have professional experience in Canada are preferred when the interview process for a job is arranged (Preston et al. 2011). .

The above survey lasted for a year between 1 October 2000 and 30 September 2001 (Preston et al. 2011). The fluency of those immigrants to English or French has been related to their level of education. Indeed, those immigrants with post-secondary education were more likely to speak English/ French fluently compared to those immigrants with high school education (Preston et al. 2011). The language skills of immigrants participated in the survey is presented below in Table 1. Table 1 – Immigrants’ language skills, as related to their level of education (source: Preston et al. 2011, p.6) A key finding of the above survey is the following: the high percentage of immigrants to Canada has postsecondary education background, about 105,380), while the number of immigrants with high-school education, or less, is significantly lower, reaching the 28,330 (Preston et al. 2011). This means that most immigrants in Canada are able to speak English/ French fluently; in this context, weak language skills would not be considered as a major problem for immigrants in Canada, at least not for the high majority of them.

Indeed, in the above survey it was proved, as shown in Table 1, that only the 3.2% of immigrants with postsecondary education face problems in regard to their language skills; for those with high-school education the relevant percentage is quite higher, about 22.5% (Preston et al. 2011). Particular reference should be made to the following fact: for immigrants in Canada discrimination because of language skills can be developed even for years after being in Canada. This fact is made clear in Table 2 below; the Table shows the discrimination that immigrants have to face in Canada because of their language skills, as related to educational background.

The table shows