Immigration Canada

Image by Dave McLean (aka damclean) via Flickr

BY CLARA HO MAY 5, 2011 COMMENTS (1)

Many immigrants come to Canada with years of work experience, talent and new ideas, but often run into language barriers and challenges adjusting to the local culture.

Frustrated and desperate to feed their families, many new Canadians end up taking minimum-wage jobs far from where their expertise lies.

It’s a situation that Ratna Omidvar sees everyday in her line of work.

That’s where mentoring programs can help, said Omidvar, president of Maytree, a Toronto-based private organization that invests resources to reduce poverty.

“Skilled immigrants bring talent, connections to world markets and new ways of thinking to solve problems,” she said at the Sheraton Suites in Eau Claire, where the 2011 ALLIES Mentoring Conference is taking place. “We need to collapse the time for them to succeed.”

Omidvar credited a mentor for helping her find her career path when she first arrived to Canada from Iran nearly 30 years ago.

Her mentor took the time to organize mock interviews, work with Omidvar on resume-writing skills, and even taught her about the “unwritten rules” of Canadian workplace culture.

The experience inspired Omidvar to take on many mentees throughout the years, many who have found success in Canada.

More than 120 delegates from across the country are in Calgary today and Friday to discuss how mentoring between employers and skilled immigrants can benefit workplaces and also help newcomers realize their full potential.

A local partnership between the Calgary Region Immigrant Employment Council (CRIEC) and Bow Valley College pairs mentors in the city’s corporate world with immigrants new to Canada.

Katalina Bardell, a mentoring project lead and employment facilitator for the program, said the partnership has facilitated over 100 matches.

Mayor Naheed Nenshi lauded the program and many others that are sprouting up across the country, but he said more needs to be done to help put new immigrants in jobs that best suit their abilities.

“We need to ensure everyone who comes to this country has the ability of achieving his or her own potential,” he said.

Immigration policy changes also need to be made to better recognize foreign credentials, he added.

cho@calgaryherald.com

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A report issued by China Merchant Bank and global management consulting firm Bain & Company indicates about 60 percent of China's multimillionaires are considering becoming or have already become immigrant investors. As Zhang Cheng reports, most immigrant investors are heading to developed countries.

More Chinese are turning to investment immigration for visas to reside in developed countries such as the United States and Canada.

To get a visa, they must invest in certain funds or business programs in the country so they eventually can become permanent citizens.

Huang Xiaoliang, an attorney in her thirties, is considering becoming an immigrant investor.

"I used to study abroad, and I like the lifestyle. You will have less pressure in your work and social life. As an attorney, it is more difficult for us to do skills-based immigration."

Skills-based immigration means a citizen of a foreign nation is granted permanent residency in another country because he or she possesses in-demand professional abilities and language proficiency.

Huang Xiangliang says she is still thinking about which country she would like to immigrate to and the field in which she would like to invest.

Robert Mu, a registered immigration lawyer from AAE Group, an investment immigration consultancy, says most of his clients choose to do invest immigration in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and the UK. They choose different fields according to each country's relevant regulations.

"Different countries have different policies. For example, in Canada, they just invest in government-approved funds, then the funds will invest in some projects to support local economic development. But for U.S. immigration, investors can only invest in U.S. Immigration Bureau-approved projects. In Australia, they can just buy bonds issued by the state government."

Mu says Chinese immigrant investors usually come from wealthy provinces or municipalities, including Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Shanghai.

Song Quancheng, Director of the Institute of Immigration Studies at Shandong University, explains the immigration trend.

"Internationally speaking, immigration is a result of globalization. Globalization leads to the flow of capital, technology and commodities, and population flow contributes part of it. Domestically speaking, people are pursuing an even better lifestyle. At the same time, some people, especially rich people like multimillionaires, are worried about maintaining the value of their fortune in China, so they choose to transfer it abroad."

The report by China Merchant Bank and Bain & Company indicates the risk appetite of wealthy Chinese has fallen. Nearly half of those surveyed said they wanted to disperse investment risk.

For CRI, this is Zhang Cheng.

Immigration Canada

Mentors help immigrants find success in Canada

Wealthy Chinese Choose Investment Immigration

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