Academic research interest in the accreditation process is quite recent; hence, published literature on the accreditation process in Canada is not readily available. The identified issues involved in the accreditation process vary, ranging from skill utilization in the labour market, recognition of foreign credentials, integration of immigrant skills, and discriminatory barriers to credential recognition, to the integration of international physicians. Available literature unanimously agrees on the following issues: Immigrants’ skills are underutilized; immigrants are underemployed and unemployed; the assessing of immigrants’ education, training and job credentials is problematic for employers due to lack of standardized systems; there is an absence of a due process of accreditation; and the list goes on. These factors together generate systemic discrimination against immigrants based on country of origin, gender, age, and class and consequently, generate barriers. Generally, most literature deals with immigrants as a whole and bypasses women with regard to the accreditation process, even though immigrant women’s experience significantly differs from that of men. In addition to their lack of access to information and the pervasive problems pertinent to the accreditation process, immigrant women are usually preoccupied with childcare and household chores mostly overlooked in the re-skilling process.

No single provincial or federal government agency or department deals with accreditation, and no universal and harmonized system exists for evaluating ‘foreign’ credentials. In spite of the government’s recent commitment to accelerating the credential process for some, no national strategy exists to assist skilled immigrants, let alone female migrants, in entering the Canadian labour market. Immigrants are encouraged to come to Canada according to their education, experience and job skills, but once these immigrants arrive in Canada, their skills carry no value. As a result, these skills are wasted. More specifically, the skills of female immigrants, who mostly enter as dependents, are not adequately assessed and carry less weight in the selection of immigrants; female immigrants particularly thus face numerous barriers.

Most overseas immigration officers lack either information or knowledge about various occupational certification regulations and consequently do not pass on accurate information about accreditation procedures and regulatory bodies to immigrants. This lack of knowledge constitutes one of the major obstacles in many immigrants’ settlement process. After migration, many immigrants obtain information on accreditation procedures that incorporate language proficiency, work experience in country of origin, educational degrees, and training. Immigrants then realize that they must obtain recognition of their skills through several disjointed regulatory bodies. The wide range of professional associations (e.g., architects, doctors, engineers, lawyers, pharmacists, and so on) that evaluate immigrants’ credentials often lack knowledge about educational systems and work experience in periphery countries. Indeed, no national or inter-provincial data bank exists that could shed light on these issues. Moreover, each province and territory sets different standards for recognizing degrees, training, and job experience from sending countries. For immigrant professionals, provincial requirements as well as occupation-specific regulations prevail for accreditation and licensing. Lack of uniform provincial requirements creates barriers for immigrants who migrate inter-provincially and hence, these immigrants have dual barriers.

Many skilled immigrants enter Canada hoping to do jobs similar to the ones they had in their countries of origin. The reality is that on arrival, many immigrants are forced into a process that is individualized, costly, and disjointed. Several institutions are key players in recognizing educational and professional skills and determining qualifications required for professional jobs (e.g., doctors, engineers, architects, university teachers and lawyers) or for certain categories of jobs (e.g., nurses, school teachers, daycare and homecare workers, and so on). These institutions include colleges and universities, various training schools (e.g., British Columbia Institute of Technology), hospitals, daycare centers, provincial and federal governments, and professional regulatory bodies for doctors, engineers, architects, lawyers, etc. Most immigrants – except those from English-speaking countries – are required to upgrade their educational skills, retrain in their professions, and get licenses from the individual professional bodies. Unless immigrants go through these procedures, they are never eligible to get their desired jobs.

Issues facing immigrant women

In addition to the challenges of dealing with the complexities of the procedures, immigrants, especially immigrant women, face financial constraints in pursuing re-training or upgrading. For immigrant women, returning to school in order to get back to their original professions – on top of supporting their families – creates major dilemmas in their lives. Should they upgrade their skills immediately once they migrate? Who will support the family financially while they upgrade their skills? Who will take care of the children and household chores? Most immigrant women, to support their families, start part-time, low-paid, ‘unskilled’ jobs on arrival and consequently most of them never have opportunities to be accredited. Due to the patriarchal ideologies embedded in families of South and South-east Asia, men after migration in most cases initiate upgrading and re-training, whereas women as spouses and dependants start low-paid, part-time, flexible-hours jobs. Patriarchal ideologies refer to the rule of men in socio-economic-political structures in the South and South-east Asia – although women challenge these ideologies both informally and formally. To counter patriarchal ideologies, immigrant women as well as their groups organize and resist. Even women who migrate as domestics or independent immigrants often spend years in low-paid jobs, so that they can sponsor family members such as children, spouses and parents as immigrants. Despite these challenges, most immigrant women from South and South-east Asia explore ways to get through the accreditation and the re-skilling process.

Immigrant women can be broadly categorized in three groups: (i) full-time homemakers; (ii) low-paid, flexible-hours workers who have some sort of training; and (iii) those who went to school for re-skilling. In the last category, very few successfully achieved their dream of working in their original profession as full-time workers. However, despite their precarious situations, most women I interviewed explored avenues that would re-skill them for the Canadian labour market.

Immigrants’ narrations demonstrate the complex and often irregular processes of accreditation and re-training in certain professions. First, there are no rules or time limit for assessing the submitted projects. Many months can pass before a student receives the outcome and grade of a project. Second, the expectation to do the assigned but specialized project independently or without a reasonable level of supervision is an onerous demand on immigrant women. Third, long time lapses can occur between different levels of education and between meetings with professors or evaluators. Finally, spending money and time in the re-skilling process does not guarantee success. The whole process of re-skilling is full of impediments that may result in a waste of money and the loss of years out of immigrant women’s lives. Many immigrant women give up, finding that they are either too old or too tired to obtain or compete for their targeted job.

In the name of re-skilling, a gendered division of labour emerges between men and women, and a racialized division of labour surfaces within the female labour force itself. Despite immigrant women’s potential for upgrading, the female labour force in Canada reflects a class-based and racialized division of labour between those who are Canadian-born, mostly white and privileged, and those who are immigrants, i.e., born in the periphery countries and disadvantaged due to complex immigration procedures and disjointed accreditation processes. Immigrant women thus become ‘the other’ and racialized, and a division emerges. The immigration immigrant women into low-paid and ‘unskilled’ jobs, i.e., that hinder these women’s access to social benefits such as Employment Insurance, medical and extended health care benefits, sick leave, disability benefits, family leave and pensions. The jobs many immigrant women perform are tedious and repetitive, and, in certain cases, require heavy lifting. Doing these jobs often causes back pain, muscle pain, and even permanent disabilities. Many immigrant women do not end up in jobs related to their original professions, i.e., the professions they used to hold in their countries of origin. Nevertheless, a few women do attain their desired jobs, and these women’s satisfaction level is naturally high.

Necessary measures

There exists compelling evidence of the hurdles immigrant women must leap to properly establish their credentials and re-enter the labour market. There is a dire need for both federal and provincial governments to address these issues, for the sake of better utilization of human resources and enhanced productivity. The following measures need to be undertaken to assist immigrant populations, particularly immigrant women:

A regulatory body needs to be set up to monitor the accreditation system and minimize variations in standards required across provinces. This body could set up a comprehensive database of foreign educational and training institutions and their standards. Working with universities, colleges, training institutions, and schools in Canada, this body could then develop the database to produce comprehensive, uniform regulations across Canada.
A regulatory body could also develop mechanisms to translate foreign qualifications into Canadian terms. This could be done in terms of continents, countries and even within countries. For example, a master’s degree in engineering from India or Holland could be deemed as equivalent to a master’s degree in engineering in Canada. On the other hand, a master’s degree in engineering from another country could be found equivalent to a bachelor’s degree in engineering in Canada. A mechanism like this could help immigrants seek relevant jobs in the labour market right away, without bureaucratic hassles. Employers could easily check with the relevant agency when considering hiring immigrants with credentials from other countries.
To develop a standardized and uniform system, federal and provincial governments need to cooperate with each other. This may greatly facilitate immigrant women’s accreditation process. Further, co-ordination is required between and among provincial governments to facilitate the transfer of skills and experience across provinces.

It is evident that most immigrant women enter Canada as dependents – as wives, sisters, and daughters. All too often, due to their dependent status, immigrant women do not receive the entitlements accorded to sponsored male immigrants. Unequal entitlements upon arrival not only foster the growth of gender disparity among immigrants, but also perpetuate the ideology of the ‘male breadwinner’ that most Asian countries endorse. The very process also perpetuates a racialized, gendered and class-based labour market.

Women still make up the majority of childcare providers, a role that takes them out of the labour market for certain lengths of time. Restructuring of childcare policy in two major provinces, i.e., in Ontario and BC, where most immigrants have settled, has created obstacles to re-skilling for immigrant women. It is clear that the struggle for childcare in Canada may be shifting from making childcare accessible for all women irrespective of class and race to ‘fighting child poverty.’ However, it is equally clear that child poverty among immigrants will not be eliminated without accessible childcare that provides immigrant women with opportunities to upgrade as well as to enter the labour force for the financial support of their families.

	Immigrant Women and Accreditation in Canada
	Habiba Zaman
	Academic research interest in the accreditation process is quite recent; hence, published literature on the accreditation process in Canada is not readily available. The identified issues involved in the accreditation process vary, ranging from skill utilization in the labour market, recognition of foreign credentials, integration of immigrant skills, and discriminatory barriers to credential recognition, to the integration of international physicians. Available literature unanimously agrees on the following issues: Immigrants’ skills are underutilized; immigrants are underemployed and unemployed; the assessing of immigrants’ education, training and job credentials is problematic for employers due to lack of standardized systems; there is an absence of a due process of accreditation; and the list goes on. These factors together generate systemic discrimination against immigrants based on country of origin, gender, age, and class and consequently, generate barriers. Generally, most literature deals with immigrants as a whole and bypasses women with regard to the accreditation process, even though immigrant women’s experience significantly differs from that of men. In addition to their lack of access to information and the pervasive problems pertinent to the accreditation process, immigrant women are usually preoccupied with childcare and household chores mostly overlooked in the re-skilling process. No single provincial or federal government agency or department deals with accreditation, and no universal and harmonized system exists for evaluating ‘foreign’ credentials. In spite of the government’s recent commitment to accelerating the credential process for some, no national strategy exists to assist skilled immigrants, let alone female migrants, in entering the Canadian labour market. Immigrants are encouraged to come to Canada according to their education, experience and job skills, but once these immigrants arrive in Canada, their skills carry no value. As a result, these skills are wasted. More specifically, the skills of female immigrants, who mostly enter as dependents, are not adequately assessed and carry less weight in the selection of immigrants; female immigrants particularly thus face numerous barriers. Most overseas immigration officers lack either information or knowledge about various occupational certification regulations and consequently do not pass on accurate information about accreditation procedures and regulatory bodies to immigrants. This lack of knowledge constitutes one of the major obstacles in many immigrants’ settlement process. After migration, many immigrants obtain information on accreditation procedures that incorporate language proficiency, work experience in country of origin, educational degrees, and training. Immigrants then realize that they must obtain recognition of their skills through several disjointed regulatory bodies. The wide range of professional associations (e.g., architects, doctors, engineers, lawyers, pharmacists, and so on) that evaluate immigrants’ credentials often lack knowledge about educational systems and work experience in periphery countries. Indeed, no national or inter-provincial data bank exists that could shed light on these issues. Moreover, each province and territory sets different standards for recognizing degrees, training, and job experience from sending countries. For immigrant professionals, provincial requirements as well as occupation-specific regulations prevail for accreditation and licensing. Lack of uniform provincial requirements creates barriers for immigrants who migrate inter-provincially and hence, these immigrants have dual barriers. Many skilled immigrants enter Canada hoping to do jobs similar to the ones they had in their countries of origin. The reality is that on arrival, many immigrants are forced into a process that is individualized, costly, and disjointed. Several institutions are key players in recognizing educational and professional skills and determining qualifications required for professional jobs (e.g., doctors, engineers, architects, university teachers and lawyers) or for certain categories of jobs (e.g., nurses, school teachers, daycare and homecare workers, and so on). These institutions include colleges and universities, various training schools (e.g., British Columbia Institute of Technology), hospitals, daycare centers, provincial and federal governments, and professional regulatory bodies for doctors, engineers, architects, lawyers, etc. Most immigrants – except those from English-speaking countries – are required to upgrade their educational skills, retrain in their professions, and get licenses from the individual professional bodies. Unless immigrants go through these procedures, they are never eligible to get their desired jobs. Issues facing immigrant women In addition to the challenges of dealing with the complexities of the procedures, immigrants, especially immigrant women, face financial constraints in pursuing re-training or upgrading. For immigrant women, returning to school in order to get back to their original professions – on top of supporting their families – creates major dilemmas in their lives. Should they upgrade their skills immediately once they migrate? Who will support the family financially while they upgrade their skills? Who will take care of the children and household chores? Most immigrant women, to support their families, start part-time, low-paid, ‘unskilled’ jobs on arrival and consequently most of them never have opportunities to be accredited. Due to the patriarchal ideologies embedded in families of South and South-east Asia, men after migration in most cases initiate upgrading and re-training, whereas women as spouses and dependants start low-paid, part-time, flexible-hours jobs. Patriarchal ideologies refer to the rule of men in socio-economic-political structures in the South and South-east Asia – although women challenge these ideologies both informally and formally. To counter patriarchal ideologies, immigrant women as well as their groups organize and resist. Even women who migrate as domestics or independent immigrants often spend years in low-paid jobs, so that they can sponsor family members such as children, spouses and parents as immigrants. Despite these challenges, most immigrant women from South and South-east Asia explore ways to get through the accreditation and the re-skilling process. Immigrant women can be broadly categorized in three groups: (i) full-time homemakers; (ii) low-paid, flexible-hours workers who have some sort of training; and (iii) those who went to school for re-skilling. In the last category, very few successfully achieved their dream of working in their original profession as full-time workers. However, despite their precarious situations, most women I interviewed explored avenues that would re-skill them for the Canadian labour market. Immigrants’ narrations demonstrate the complex and often irregular processes of accreditation and re-training in certain professions. First, there are no rules or time limit for assessing the submitted projects. Many months can pass before a student receives the outcome and grade of a project. Second, the expectation to do the assigned but specialized project independently or without a reasonable level of supervision is an onerous demand on immigrant women. Third, long time lapses can occur between different levels of education and between meetings with professors or evaluators. Finally, spending money and time in the re-skilling process does not guarantee success. The whole process of re-skilling is full of impediments that may result in a waste of money and the loss of years out of immigrant women’s lives. Many immigrant women give up, finding that they are either too old or too tired to obtain or compete for their targeted job. In the name of re-skilling, a gendered division of labour emerges between men and women, and a racialized division of labour surfaces within the female labour force itself. Despite immigrant women’s potential for upgrading, the female labour force in Canada reflects a class-based and racialized division of labour between those who are Canadian-born, mostly white and privileged, and those who are immigrants, i.e., born in the periphery countries and disadvantaged due to complex immigration procedures and disjointed accreditation processes. Immigrant women thus become ‘the other’ and racialized, and a division emerges. The immigration immigrant women into low-paid and ‘unskilled’ jobs, i.e., that hinder these women’s access to social benefits such as Employment Insurance, medical and extended health care benefits, sick leave, disability benefits, family leave and pensions. The jobs many immigrant women perform are tedious and repetitive, and, in certain cases, require heavy lifting. Doing these jobs often causes back pain, muscle pain, and even permanent disabilities. Many immigrant women do not end up in jobs related to their original professions, i.e., the professions they used to hold in their countries of origin. Nevertheless, a few women do attain their desired jobs, and these women’s satisfaction level is naturally high. Necessary measures There exists compelling evidence of the hurdles immigrant women must leap to properly establish their credentials and re-enter the labour market. There is a dire need for both federal and provincial governments to address these issues, for the sake of better utilization of human resources and enhanced productivity. The following measures need to be undertaken to assist immigrant populations, particularly immigrant women: A regulatory body needs to be set up to monitor the accreditation system and minimize variations in standards required across provinces. This body could set up a comprehensive database of foreign educational and training institutions and their standards. Working with universities, colleges, training institutions, and schools in Canada, this body could then develop the database to produce comprehensive, uniform regulations across Canada. A regulatory body could also develop mechanisms to translate foreign qualifications into Canadian terms. This could be done in terms of continents, countries and even within countries. For example, a master’s degree in engineering from India or Holland could be deemed as equivalent to a master’s degree in engineering in Canada. On the other hand, a master’s degree in engineering from another country could be found equivalent to a bachelor’s degree in engineering in Canada. A mechanism like this could help immigrants seek relevant jobs in the labour market right away, without bureaucratic hassles. Employers could easily check with the relevant agency when considering hiring immigrants with credentials from other countries. To develop a standardized and uniform system, federal and provincial governments need to cooperate with each other. This may greatly facilitate immigrant women’s accreditation process. Further, co-ordination is required between and among provincial governments to facilitate the transfer of skills and experience across provinces. It is evident that most immigrant women enter Canada as dependents – as wives, sisters, and daughters. All too often, due to their dependent status, immigrant women do not receive the entitlements accorded to sponsored male immigrants. Unequal entitlements upon arrival not only foster the growth of gender disparity among immigrants, but also perpetuate the ideology of the ‘male breadwinner’ that most Asian countries endorse. The very process also perpetuates a racialized, gendered and class-based labour market. Women still make up the majority of childcare providers, a role that takes them out of the labour market for certain lengths of time. Restructuring of childcare policy in two major provinces, i.e., in Ontario and BC, where most immigrants have settled, has created obstacles to re-skilling for immigrant women. It is clear that the struggle for childcare in Canada may be shifting from making childcare accessible for all women irrespective of class and race to ‘fighting child poverty.’ However, it is equally clear that child poverty among immigrants will not be eliminated without accessible childcare that provides immigrant women with opportunities to upgrade as well as to enter the labour force for the financial support of their families.