Nomen est omen at the Canadian jobs marketplace

Last year, Ottawa public transport facilities sported ads urging employers to employ immigrants. They featured a photo of a member of visible minorities* and their job application, foreign sounding name, various levels of academic degrees and foreign experience. Jobs poster immigrants applied for were low paid and low skill.

High educated and skilled immigrants often face incredible difficulties finding a job that would properly reflect their education and professional and language skills. For one thing, they are admitted to Canada on the basis of the government’s point system but employment is often governed by private organizations such as chambers, unions etc. which specifically require either Canadian education or experience or both. That practice would be in itself an interesting topic for research since foreign educational standards and professional requirements are often much higher than Canadian ones. Very often the only purpose of these chambers is not as much as to protect standards as to protect the members and the chambers’ existence.

However, even non-organized jobs are often off-limits to immigrants. Even their Canadian-born children may struggle on job markets.

One of the reasons could be their names. They sound, look and are foreign. Nomen est omen According to a research conducted by Philip Oreopoulos, professor of economics at the University of British Columbia, applicants with English names are 40% more likely to receive an call back for an job interview than foreign-named applicants who submitted identical resumes for the identical job. Matthews Wilsons and Gregs Johnsons would be selected over Arjuns Kumars and Chaundrys Mohammads. The rate dropped to 20% when the name contained both English and foreign parts, such as Vivian Zhang or Jennifer Li.

The research method was devised in a way that made a name the most prevalent feature determining whether a person received a call back. At the same time, it allowed the team of researchers to determine the effect of other individual categories such as foreign versus Canadian education and foreign versus Canadian work experience. The research concludes that “overall, the results suggest considerable employer discrimination against applicants with ethnic names or with experience from foreign firms.”

According to Professor Oreopoulos this apparent name-based discrimination, while contravening anti-discrimination regulations, may or may not be intentional. For example, jobs requiring specific language or social skills may induce higher non-call back rates for bearers of ethnic names since, statistically or based on experience, their level of English may not.

Statistics, however, cannot explain a 40% difference. Professor Oreopoulos stayed clear of drawing far reaching conclusions and limited his reasoning to admitting “an element of unfairness”.

The report, albeit conclusive, has few shortcomings. The research took place in Toronto, where a half of the population is foreign born. Not just of foreign descent. Foreign born. Is Toronto less immigrant-friendly? Is it based on statistical experience? Other regions of Canada can produce different results.

The researchers only evaluated Indian, Pakistani and Chinese names. What about less visible minorities? There are many distinctly non-English names in Canada of say, Russian, Italian, Polish, Slovak or Czech origin. Ignatieff and Gretzky may be anglicized but their original is distinctly Russian (Ignatiev and Greckij). London (Britain) based HR agencies are very careful to avoid accusations of discriminating against South Asian job seekers but often feel free to discriminate against job-seekers from EU countries, especially those coming from Central and Eastern Europe.

Still, the outcome of Professor Oreopoulos’s research is rather conclusive. Is the observed state of the affairs triggered by immigration-related issues only? Or is it a fear of foreign elements?

* I use the term for the convenience’s sake and not to determine a category or social status. The UN describes the term as “racist”.

Linguistically flammable

Canadian minister of citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism Jason Kenney sparked a controversy when he suggested that people without a satisfactory command of English or French should be denied citizenship. Let’s put aside the official bilingual farce, although, to be fair, speaking both languages does make sense in certain circumstances, for example, if a person happens to be an immigrant or wants to pursue a career in government.

Back to language tests. To demand a satisfactory command of the official and/or prevalent language is legitimate. Immigrants, in any major migrant destination, can spend their lives without the knowledge of English in some areas. Florida and China Towns are the most obvious examples. But the living is often reduced to survival as any involvement with the authorities requires help of other people. As a result, not knowing the language of majority confines individuals to their communities, limits their opportunities and fosters “ghettoization” of neighbourhoods.

On the other hand, authorities often make their announcements or application forms available in minority languages. The London borough of Tower Hamlets offered voter registration form and other documents and in many European and Asian languages. But while that can be viewed as a form of help and support, it also takes away an important opportunity for the new and old immigrants with poor majority language skills to become active members of the community beyond the borders of their language and culture.

Many of immigrants in Canada come from countries where even basic education is scarce and the opportunities to learn languages may be non-existent. The only way to learn English or French is to take a language course in Canada.

But the quality of teaching staff in various immigration centres is often questionable. An immigrant I know in Calgary went to English classes shortly after their arrival to Canada. Educated in Europe and fluent in three languages, they kept asking more profound grammar related questions such as “why is that”. The ubiquitous answer was “it’s like just that, English has no logic”. Which is a) rubbish, b) proof that the “teacher” was not really a teacher of English but merely an English speaking person without necessary qualification and lack of pedagogical skills.

It’s not an isolated case. In Canada and Britain, English language is not a part of standard school curriculum. English is reduced to teaching spelling and stylistics but it is not the same as teaching a language. People learn their mother tongue only by means of its everyday use. Asking an educated Briton or Canadian questions about an accusative or a plus quam perfectum (pluperfect tense) usually results in a pretty accusatory, i.e. dumb, look. Not to mention frequently misunderstood and thus potentially explosive “genitive case”.

According to the Conference board of Canada, about 40% of adult (working age) Canadians “do not have the literacy skills to cope with the demands of everyday life and work in modern society”. In other words, they are functionally illiterate. UN statistics from 2000 put Britain’s illiteracy rate to approximately 20%. UK government says that 42% of children leaving school at 16 “fail to achieve a basic level of functional English”. According to Daily Telegraph, one in six British adults lacks the literacy skills of an 11-year old.

A friend of mine spent two years teaching biology at two prestigious private boarding schools in Britain. That was her main assignment. As a secondary one – she taught overseas students English as a foreign language. In Britain.

This emphasizes the fact that teaching English to people who grew up in a non-English environment requires different methods, qualifications and skills which, apparently, most of the native speakers do not possess as they had no opportunity to acquire them.

If the federal government in Ottawa wants to make the command of official languages a condition for granting an applicant citizenship, it must reconcile its two often contradictory policies – granting substantial semi-autonomous language-related cultural and religious rights on the one hand and its integration policies. Second task would be to improve language learning programs for both immigrants and the Canadians.

Unfortunately, things are not that simple. Even if immigrants do speak perfect English or French and can present official diplomas from their home countries, they are often required to pass language tests because Canadian authorities or private companies chose not to accept their foreign qualification in a given language. But that’s a different story.