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”.
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