ADVANCE AUSTRALIA FAIR.....

Lessons from Down Under

Lesleyanne Hawthorne, National Post
Published: Monday, June 23, 2008


There has been a lot of discussion of late about the Harper government's proposed changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. When it becomes law, Bill C-50 will refine Canada's economic selection policy, giving the immigration minister the authority to identify priority occupations and fast-track applicants with skills and experience that correspond to employers' needs.

Indeed, the government's attempt to modernize the immigration selection process will bring Canada more in line with the demands of today's labour market.

Until recently, Australia and Canada had the same approach to economic migration. Canada continues to maintain a human capital approach to the immigrant selection process, which has resulted in admitting applicants with limited host-country language ability, non-recognized credentials and qualifications in fields that have weak labour market demand.

The deterioration of labour market outcomes for recent immigrants to Canada has been known for some time. The problems associated with underemployment, skills wastage and earnings gap relative to Canadian-born counterparts are now being compounded by the chronic poverty experienced by skilled and educated newcomers.

While the economic selection process has remained status quo in Canada, Australia has taken a markedly different course. Indeed, major policy differences have emerged between Canada and Australia in terms of point-based selection in the past decade. In Australia's experience the human capital model of selection had proven flawed--delivering principal applicants lacking the attributes employers sought.

Since 1999, Australia has used research evidence to exclude economic category applicants at risk of poor employment outcomes at point of entry by considerably expanding pre-migration English language testing and mandatory credential assessment, and awarding bonus points for high-demand occupations.

In redesigning its economic selection criteria, the Australian government affirmed the program's original intent: to select economic migrants who can make an immediate contribution to the economy by employing their skills at an appropriate place in the labour market. Parallel goals were to reduce skills wastage among recent arrivals and to limit the level of government investment required to support their labour market adjustment needs (by the mid-'90s, this amounted to some AUD$250-million of annual federal funding for employment, credential recognition and English-language training -- and even this was inadequate). Former international students have become important participants in the program. In theory, such students have financed their own efforts to meet domestic employers' demand: they are young and acculturated, and they have advanced English language ability and fully recognized credentials. To what extent have Australia's revised selection criteria transformed employment outcomes relative to Canada's, in a context where governments frame migration policy but employers retain the power to offer or withhold work? Simply put, degree-qualified economic migrants have performed indisputably better in Australia than in Canada in the past decade.

Far greater proportions of newcomers in Australia secure positions fast, achieve professional or managerial status, earn high salaries and use their professional credentials in work. In the process, unprecedented numbers of economic migrants have avoided labour market displacement and overqualification. These policy changes have not discouraged or distorted migration flows -- the number of economic migrants increased from 77,800 in 2004-05 to 102,500 in 2007-08. Racial and ethnic diversity has been strongly maintained. Most importantly, employment outcomes have dramatically improved for traditionally disadvantaged groups -- including economic migrants from Eastern Europe, India, the Philippines and China -- as a result of more effective screening. The Australian experience suggests such outcomes are highly amenable to policy intervention.

Important Canadian policy initiatives are already underway to improve foreign credential recognition, the transition of former international students and temporary workers to economic migration, and to expand the Provincial Nominee Program. Major sums are being invested to address labour market barriers for skilled migrants, including language and bridging courses.

These are timely initiatives, given that many skilled migrants are more likely now to face chronic low income and poverty than did previous cohorts. Alongside such measures, Canada should consider adopting mandatory pre-migration Englishand French-language assessments. It would also make sense to reevaluate the proportion of points allocated to pre-migration work experience, as it is currently systematically discounted by Canadian employers.

In the knowledge economy the stakes are high, both for economic migrants and for the nation. - Lesleyanne Hawthorne is associate dean, international, at the University of Melbourne and the author of The Impact of Economic Selection Policy on Labour Market Outcomes of Degree-Qualified Migrants in Canada and Australia, published by the Institute for Research on Public Policy, www.irpp.org.