Diana Finley, announcing new immigration changes, stated: “The Canadian government wants more international students to choose Canada, and we want to help them be successful. Open and long-term work permits give international students more opportunities to gain work experience and develop professional skills. In turn, this will help make Canada more attractive as a country chosen by international students for education.”
Commenting on these progressive changes, Michelle Suderman, Director of International Cooperation Development at the University of British Columbia, said: “This puts Canada ahead of any other country in the world, and international students can now see these changes as a sign of Canadian openness to immigration.”
The reason for such significant relaxations regarding foreigners who have graduated from universities of the Maple Leaf country was the situation on the national labor market. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, by 2050 the proportion of Canadian retirees aged 65 and older will increase relative to the working-age population from the current 20% to 45%. Recent surveys, to which HR managers of large and medium-sized Canadian companies responded, show that 66% of employers have difficulty filling job vacancies due to a lack of suitable candidates.
In a report last year, the Canadian government organization for human resources management and social development stated that there is a shortage of personnel in such industries as healthcare, management, oil and gas, home construction and renovation, information technology (especially computer software and programming, website optimization, computer design), and public service. University teachers are also considered deficit personnel. In addition, the report's authors say that in the near future there will be difficulties in providing labor for manufacturing, trade, and services.
To solve this problem, retirees are offered to stay at work as long as they are able to do so. But this, according to analysts, can hardly alleviate the problem. Modern Western retirees are quite wealthy people, so most of them prefer to join the tourist army rather than continue working. The second problem is that not all of them are able to improve their skills, as required by science-intensive production and the service sector. Those who maintain good professional shape choose to work in the country where they are offered a higher salary.
Canada is also making significant relaxations for the entry of skilled immigrants. According to the Canadian Statistical Bureau, 50% of immigrants who entered the country from 2001 to 2006 have higher education. However, to gain access to professional activities requiring certain labor skills, they need time to confirm previously obtained qualifications. And here, graduates of national universities could be a significant support for the Canadian labor market.
But Canada is not alone in filling emerging vacancies. All developed countries are experiencing similar difficulties and are involved in the competitive process of providing their national economies with highly qualified personnel. If some ten years ago technologically rich northern states were 'fed' by personnel from backward poor southern countries, now the situation has changed significantly. The ongoing economic rise of South Korea, China, and India has required specialists with university education who can make faster career growth in their homeland and receive higher salaries than in the northern countries. Developing countries are not only actively engaged in the economic race, but also rapidly improving the state of national higher education and opening university programs taught in English. By doing so, they aim not only to reduce the number of citizens going to study in English-speaking countries, but also to attract more international students who experience certain difficulties with learning Chinese, Korean, or Hindi.
And in this matter, they have made a significant leap forward. If some five years ago a small number of international students went to developing countries, now China itself is beginning to pose serious competition to education-exporting countries. For comparison, we can cite data prepared by the Institute of International Education.
Features of Different Countries
In the competitive struggle to attract foreign students, developed countries use various incentives, including permission to work part-time during studies and the opportunity to work after graduation. Thus, in the USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, foreign students have the right to work off-campus up to 20 hours per week during studies and full-time during holidays. But in the USA, they receive this right after one year of study, while in the other listed countries, they can work starting from the first semester.
Foreign students holding an F1 visa can work for one year after completing their studies at a US university. This is considered part of their practical training. To continue working after this period, they need to find an employer and change their visa type to H-1B, which allows them to work for three years at an American company with the possibility of extending the contract to six years. However, this visa type is reserved for professions in which the country faces a shortage. These are primarily specialties related to engineering, technology, exact and natural sciences. Also, due to bureaucratic delays, foreign graduates of US universities are often forced to hire lawyers to obtain a work visa, which complicates the employment process.
A foreigner who has graduated from an Australian university can obtain a visa allowing them to work for 18 months after graduation without leaving the country. In England, a program was also adopted in 2004 that allows foreign university graduates to work in the country for one year. Initially, it applied only to holders of science and engineering specialties, but from May 2007, other fields also fall under its scope. Scotland proved to be more advanced in this matter than its neighbor and began issuing permits for two years starting in 2005.
What difficulties might our citizen face when seeking employment after graduating from a foreign university with so many options? The main problem, even when there is a vacancy, is the unwillingness of employers to deal with filling out a large number of documents required to hire a foreigner. This especially applies to a united Europe, where preference in employment is given to citizens from EU countries.
The second problem is the limited time for job searching. The third is the limited field of job opportunities, where engineers, mathematicians, and graduates of some other specialties in which the labor-importing country faces a shortage at the time have an advantage. The fourth point is the difference in mentality, whereby, for example, an Indian citizen who graduated from a British university is more likely to be hired in the UK than a citizen of our country. It is believed that an Indian, who first studied in English at home in the former British colony, will better perform job duties.
Therefore, as of today, changes in Canada's immigration legislation are the most advanced because two main restrictions have been eliminated: the need for an employer invitation to obtain a work permit, and the requirement to be employed only in one's field of study.
However, the Canadian higher education market is still poorly explored by students from our country. Domestic students, when choosing a country of study and a specific university, mainly focus on two indicators: its cost and the name of the university. Students with limited financial means prefer countries where they can get higher education for minimal money – in Germany and France. In doing so, they agree in advance to overcrowded classrooms, an insufficient number of teachers per student, modest student services, and problems with providing students with cheap housing. Those who have no shortage of funds strive to enter the most prestigious universities in the US and UK, and here the problem of matching the candidate's personal data with the university's admission requirements comes to the forefront.
In terms of the number of Russian-speaking students, Canada is in the middle between Australia and New Zealand, although studying at Canadian universities is cheaper than at Australian, American, and British ones. As for the reputation of Canadian universities, it can be said that there are no 'bad' universities in Canada where it would not be worth studying even for free. With the exception of a few private institutions, the entire higher education sector in Canada is public, and the state exercises strict control over their activities.
Based on materials from the CMC 'Parta'.