Question content, Scope, Purpose

Hey Elysia, I think that's a great start for ideas and brainstorming. We should be aware also that miscommunication of information to immigrants or lack of interpretation and supposed language deficiency may not be the primary structural disadvantage that bars new comers from practicing their former professions.

income discrimination against visible minority workers, which is generally more related to the trend of 1)underutilization if immigrant skills in the Canadian Labour Market 2)pay inequities for immigrants doing the same work as native born Canadians. Some bodily evidence, Reitz (2001) identifies total annual immigrants earnings in 1996 amassed 15 billion, of which 2.4 billion was underutilization, while 12.6 billion dollars was in the form of pay inequities. More observations related to income discrimination and this issue of immigrants not being able to assume their former professions where they are may be highly skilled are like when employers tend to give little credibility to foreign education or foreign work experience

an article by "Omidvar Ratna" in the Laidlaw Foundation also identifies structural changes in the international economy being related to this as part of the bigger picture, with the liberalization of world trade, globalization of markets making domestic economies and subsequent employment rates more unstable, so now jobs are focused in the service sector rather than the industrial sector which is where immigrants from earlier decades like the 50s and 60s could garner decent jobs with low skill requirement and decent wages... but that's a little much to pursue for now

and perhaps we could look at this general phenomenon of interest not just with regards to immigrants being able to practice former professions, but maybe as a trend in increased rates of poverty among immigrant families as identified by the census of the last 2 decades? that would be an interesting causal effect to study perhaps - their social and economic exclusion from Canadian society.