Question content, Scope, Purpose

Hey guys, I'm jumping in a bit late into the discussion so I don't have much to add that hasn't already been said about the original posts but here we go.

I like the observation that Alex and a few others brought up about the general trend of professional downgrading of skilled immigrants in the Canadian job market. We've already established a good line of ideas for examining the problem on a macro level by asking questions like what kind of and how much educational and vocational training support the government provide for new immigrants. On the subject of defining "new immigrants", Mayra's concern for the number of years of residence is very valid. I think we should be very careful in trying to define the term "recent immigrant" by looking at years of residency because of the overwhelming presence of multiple and heterogeneous diasporic experiences in Canada. Is a British immigrant whose first language is English who has only lived in Canada for 4 months worse off than a Vietnamese immigrant who has lived in Canada for 10 years and speaks no English in terms of professional job searching? I know this is more along the normative line of problems rather than purely statistical, and we all know that statistics in the end is all about generalization, but I feel generalizing the term "immigrants" is extremely dangerous in a survey that could potentially affect how the government, and indeed, the general Canadian populace, view "immigrants" and the concept of immigration. I support the previous suggestion that if we were to ask a sample of self-identified recent immigrants, we include questions about their primary language(s), income in their "country of origin" (adjusted in relative terms for more accurate comparisons), race(s), and previous level of education. This is a touchy subject but we also need be reflexive about how ourselves as survey designers define "immigrants". Do we only see people of colour? People who speak neither English nor French? People from the "developing world"? The clearly "disadvantaged"? Or do we see an array of folks who come from any country that is not Canada? All of these implications could affect the validity of our data and research question as a whole. Lastly and not quite related to my previous line of thought, for a survey that is to be filled out by recent immigrants, I imagine distributing the questions in multiple languages would greatly boost the participation rates.

Now on to something a bit more difference, I thought of another possible types of surveys that could be asked under the topic of immigration and assimilation. I was thinking of a survey that would be posed to "local" "non-immigrants" (which we know there is no such thing as in Canada). By this I mean anyone from "long-term" residents to potential "local" employers to government workers who provide services to recent immigrants. We would ask them about their attitudes toward assimilation and multiculturalism. Here are a few possible questions to ask to an employer for example: - How is your decision to hire an employee affected if he or she speaks with a non-English/French accent? - How is your decision to hire an employee affected if he or she is a racial minority? - How likely are you to grant a leave of absence for an individual employee for the purpose of observing a religious or cultural holiday that is not on the statutory calender? Of course, this is a very sensitive and potentially offensive line of questions, as one would imagine, but the private nature of mail-in and online surveys with the appropriate preamble would allow us to ask more daring questions and push for more honest answers. I for one believe it is very important to ask the "hard" questions on assimilation and multiculturalism.