Question content, Scope, Purpose

Hi everyone! Sorry for jumping in so late, it took me a while to sort out how to work this thing.

I'm really glad that the last two comments began touching on issues of cultural assimilation rather than just looking at income inequality. Of course, it's easier to do statistics with numbers, but I really like the idea of focusing on the tough questions, as Lucy says. Personally, I am interested in three of the topics mentioned so far:

1. Immigrant qualifications and how they are counted in Canada. As most of us know, I'm sure, it's not so easy to get into Canada, and often times immigrants need post secondary degrees to be allowed in as permanent residents. I think it would be interesting to look at things like what kinds of positions these people held previously, and whether or not they have been able to get their degrees credited, as well as whether or not they have been able to find positions in the same field/ position.

2. Immigrant assimilation from the immigrant pov. Use of programs, language classes and whether or not they sense a general level of acceptance from the rest of the population. I guess that would be targeted more towards recent immigrants (as in the last couple of years or so). I work with a lot of people who are fairly new to Canada, and I get the sense from a lot of them that their experience has been much more difficult than they assumed it would be, so I was wondering if there was any way we could get to the bottom of that miscommunication. So asking them how easy they thought it would be to find work/a place to live/make connections with neighbours and coworkers etc. vs. their actual experiences.

3. The rest of the population's view of immigrants. This is especially interesting with the current state of the economy; we all know that Canada needs immigrants, but when people who already live here are having a hard time finding jobs, I would imagine that the level of acceptance would decrease. I like the questions that Lucy proposed, I just wonder how/if we could work on the phrasing to make it sound less offensive so that we can get a more honest answer.

Also, are we accounting for large immigrant communities (mainly South Asians and East Asians in the Vancouver context) and the amount of support people who belong to those groups could get from within the community, rather than the federal government? Immigrants with a large base might have an easier time because they could help each other out, whereas people who are from more underrepresented areas may be pushed into the greater 'Canadian' society (whatever that means) with a bit more force.

I think here (and in many other places, really) we run into the problem of how we are going to define immigrants and locals - are we going by amount of time spent in Canada? Are things like level of English, race, existence of cultural community relevant in terms of accounting for the ease of the transition and the level of acceptance? Once we sort that out, I think we need to structure our questions with follow up (If yes, than...) subsections, but we need to really structure those clearly.

Also, does anyone know what the base questions will be? It might be that Dr. Owen has already sorted out how to phrase this question and that it will be one of the early identification ones.