A national alliance dedicated to providing an evidence base for newcomer settlement & integration and the promotion of welcoming communities in Canada
The Media Roundup provides links to recent and archived articles, in both English and French, on immigration and diversity appearing in the national and local news. Some international content is also included. Articles are updated weekly.
You may have a string of prestigious degrees and years of experience in Canada, but potential employers may never get that far into your résumé if your name sounds foreign, a new study has found. An underlying reason appears to be subconscious discrimination, the researchers suggest.
In the last few years, Canadian marketers have been retooling their organizations to target newcomers to the country. Ethnic media are bursting with ads targeting Chinese, Filipino and South Asian immigrants. (Or at least as bursting as media outlets are these days.) But there’s another group of newcomers, all but unknown and ignored, that some people believe present a sweet opportunity to savvy companies willing to learn another language: Hispanic-Canadians.
In every war that Canada has fought in the past 100 years, Canadian forces have engaged local support staff to assist in establishing a stable ground operation. The war in Afghanistan has been no different. Many Afghans have worked, for pay, to help Canadian soldiers on the ground as translators. In 2009, I created an unprecedented, special program to help long-serving translators whose lives were endangered as a direct result of their work with Canadian troops. Over the past few months, your paper has repeatedly misled your readers about this program and specific applications received under it.
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1088272–sharifi-was-not-a-credible-applicant-kenney
Earlier this year the Federal Court overturned a large number of cases where refugees who had applied for protection at the Canadian Embassy in Cairo had been refused visas. The cases involved people who had fled from Eritrea who had applied for protection in Canada. Although they had been found to be refugees by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the Canadian immigration officer rejected their applications concluding that there was no evidence they would be at risk.
The Come to Canada Wizard, which helps people determine if they are eligible to come to Canada, has recorded more than 400,000 visits since being launched last August. “This is one way that my Department is creating a more responsive, transparent and efficient immigration system that benefits applicant, immigrants and Canadians alike,” said Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney.
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/media/releases/2011/2011-11-16.asp
The fraudulent language tests were first detected among immigrants applying to come here from Indonesia and Timor-Leste, according to a report from a Canadian visa officer in Indonesia. Some Toronto lawyers claim a number of tradespeople and immigrants find the standardized International English Language Testing System (IELTS) difficult and have to write the test twice or three times to pass. Immigrants are required to have a working knowledge of either of the official languages before they’re allowed to come to Canada as permanent residents.