The Globe has developed fictional profiles of prospective immigrants. We asked two experts to assess the candidates. Who would you choose?
LEI
Lei is a 24-year-old woman from China who wants to move to Toronto. An engineering graduate, she's had trouble finding a job and has heard there's lots of work in Canada. To start, she's been offered a minimum-wage job at her uncle's Chinatown store. Lei knows she would have to work her way up, but believes she'd eventually get a job in engineering. She speaks rudimentary English, but isn't worried because her uncle says that you can get by speaking only Chinese in Toronto. Lei, who is excited about Canada's wide open spaces, would leave behind her boyfriend, who also hopes to emigrate to Canada some day.
Martin Collacott: If she doesn't speak much English, she's in real trouble and maybe she doesn't realize that. This is one of the problems of selection with our system. ... If you don't speak enough English to function in the area of work you want to go into, you're going to be out of luck. The fact that we give them a visa because they may have good degrees, but if they don't speak enough English, they're going to have a very difficult time here. She will be washing dishes or doing whatever in her uncle's Chinatown store. She's going to have a tough time ... also because there are probably too many engineers here now and too many more coming in. But you keep hearing that we have all these shortages, which is to some extent propaganda by the immigration industry. They're not shortages immigrants are likely to fill, except maybe for doctors.
Sharryn Aiken: I think she could make an ideal immigrant to Canada. She's young, she's educated. It's clear she's motivated in terms of coming to Canada. We've also been told, and this is critical, that she's going to be coming into a situation where she's got a family network. Her uncle owns a store. She's been offered a job there. Although it's only minimum wage and clearly not in her line of work, it sounds like she doesn't mind that and that she's willing to work her way up. That's the classic story that many newcomers or their descendents experienced, particularly in the past: Coming to Canada, often with significant education and experience, having to give that up, start all over again, but through dint of hard work, ultimately succeeding. There's no reason to think that Lei wouldn't be successful.
Jill Mahoney