migrant engineers to Canada Australia New Zealand

[opsops]

All are facing similar issues; the goverments bring in people according to a "socialist" type central planning system to boost the population numbers. Baby boomers are retiring and somebody needs to prop the retirement funding; ie taxes.

Obviosly the selection process is based on age and education. Goverments don't desire criminals for good reasons.

However, what people do when they are already in the country is nobody's problem. Somebody needs to do the work that locals don't. Isn't it?

Regulation, certification is nothing else but a close shop approach, to weed competition. It used to be that east european engineering education was very very competitive and good.

I guess is bad luck for the foreign engineers, dubbed and forced to take what is left on the table



hope there are no typos for the picky ones....

 

[moltenmetal]

Engineering salaries, employment rates and variety of opportunities are greater in the US than in Canada. At least the US has the H1B visa system to control legal economic immigration to rates at least somewhat approximating the actual labour demand there.

 

[opsops]

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/11/story.cfm?c_id=11&objectid=10405504

employment info in NZ

 

[opsops]

without a system like H1B in the marketplace the pay for engineers drops/declines as laws of supply and demand kick in.


It makes it easy to recruit, ie lower costs and better choice, great news for businesses.

Not that great for employees

Also, is great for outsourcing

 

[moltenmetal]

opsops: now you understand what's behind Canada's immigration policy! Removal of the profession-specific targets arose out of business lobbying efforts. Businesses exist to maximize profit- labour is just another cost, regardless whether it's widget-makers on an assembly line or engineers in a cubicle-farm. More supply means cheaper and more flexible (i.e. cowed) labour.

The trouble is, so many people who have no hope of entering the engineering workforce come to Toronto every year, that they're forced to take "survival jobs" to make ends meet. So instead of having a refugee driving a taxi with an ear-to-ear grin on his face, thanking God that he can go to sleep at night without worrying about the death squads coming for his wife and kids, you have some disgruntled engineer in the driver's seat and disrespecting Canada under his breath. What good is THAT for business?

Matching labour force demand and immigration/training/graduation supply is just plain commonsense. Abandoning it for any profession is idiotic public policy.

 

[GregLocock]

Would you employ an engineer who did not check out the employment conditions before migrating?

Perhaps they drive taxis because they are unemployable as engineers.



Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[KENAT]

What if they did it for love?

 

[GregLocock]

What, all of them?

Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[KENAT]

I didn't say love of what

I just say that cause it's how I ended up in the States.

Ken

 

[ilovechickens]

Hi Opsops

I have to say I totally disagree with your comments on engineering in NZ. Also the newspaper is not the best place to look for a job of you are coming to NZ as most jobs never make get advertised in the paper. You have to use job agents, professinal bodies etc to find a job.

"In New Zealand the engineering market is weak and low tech. pay is no great either."

Not true - pay may be less to start with until you prove yourself capable, but in the end most professional NZers have a very good standard of living and can afford to travel the world when they are young. You can not compare the salaries with those in say Europe or the US, you also have to compare the standard of living and what people can buy with their money.

"The only field where seems to be some activity is civil engineering as money comes from goverment budgets. "

Yes civil engineering is a very big field, mainly because all our engineers are being pinched overseas by OZ, the UK etc.

"Everything else is basic... no challenges"

"Rubbish". Unlike other countries where I have worked where you get stuck into a tiny little cubby hole as to your job description and duties, in New zealand engineers are more likely to be a jack of all trades master of none. There are a lot of companies in NZ doing very high tech, specialist work with clients all round the world, and if you are s goof engineer with good english, recognised qualifications and work experience you should be able to get a job in NZ as they have a shortage of engineers.

If you are very highly specialised in an area that there are no companies in NZ then yes maybe you will struggle in NZ to find a job, because the market has to be flexible enough to employ good practicle people who can give anything a go.

"Also there are many migrants, competiting for very few jobs. Priority is usually given to UK migrants, funny enough even before local graduates. I guess it has to do with the fact that the locals are modest in presenting their abilities, while UK boys overinflate their capabilities. The superiority complex! "

Again not always true the company I worked for has over 50 nationalities. Yes there are a lot of brits, but also lots of asian, dutch, south african, german etc etc etc. in reality a large percentage of the population in NZ has british ancestory. in the end i imagine that if I applied for a job in Asia and as competing with an Asian Engineer on an equal footing, then I imagine the Asian engineer would get the job over me. Qualifications are just one item to be considered when you get a job, many other things come into it, including cultural issues.

 

[opsops]

sorry, the word "unemployable" is only in the lexicon of "charm school".


That's a label that has no substance to it in any way. The person might have certain level of knowledge or experience that fits a certain role level.

It is not right to put labels on people. The point is simple:

is he/she or not an engineer? that it

" to be or not to be "

 

[opsops]

Hi turbokiwi

How much a professional mechanical engineer gets after lets say 10 years, what benefits etc


what kind of work you do in the mechanical field?






" to be or not to be "

 

[opsops]

according to australian newspapers the unemployment is the lowest in 30 years........






" to be or not to be "

 

[moltenmetal]

Greg: the problem is, when people try to check out the "employment conditions" before immigrating to Canada, they get a lot of claptrap about how Canada needs "skilled workers", and how our overall national unemployment rate is at the lowest we've hit in several decades. They get no breakdown by profession or region etc. They have no way of knowing that Canada is swamped with immigrant engineers, and that unemployment has (significant) regional peaks and valleys- and under-employment is not measured. Look at the licensing bodies' websites, Citizenship and Immigration Canada's website etc. and you'd never know anything was wrong. Hence my little crusade...

opsops: are some of the taxi-driving "engineers" fundamentally unemployable as engineers here in Canada? Yes- without further training that they are unlikely to be able to afford, and unlikely to feel that they need. The enormous, protracted supply ensures that outside of the areas of local shortage (i.e. the tarsands oil patch), firms have no need to train people who are a poor fit- they just need the patience to sort through the dreck pile of resumes that come in with each job posting and sift through it to find the gems hidden in there. If they want to fill an entry-level position, they'd prefer a new grad anyway, since they have lower salary expectations, are more connected to their education and are generally native speakers of English to boot.

Is there something that the balance of "unemployable" folks can do in an engineering context without further training? Yes, but it's not really an engineer's job and not deserving of an engineer's salary- hence not ideal employment for someone who thinks they deserve to work as an engineer. We've had numerous bad experiences hiring people who think they're superior to the role they're given- it very frequently leads to insubordination and lacklustre performance in the assigned tasks.

There are exceptions to this rule for sure, but I'm sure that most of the engineers driving taxis feel that they are the exception. The marketplace is the only true judge.

As to whether or not someone is an engineer being the only question that matters, we agree- but if you merely mean, "Do they have a degree in engineering from some university or another?", then we don't agree. There's more to engineering than a degree, and more to a degree than a piece of paper.