Discrimination: Foreign Trade Professionals

Recognition of Foreign trained professionals Discrimination on the basis of race and country of origin - Part I Dr Ramesh C. Joshi * Very highly educated engineers and geologists ( some even with M. S. and others with Ph. D. Degree) from the former British colonies are currently  languishing in low paying technician type jobs or are unemployed or even doing some menial work to support their families. They are not even given a chance to prove that they are as good or even better engineers than many others and even Canadian Engineers. There are about 8000 so called Members in Training (MIT) and another 4000 or more Engineers in Training who have been asked to take courses to allow their degrees to be equivalent to the degree awarded by Canadian Universities.

It is my understanding that Ontario has barred the practice of evaluation of University degree by the professional associations. But here in Alberta it is being used with vengeance to keep the foreign trained professionals, particularly engineers, from working in their profession. APEGGA claims that they have some kind of agreements for reciprocal recognition of degrees. On other occasions the association representatives say that they have checked the system in other countries and have found their degrees to be acceptable or equivalent to the degrees awarded by the Canadian Universities.. This appears to be based on false presumption.

There is no reason why an association of undergraduate engineers should even be allowed to evaluate the degrees of the foreign trained engineers and geologists and geophysicists.

I have explained the  unreasonableness of this argument of equivalency in letters to two consecutive Presidents of APEGGA. There  is no sensible reason for the APEGGA to be allowed to evaluate the foreign degrees. APEGGA neither has the resources nor are they qualified to conduct a fair assessment. These foreign degrees have already been evaluated before all these foreign trained professionals immigrated to this sweet land of ours.

We are a nation of immigrants and we need more of them to develop our human resources and maintain our standard of living. We are considered to be the best country in the world because of our attitude of fairness to all of our citizens and even to all other humans in different countries. Canada and Canadians have helped alleviate injustice, slavery and apartheid in the past. We as a nation and many individuals have earned the laurels of the world. I am submitting this to urge you and all other professionals to search our conscience and reason to see if we can show the same sense of fairness and equality to the foreign trained immigrant professionals who toil and suffer working on low paying jobs in this knowledge based economy. It is not an easy task but I am sure we can do it.

The entry to the professions is governed by the rules and regulations set by the self-governing professional associations just like the entry to the country is for all the new immigrants including the refugees. The academic requirement for the entry to the profession of engineering, geology, and geophysics as per Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists, and Geophysicists (APEGGA) rules is the basic undergraduate degree from any of the Canadian Universities. There are also mutual recognition agreements with some countries namely, The USA, The UK, France, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Hong Kong, and Japan. The dates for the agreements with various countries are also given on APEGGA website.

Apparently the need for the mutual agreements was necessitated by the influx of professionals at the time of the economic booms or migration of professionals for some reason or the other from the country of origin as is indicated by the year of the agreements. For some reason or the other various other countries from where the majority of the engineers and other professionals came to our shores looking for opportunities or fleeing from political upheavals were excluded from the list of the Mutual Agreements. These countries included India, Pakistan, Thailand, Philippines, China, many  former British colonies as well as various European and other countries all over the world.

Except for France and Japan, most of the countries with which the agreements have been reached by APEGGA are the former British colonies with white majority population. (France has been apparently included because of Quebec. Inclusion of Japan in the list can only be assigned to its economic importance since I am personally familiar with the Japanese system of engineering education very well and it did not merit any special consideration. I visited Japanese Universities for a period of three months as an invited Senior Fellow of the Japan Society for Promotion of Science. My task included evaluation and comparison of research quality between the western and Japanese Universities. I have also visited Japan at least six more times since then). 

Almost all the old British colonies including those with majority Non-White population as well as Thailand and Philippines, have English as the medium of instruction as well as professional practice. Even the curriculums for all the technical and professional degrees in the universities and world famous technical institutes in many of these countries are almost the same as those in Canada or any other western country. After all they are the chicks of the same brood (meaning colonial background).

In most cases the new immigrants from the old colonies with Non-White majority population also have the added knowledge of one or more languages, which is so necessary for providing services to Canadians, who do not speak English at all. The additional knowledge in languages as well as the culture of their countries of birth is an asset, which seems to have escaped notice of the professional associations and even the multinational corporations.

It may come as a surprise to you and the general membership of APEGGA that the immigration rules seem to mandate a certificate from the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers (CCPE) for all the immigrating engineers from colonies and other countries with Non-White majority population for verifying their academic qualifications. The additional fee for this service provided by CCPE to the foreign trained engineering immigrants is $175. The certificate issued by the CCPE does not guarantee the immigrant automatic membership in the professional associations, but still it seems to give them the impression that they are eligible to work with their credentials as verified by the CCPE. It is only fair that if the degree has been verified and found acceptable by the CCPE then the self-governing provincial associations should accept the same too.

The degrees and even the professional experience of the people from the old colonies with majority white populations are accepted for membership in APEGGA despite the fact that those credentials or degrees do not seem to be any different from the degrees and experience in the other old colonies with majority non-white population. Many of these new immigrants are forced to seek admission in the universities for postgraduate studies since they cannot support themselves and their families on meager wages offered to them in the labor market even in the boom times.

A fair number of such immigrants does succeed in obtaining the postgraduate degree from Canadian Universities and join the academic profession or other research positions. Many such graduates have failed to find jobs in their field even after obtaining the postgraduate degrees from a Canadian University since they are considered either over qualified or having no field experience. In many cases APEGGA has denied many of these immigrant professionals with the additional post graduate degree admission to profession saying that their undergraduate degree is not equivalent to a degree from a Canadian University. Most applicants are simply assigned the M.I.T. status.

It appears there is lack of consistency in the application of the rule of fairness.

I have known people with undergraduate degree from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), who was denied membership in APEGGA and he had to get a MS degree from here before he was considered for membership in APEGGA and thus the right to practice the profession. Likewise I know many new and old immigrants who hold more than one academic degree (both degrees  from their country of birth or one of them from a Canadian University) in their branch of choosing but have been denied membership in APEGGA.

The immigrant engineers from the non-white majority nations feel not only discriminated but also frustrated and at a loss to understand the reasons for the bureaucratic responses they receive from APEGGA even after following the due procedures. Given below is reproduced a typical response sent to one of the applicants:

“Hello,

 Yes we did receive those transcripts and all other required documentation. 

Your file is currently in the review process and is out with an academic examiner. The whole review process can take anywhere from six to eight months as it needs to go for an academic review, an experience review, and then to the board where a final decision will be made on your file. If we require any additional information from you then you will be contacted. 

Thanks

Have a good day!

Jessica Almeida”

I have not included the name of the applicant or date etc to protect the prospective member. I know of this and many other cases in which this type of response has been sent to the foreign trained professionals. The applicants like him feel not only frustrated but also humiliated that his credentials cannot be verified with promptness. He and others also have years of field or project management experience. Such highly trained professionals feel futility of having immigrated but can not return back to their homeland for they have exhausted the financial resources to achieve the dream of practicing the profession and living like most of us as content and happy Canadians. Returning to the homeland is also not an option for the most since it is considered a failed attempt and thus an act of shame in most other cultures they come from. We cannot understand the humiliation and pain these immigrant professionals experience.

First of all why should APEGGA or its members be responsible for evaluating such academic credentials? Why not let the Universities evaluate all such degrees since the academics in the universities are quite familiar with the process and also the type of the universities and curriculum etc. They deal with such cases almost every day. I know it from personal experience here at the University of Calgary and many other Universities all over the world, where I have taught and or have been invited to present lectures.

Why should it take 6 to 8 months to evaluate the credentials? These days the whole world is interconnected. In the October 27^th 2006 issue of the e-PEGG on line there is also an announcement for “Communication Systems for various applications” by Ekrom Tadros in which the members are urged to learn of the ways of instant communication. It is difficult to understand for an applicant that it should take six to eight months to verify the credentials when the corporations and individuals are attempting to improve productivity and speed of data transmission using the Internet and other methods of communication.

To be continued...

Dr. Ramesh Joshi  has over 50 years of experience in consulting, research, teaching and business development in the area of civil engineering.He has worked in three different countries from 10 to 25 years each. He obtained his B. E. (Civil Engg) in 1956 from Jodhpur, India; M.Sc. (Highway Engg) in 1963 from Chandigarh, India; M.Sc. (Soils Engg) in 1968 and Ph.D. in Civil Engineering in 1970 from Iowa State University, U.S.A.  Before joining the academic ranks at the University of Calgary in 1977, he was a partner in Woodward Clyde Consultants of San Francisco, an internationally recognized geotechnical consulting engineering company, He is extensively published and has won several awards and has held various positions besides the membership and fellowship in the professional societies in Canada as well as the U.S.A. Japan Society for Promotion of Science(JSPS) awarded him a senior fellowship for evaluating the research quality at various Universities there.His areas of expertize include Fly Ash Utilization and Geotechnical Engineering.  He is a Life Member of APEGGA and Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering, University of Calgary.