I wanted to make Canada my home. Then I realized my degree was worthless here

 Canada·First Person

After 9 years as an architect in the Middle East, it hurt that I could no longer call myself one in Canada

 

Komaldeep Makkar · for CBC First Person · Posted: Mar 18, 2023 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: March 18

Komaldeep Makkar had nine years of experience as an architect in India and Dubai before she moved to Canada. (Submitted by Komaldeep Makkar)

This First Person column is the experience of Komaldeep Makkar, a Canadian permanent resident who moved back to Dubai. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.

I grew up in the Indian state of Punjab. It felt like almost every street in my state had billboards promoting a better life and lots of job opportunities with higher salaries in Canada. I knew many families whose younger members were enrolled in courses for English-language proficiency tests making efforts to move to Canada. The pride in the eyes of those parents as they shared the news of their son or daughter settling in Canada left a strong impression on me. It made me think Canada had amazing opportunities and could one day also become my home.     

I graduated with a bachelor of architecture and a master of urban planning from India. My work as an architect took me to New Delhi and subsequently to Dubai, where I worked for multinational firms. In Dubai, I earned a salary I likely would have never earned in India, while also having a good work-life balance. But as an expat living in Dubai, there isn't a straightforward path toward citizenship. So to advance my career goals and in pursuit of a place to call my permanent home, I applied for the Canadian express entry program in 2017. I got married to an architect during the process of application and received my permanent residency visa in early 2020. My husband and I were excited to finally make the move we had heard and read so much about.

Makkar, pictured here, and her husband immigrated to Toronto in 2021. (Submitted by Komaldeep Makkar)

When we landed in Toronto in January 2021, we experienced our first snowfall. I loved breathing in the clean air and listening to the sounds of nature, which were so different from India. But soon our winter started getting colder with the cold calls that ended nowhere. After a few months of job hunting, I realized that my education and nine years of experience as an architect in the Middle East didn't matter. 

We joined government-funded newcomer programs when we arrived in Toronto to learn how to adapt our skills and experience to the Canadian market. I was told by multiple employment counsellors to remove my master's degree from my resume — the same degree that had gained me additional points in the express entry program. They also kept suggesting that I shave off some years of experience from my resume or strike off some of higher-profile projects so that I didn't appear overqualified for positions available to me. 

Architecture is a licensed profession in Canada — which is another way of saying I was no longer allowed to call myself an architect. I could only identify as an internationally trained architecture professional. To add to our confusion, while immigration is the federal government's responsibility — and we scored high in the points system because of our qualifications — the licensing requirements are managed by the province, which didn't recognize our degrees. If I wanted to call myself an architect, I'd have to enroll in an expensive Canadian master's program and repeat the degree I already had or crawl my way up the corporate ladder by taking entry-level internships. That was the advice I got from counsellors and other immigrants who had made it. I felt deeply disrespected and demoralized. 

Most interview callbacks I received were either for co-op or unpaid work. The few job offers for architectural technician positions which I received paid $15 per hour. I was at a loss. I had invested years of my life and a lot of money in the process of getting permanent residency in Canada. But instead of getting a job in the profession I had studied and worked so hard for, I was bleeding my savings day by day, just to keep up with living costs in Toronto.

 

Makkar sketched the view from her balcony in Toronto in between hunting for jobs as an architect. (Komaldeep Makkar)

My husband and I started to become disillusioned by the reality of the Canadian dream. We both had worked on large-scale projects in many regions like the Gulf states, Africa and India. And here we were as newcomers to the country explaining to companies why we did not have this seemingly special "Canadian experience." 

We weighed our options. To stay meant spending a huge amount of money for further education in the hopes of eventually landing a job as a Canadian architect, while simultaneously putting on hold our plans for saving for retirement or buying a home. Our years of education and professional experience overseas would have been for nothing. Rather than choose this subpar life in a country that has erected systemic blockades to prevent immigrants from succeeding in their professions, we decided to leave. I respect myself too much to stay.

I can't understand how the Canadian government says it plans to welcome 500,000 immigrants a year in order to meet the country's labour shortage, but then doesn't seem to do anything to stop qualified professionals from being treated with disdain. Until that gap between immigration policy and hiring loopholes is closed, we'll keep hearing stories of foreign-trained doctors who become Uber drivers and teachers who can only find jobs as janitors.

I also totally understand why so many immigrants in our position choose to stay — to validate the dream they have been advertised for their entire lives. Many of them are even from my hometown. Throwing in the towel was not something I ever saw myself doing until I saw my bank statements.

 

Makkar, left, with her husband at a beach in the U.A.E. in July 2021. (Submitted by Komaldeep Makkar)

We currently live in Dubai, working in decent jobs where we can proudly call ourselves architects and hold a standard of living that we have earned and our parents can be proud of. We do not intend to go back.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/first-person-degree-was-worthless-in-canada-1.6772923

What does Parliament’s disruption by the ruling party say about Indian democracy?

Published

20 Mar, 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Shoaib Daniyal

Much of the Union Parliament last week was washed out. By itself, disruptions in the business of India’s Parliament are not unusual. In fact, chaos in legislatures around the world is quite common.

In 2012, for example, Canada’s lower house saw a near-brawl as the Opposition attempted to block a vote on the government’s budget bill. In 2015, Japan’s Opposition tried to physically prevent a contentious vote that would allow Japanese troops to fight abroad – a controversial topic given the nation’s World War II history. In 2016, Opposition MPs were forcefully ejected from parliament in South Africa as they tried to disrupt a speech by the president.

Unfortunate as these are, disruptions are a natural side effect of the transparent nature of legislatures in Parliamentary systems in which elected politicians conduct business in the full view of their voters.

Who guards the guardians?

Even by these standards, however, what happened in India’s Parliament in the last week was unusual. Almost all disruptions in legislatures are affected by the Opposition, which uses the democratic space provided to them in Parliament to try and stymy or, at least, embarrass the government. In a dramatic twist, however, India’s Parliament is being disrupted by the government itself.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party claims it is disrupting Parliament in order to protest the fact that Rahul Gandhi while he was touring the United Kingdom had argued that Indian democracy was under threat. The ruling party has demanded an apology from Gandhi for this as well as for claiming that the microphones of Opposition MPs were muted in Parliament. If not, a BJP MP has asked for Gandhi to be suspended from Parliament.

While Parliament does have the power to suspend an MP, to do so for comments made about the quality of democracy would be, not to put too fine a point on it, ironic. Criticism is part of the job of the Opposition and there are numerous instances of Modi doing the same – even on foreign soil. To make this doubly ironic, Newslaundry reported that on Friday as the BJP protested against Gandhi’s comments about mics being muted, the Lok Sabha’s audio feed went silent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Congress tweeting out a video of Lok Sabha's audio being muted to drown out slogans of "Let Rahul [Gandhi] speak".

Punching bag

The BJP is ready to brave these paradoxes since by disrupting Parliament, it strategically avoids a discussion on the alleged financial scams of the Adani Group that US investment firm Hindenburg Research claimed to have unearthed. Given the close links between Modi and Adani, questions about the billionaire could potentially hurt the BJP, which has so far avoided any political blowback from allegations of corruption.

Short-term political strategy aside, the fact that the ruling party itself is ready to disrupt Parliament points to a stark truth about Indian democracy: legislatures are now largely irrelevant. In the normal scheme of things, the government is tasked with running Parliament and any disruptions would embarrass it. But clearly, the BJP fears no such repercussions.

This is only the latest such example that shows just how powerless Parliament is. As part of the distribution of powers, the institution’s primary role is to scrutinise and approve legislation. However, as data by the PRS thinktank shows, Parliament barely spends any time reading bills – much less scrutinising them. For example, the Lok Sabha took all of five minutes to pass the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (Amendment) Bill, 2021. Even worse, some critical bills have been passed using voice votes in the Rajya Sabha, a House in which the BJP does not have a majority (this explains how undemocratic that can be).

By far the worst step here involves the passing of the Anti-Defection Law in 1985, which put elected MPs and MLAs under the thumb of unelected party high commands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi shows photos of billionaire Gautam Adani and PM Modi in Parliament. Credit: Screengrab/Rahul Gandhi.

Politics of personality

The erosion of the legislature has prompted the rise of the politics of personality. Indians now vote directly for centralised leaders. The most prominent example of this is of course Narendra Modi but many states have their own examples. A Bharat Rashtra Samithi MLA is just as powerless in Telangana as a BJP MP is in Delhi. In both cases, they owe their elections largely to their party leaders.

For a phenomenon to be so wide ranging, it is impossible to be all bad. In a poor electorate with a large proportion of illiterate citizens, the brand of personality allows for easy identification with parties and their policies. Modi’s alignment with Hindutva, for example, quickly allows voters with the same ideology to identify who to vote for. In the context of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee is seen as a welfare populist who pushes minority rights and a Bengali identity, which easily categorises Trinamool voters.

This system, unideal as it is, helps voters wrangle as much as they can out of the state at election time. India’s welfare state, relatively impressive for its income levels, is paradoxically an outcome of this personality politics, from MG Ramachandran’s mid-day meals in Tamil Nadu to K Chandrashekar Rao’s farmer stipends in Telangana.

Of course, as the current fracas in Parliament shows, this politics of personality has a significant flaw in that it severely weakens the checks and balances of democracy. With Parliament’s power attenuated both legally and politically, it has almost no power to check the executive. It has practically become a rubber stamp for the government, whose only check is now elections.

Source: https://indiafix.stck.me/post/67920/What-does-Parliaments-disruption-by-the-ruling-party-say-about-Indian-democracy

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