[urbanfan89]

As a second generation immigrant myself, I'm thankful that my parents studied in Canada and decided that Hong Kong and Japan would be a better place to pursue their career.

If they had stayed in Canada, their degrees would have been devalued and I would have grown up in a highrise in Scarborough.

 

[prosperegal]

As a second generation immigrant myself, I'm thankful that my parents studied in Canada and decided that Hong Kong and Japan would be a better place to pursue their career.

If they had stayed in Canada, their degrees would have been devalued and I would have grown up in a highrise in Scarborough.

What's a second generation immigrant and why would your parents' degrees be devalued if they studied here? Most of my immigrant relatives/friends (and children of immigrants) who went to school in Canada are doing pretty well career-wise. I know FEW, if any who aren't where they're "supposed to be" based on the number of years they've worked. Most live in suburban homes in the 905.

 

[rpgr]

What's a second generation immigrant and why would your parents' degrees be devalued if they studied here? Most of my immigrant relatives/friends (and children of immigrants) who went to school in Canada are doing pretty well career-wise. I know FEW, if any who aren't where they're "supposed to be" based on the number of years they've worked. Most live in suburban homes in the 905.

Second generation is just that. Immigrant parents coming from another country = 1st generation immigrant. 2nd gen are those like us born and raised in Canada to immigrant parents.

Also s/he said that the degrees were from Canada but careers were pursued in far east Asia. Now that I've done a few cases and am going through case files from my mentor (working part time as an immigration consultant), education credentials earned in Canada (or the US) carry quite a lot of weight in far east Asia.

It's easy to see why as people are needed to bridge the gap between the English speaking mega-powers and other economies.

There's a lot of people who think immigration is a sham and I don't blame them, just the news that continues to only carry negative attitude polarizing stories (on just about anything).

 

[prosperegal]

Second generation is just that. Immigrant parents coming from another country = 1st generation immigrant. 2nd gen are those like us born and raised in Canada to immigrant parents.

Also s/he said that the degrees were from Canada but careers were pursued in far east Asia. Now that I've done a few cases and am going through case files from my mentor (working part time as an immigration consultant), education credentials earned in Canada (or the US) carry quite a lot of weight in far east Asia.

It's easy to see why as people are needed to bridge the gap between the English speaking mega-powers and other economies.

There's a lot of people who think immigration is a sham and I don't blame them, just the news that continues to only carry negative attitude polarizing stories (on just about anything).

I've never heard of the Canadian-born generation being referred to as "immigrant." I certainly don't consider myself one. My parents are immigrants, I'm CBC. An immigrant is someone who comes from another country. If you're born here, you're NOT an immigrant, even if you're closely connected to old country culture.

I think one reason why some immigrants (or children of immigrants, at times) don't do well is the lack of connections/networks. A lot of people who're multigeneration Canadian have relatives, friends and acquaintances in their social circle who might be able to be a reference for prospective jobs and internships. Note the so-called "Old Boys' Network." In the Toronto-area, the most traditional "Old Boys' Networks" means that not only are you male and of a certain ethnic group, but you probably went to certain schools as well. They use each other as references/intros for jobs. You've got to play the game to get ahead.

 

[cacruden]

I've never heard of the Canadian-born generation being referred to as "immigrant." I certainly don't consider myself one. My parents are immigrants, I'm CBC. An immigrant is someone who comes from another country. If you're born here, you're NOT an immigrant, even if you're closely connected to old country culture.

I think one reason why some immigrants (or children of immigrants, at times) don't do well is the lack of connections/networks. A lot of people who're multigeneration Canadian have relatives, friends and acquaintances in their social circle who might be able to be a reference for prospective jobs and internships. Note the so-called "Old Boys' Network." In the Toronto-area, the most traditional "Old Boys' Networks" means that not only are you male and of a certain ethnic group, but you probably went to certain schools as well. They use each other as references/intros for jobs. You've got to play the game to get ahead.

Your right, I would not consider children born here to be immigrants, in fact - if they come here before graduating high school - I really don't consider people immigrants.

I have heard rumours of an old boy's network - but never really ran into it other than a very very very few individuals that were born into well-to-do families. I believe it is over-rated in most cases. Building connections are always a good idea though, most jobs are not advertised - but that is more for after you have established yourself.

 

[rpgr]

You've never heard of generational immigrants? The one I most often hear are X generation Scot or X generation French.

Even the usage of hyphenated Canadian instead of just Canadian would attest to the fact that you separate yourself from being just Canadian (damn, all the filler/electives i took in U to boost my marks are flooding back), otherwise people would just say "I am Canadian" like the beer commercial from Molson. It's a whole local but foreign thing and it's encouraged by our "multicultural" philosophy.

Either way even if your Grandchildren are born and raised here and couldn't hold a set of chopsticks to save their lives let alone speak a lick of Mandarin or Cantonese, unless they are of mixed blood leaning more towards the Caucasian side, they will still be seen as Asian or "other".

I guess it is true that Asians don't usually take notice of this but I tend to throw it back in Eastern European immigrants who shout at me to "go back to where I came from" in heavy Eastern European accents when they drive poorly (it's usually this group that says it and almost always in white vans, yeah it's a bad driver stereotype in Europe, the dreaded "white van man").

 

[prosperegal]

You've never heard of generational immigrants? The one I most often hear are X generation Scot or X generation French.

That's identifying with an ethnicity, not identifying as an immigrant.

 

[cacruden]

You've never heard of generational immigrants? The one I most often hear are X generation Scot or X generation French.

Even the usage of hyphenated Canadian instead of just Canadian would attest to the fact that you separate yourself from being just Canadian (damn, all the filler/electives i took in U to boost my marks are flooding back), otherwise people would just say "I am Canadian" like the beer commercial from Molson. It's a whole local but foreign thing and it's encouraged by our "multicultural" philosophy.

Yes I have heard of that but just because you distinguish a sub-group does not make that subgroup an immigrant - more of - in addition to you also are part of another subset. I would not wish having to learn the bagpipes on my worst enemy Everyone is nth generation somthing - in that sense were are all generational immigrants ....

 

[Glen]

....... I'm CBC..........

Radio or Television?

 

[prosperegal]

Radio or Television?

LOL! CBC also stands for Canadian Born Chinese

(note: In the UK, you're a BBC, in the US and Australia, you're ABC. In all cases, the letters also stand for a broadcasting organization)

 

[kEiThZ]

The potential that immigrants bring in this economy....

PUBLICATION: National Post
DATE: 2009.02.13
EDITION: National
SECTION: Issues & Ideas
PAGE: A16
ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo: Adnan Abidi, Reuters / Students reach out tokiss a cutout of U. S. President Barack Obama in New Delhi. ;
DATELINE: BANGALORE, India
BYLINE: Thomas L. Friedman
SOURCE: The New York Times
WORD COUNT: 858

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Immigrant stimulus

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Leave it to a brainy Indian to come up with the cheapest and surest way to stimulate America's economy: immigration.

"All you need to do is grant visas to two million Indians, Chinese and Koreans," said Shekhar Gupta, editor of The Indian Express newspaper. "We will buy up all the subprime homes. We will work 18 hours a day to pay for them. We will immediately improve your savings rate -- no Indian bank today has more than 2% nonperforming loans because not paying your mortgage is considered shameful here. And we will start new companies to create our own jobs and jobs for more Americans."

While his tongue was slightly in cheek, Gupta and many other Indian business people I spoke to this week were trying to make a point that sometimes non-Americans can make best: "Dear America, please remember how you got to be the wealthiest country in history. It wasn't through protectionism, or state-owned banks or fearing free trade. No, the formula was very simple: build this really flexible, really open economy, tolerate creative destruction so dead capital is quickly redeployed to better ideas and companies, pour into it the most diverse, smart and energetic immigrants from every corner of the world and then stir and repeat, stir and repeat, stir and repeat, stir and repeat."

While I think President Barack Obama has been doing his best to keep the worst protectionist impulses in Congress out of his stimulus plan, the U. S. Senate unfortunately voted on Feb. 6 to restrict banks and other financial institutions that receive taxpayer bailout money from hiring high-skilled immigrants on temporary work permits.

Bad signal. In an age when attracting the first-round intellectual draft choices from around the world is the most important competitive advantage a knowledge economy can have, why would we add barriers against such brainpower -- anywhere? That's called "Old Europe." That's spelled: S-TU-P-I-D.

"If you do this, it will be one of the best things for India and one of the worst for Americans, [because] Indians will be forced to innovate at home," said Subhash B. Dhar, a member of the executive council that runs Infosys, the well-known Indian technology company that sends Indian workers to the U. S. to support a wide range of firms. "We protected our jobs for many years and look where it got us. Do you know that for an Indian company, it is still easier to do business with a company in the U. S. than it is to do business with another Indian state?"

Each Indian state tries to protect its little economy with its own rules. America should not be trying to copy that. "Your attitude," said Dhar, should be " 'whoever can make us competitive and dominant, let's bring them in.' "

If there is one thing we know for absolute certain, it's this: Protectionism did not cause the Great Depression, but it sure helped to make it "Great." From 1929 to 1934, world trade plunged by more than 60% --and we were all worse off.

We live in a technological age where every study shows that the more knowledge you have as a worker and the more knowledge workers you have as an economy, the faster your incomes will rise. Therefore, the centrepiece of our stimulus, the core driving principle, should be to stimulate everything that makes us smarter and attracts more smart people to our shores. That is the best way to create good jobs.

According to research by Vivek Wadhwa, a senior research associate at the Labor and Worklife Pro-gram at Harvard Law School, more than half of Silicon Valley start-ups were founded by immigrants over the last decade. These immigrant-founded tech companies employed 450,000 workers and had sales of US$52-billion in 2005, said Wadhwa in an essay published this week on BusinessWeek.com.

He also cited a recent study by William R. Kerr of Harvard Business School and William F. Lincoln of the University of Michigan that "found that in periods when visa numbers went down, so did patent applications filed by immigrants [in the U. S.]. And when visa numbers went up, patent applications followed suit."

We don't want to come out of this crisis with just inflation, a mountain of debt and more shovel-ready jobs. We want to -- we have to -- come out of it with a new Intel, Google, Microsoft and Apple. I would have loved to have seen the stimulus package include a government-funded venture capital bank to help finance all the startups that are clearly not starting up today -- in the clean-energy space they're dying like flies --because of a lack of liquidity from traditional lending sources.

Newsweek had an essay this week that began: "Could Silicon Valley become another Detroit?" Well, yes, it could. When the best brains in the world are on sale, you don't shut them out. You open your doors wider. We need to attack this financial crisis with green cards not just greenbacks, and with start-ups not just bailouts. One Detroit is enough.

 

[rpgr]

Yes I have heard of that but just because you distinguish a sub-group does not make that subgroup an immigrant - more of - in addition to you also are part of another subset. I would not wish having to learn the bagpipes on my worst enemy Everyone is nth generation somthing - in that sense were are all generational immigrants ....

I like bagpipes myself (well the sound of it anyways when done well, I would not have the lungs capacity to play them myself).

And it's not about saying you're an immigrant however when people look at you superficially you are still defined as an "other" first and not as a fellow Canadian.

Not to say it is entirely wrong, after all that's what multiculturalism is based on, differences. It's just a quirk that goes hand in hand for better and for worse.

Ahhh, as a better example of this is White and Black in the states. Both have been on the same land for pretty much the same amount of time but each regards the differing group as "outside" of understanding the other group.

That's identifying with an ethnicity, not identifying as an immigrant.

Does it make a difference as long as the majority perceive you as "slanty eye" either way? Let me propose this, when you see a black guy on the street, what do you see? Jamaican? African? Or just plain "black guy"? Do you know the difference between those that identify themselves as African and those that call themselves Jamaican (there is a big difference there as my friend had taught me)?

 

[rpgr]

Bad signal. In an age when attracting the first-round intellectual draft choices from around the world is the most important competitive advantage a knowledge economy can have, why would we add barriers against such brainpower -- anywhere? That's called "Old Europe." That's spelled: S-TU-P-I-D.

Just a comment on this, in general it is harder to get dual citizenry for the US than it is for Canada (US likes to make someone give up their other citizenship before accepting an application, I'm not 100% sure of the rules since I'm not a US immigration lawyer but it is something I have to be aware of with US citizens immigrating to Canada). As such money made in the US has more tendency to stay inside while Canada is a bit more lax and money gets sent overseas.

Of course this is both good and bad. By showing that people are succeeding here and having easier family immigration (which I see a lot of people bemoan as "welfare sucking recipients") we attract more people, however our failure as a society (not by law but by it's citizens) in recognizing foreign credentials is well, "cockblocking" any potential growth in this manner.

As such people are left to "drive taxis" or open "ethnic shops" which in turn makes a community more isolated and perpetuates continuing xenophobia.

In any case, there is a breakdown in what once was called "the American dream".

 

[prosperegal]

Does it make a difference as long as the majority perceive you as "slanty eye" either way? Let me propose this, when you see a black guy on the street, what do you see? Jamaican? African? Or just plain "black guy"? Do you know the difference between those that identify themselves as African and those that call themselves Jamaican (there is a big difference there as my friend had taught me)?

As long as you continue to see yourself as a foreigner, no one will accept you as a Canadian. If you assert yourself as Canadian, then eventually people might change their mind. In any case, most Chinese people don't see me as "Chinese," culturally speaking. That's why they call CBCs, jook sing - a hollow bamboo. Some people hate the term, but I wear it with pride

 

[afransen]

I tend to judge people more on the basis of their behaviour. Race isn't a very good way to judge cultural background. Things like accents, dress, etc. are more useful...