I have finished my Ph.D. in Canada and applied for PR afterwards. But I feel I am wasted in Canada right now.
After my Ph.D. program in Canada, I realize basically there are two options for me to continuously use my knowledge: find a R&D position in the company/government, or find a faculty position. Faculty position is tough for everyone including native Canadians, Thus I plan to work for a R&D department in the company or government. However, I have applied and received interviews from quite a few appropriate positions, but there is one thing they always asked is "Are you a Canadian Citizen?". Well, sometime they beautifully asked this question in other ways, such as how long have you been in Canada, or what is your status in Canada, or can you get a secret security clearance? That is because government positions give priority (actually only to) to Canadian citizens, whereas company R&D positions are opened mainly because these companies received government contracts, which again will require the secret security clearance attaches with the contracts. Or companies will consider the potential of future government contracts and decide only recruit Canadians, not PR or work-permit holders.
Except the well-commercialized subjects (such as computer sciences), most other subjects like mine have their jobs come from the government, directly or indirectly. Such government-driven positions are restricted by security clearance or "priority to Citizen" policy, which cannot be satisfied by new immigrants. We usually need to wait for about five years to be eligible from PR, while this five years are prime for the career development. Most Ph.D. has no choice but work as post-doc (like me) or accept a low-level position without really using their Ph.D. expertise. If we PH.D.s cannot find a position to utilize the knowledge we have learned, then Canada why are you keeping us here? Do you want we pursue our PhD degree for a such a long time, only going to do some basic office work, and waste all the time and resource used to train us?
I finished my Bachelor degree and Master degree in my home country, both of which are top three in a country with 40 times population of Canada. Most of my classmates became research scientists in R&D dept. of big companies/national research labs or faculties in universities with their own research teams and adequate research grants. I believe I am equally good as them, but I chose to come Canada for its freedom. I am writing my experience not for showing off but try to say I can be competitive. However, I cannot thrive in Canada here because of these restrictions.
Work for some kind of relevant jobs would still be lucky, I found there are so many PH.D. of different areas who turns out to have no jobs and stay at home, or work for subway, TimHorton, The Bay's (shopping guide), or something totally irrelevant to their PH.D degree. Some people may argue that PH.D. have their own problems, such as the difficult of their Ph.D. topic in solving real-world problem, their narrowed down scopes thus job choices, picky on jobs, worse personal skills, which lead to their struggle in job market. I admit that, but the proportion of such PHDs is so high in the people I know and I heard, that I feel it is not because of the personal or subject reasons, it is more a common phenomenon. It is more caused by language, culture, environment barriers that impede foreign Ph.D.s from finding an ideal job and exploit our skills. More importantly, policies such as the "priority to Canadians" and "security clearance" are obvious factors that even attenuate the chance of Ph.D. immigrants to thrive in Canada. I understand the importance of the "priority to Canadians" and "security clearance" polices, but it is the truth that well-educated immigrants are wasting due to these polices. Also, there is a lot things the government could do to help Ph.D.s to best utilize their expertise to serve this country.
What is your insights? please share your comments/suggestions/stories.
After my Ph.D. program in Canada, I realize basically there are two options for me to continuously use my knowledge: find a R&D position in the company/government, or find a faculty position. Faculty position is tough for everyone including native Canadians, Thus I plan to work for a R&D department in the company or government. However, I have applied and received interviews from quite a few appropriate positions, but there is one thing they always asked is "Are you a Canadian Citizen?". Well, sometime they beautifully asked this question in other ways, such as how long have you been in Canada, or what is your status in Canada, or can you get a secret security clearance? That is because government positions give priority (actually only to) to Canadian citizens, whereas company R&D positions are opened mainly because these companies received government contracts, which again will require the secret security clearance attaches with the contracts. Or companies will consider the potential of future government contracts and decide only recruit Canadians, not PR or work-permit holders.
Except the well-commercialized subjects (such as computer sciences), most other subjects like mine have their jobs come from the government, directly or indirectly. Such government-driven positions are restricted by security clearance or "priority to Citizen" policy, which cannot be satisfied by new immigrants. We usually need to wait for about five years to be eligible from PR, while this five years are prime for the career development. Most Ph.D. has no choice but work as post-doc (like me) or accept a low-level position without really using their Ph.D. expertise. If we PH.D.s cannot find a position to utilize the knowledge we have learned, then Canada why are you keeping us here? Do you want we pursue our PhD degree for a such a long time, only going to do some basic office work, and waste all the time and resource used to train us?
I finished my Bachelor degree and Master degree in my home country, both of which are top three in a country with 40 times population of Canada. Most of my classmates became research scientists in R&D dept. of big companies/national research labs or faculties in universities with their own research teams and adequate research grants. I believe I am equally good as them, but I chose to come Canada for its freedom. I am writing my experience not for showing off but try to say I can be competitive. However, I cannot thrive in Canada here because of these restrictions.
Work for some kind of relevant jobs would still be lucky, I found there are so many PH.D. of different areas who turns out to have no jobs and stay at home, or work for subway, TimHorton, The Bay's (shopping guide), or something totally irrelevant to their PH.D degree. Some people may argue that PH.D. have their own problems, such as the difficult of their Ph.D. topic in solving real-world problem, their narrowed down scopes thus job choices, picky on jobs, worse personal skills, which lead to their struggle in job market. I admit that, but the proportion of such PHDs is so high in the people I know and I heard, that I feel it is not because of the personal or subject reasons, it is more a common phenomenon. It is more caused by language, culture, environment barriers that impede foreign Ph.D.s from finding an ideal job and exploit our skills. More importantly, policies such as the "priority to Canadians" and "security clearance" are obvious factors that even attenuate the chance of Ph.D. immigrants to thrive in Canada. I understand the importance of the "priority to Canadians" and "security clearance" polices, but it is the truth that well-educated immigrants are wasting due to these polices. Also, there is a lot things the government could do to help Ph.D.s to best utilize their expertise to serve this country.
What is your insights? please share your comments/suggestions/stories.
