www.oocities.org/ubinz/press/1999B20HeraldEducatedImmigrants.html

Weekend Review, NZ Herald, 20 November 1999
 

Where can you meet tertiary-qualified professionals without visiting university? In a taxi.

It's not much of a joke, because almost always that highly educated taxi driver will be an immigrant.

The sad truth is that many immigrants arriving in New Zealand with tertiary qualifications and years of professional experience struggle to find meaningful employment.

The harsh reality is that these engineers, scientists, accountants, technicians, educators and administrators cannot find jobs, although their skills fall in fields where there is a demand for qualified professionals.

The Equal Employment Opportunities executive director, Trudie McNaughton, says discrimination is a problem for some ethnic groups.

"These people are caught in a vicious cycle," she says. "Because of discriminatory practices, they cannot gain the New Zealand experience employers are seeking.

"Too many workplaces and recruitment consultants are involved in wasteful, discriminatory and potentially illegal practices."

The discrimination may be unconscious and accidental, "but the effects are the same."

Her comments follow the release by her office of a survey of Sri Lankan migrants, the ethnic group with the highest rate of tertiary qualification in the country.

Half of Sri Lankan men and more than a third of Sri Lankan women have a tertiary qualification, compared with a national average of 9 per cent of men and 7 per cent of women.

Also, nearly half the tertiary-qualified Sri Lankans had at least one degree from a country outside their homeland.

The Sri Lankans were chosen as a target group for part of a pilot study to investigate employment experiences among immigrants: more than 75 per cent were in professional jobs before migrating, most boasting 11 to 20 years' experience.

Yet only about 60 per cent of those in jobs are working in the field for which they are qualified, and more than half are in less senior positions, although more than three-quarters of the respondents had been resident in New Zealand for more than two years.

Indeed, of those with tertiary qualifications, 40 per cent of bachelor's degree holders, 37 per cent of master's degree holders and three out of 11 with PhDs were unemployed. Of the PhDs, two were in science and one in archaeology.

Language was not a problem for the Sri Lankans, more than 90 per cent reporting fluency in English.

Trudie McNaughton says that the "feedback I receive from applicants, recruitment consultants and employers is that the results for Sri Lankan immigrants would generalise to other ethnic groups.

"The Sri Lankan experience is part of a broader picture: what we talking about here is discrimination."

A separate survey of New Zealand graduates showed unemployment rates of 34 per cent and 38 per cent for Indian and

Asian people, compared with 22 per cent for both Pakeha and Maori.

Although the Sri Lankans were highly qualified, more than a third of those unemployed had been applying for jobs without success for more than two years.

Trudie McNaughton says the figures show that employers are not making appropriate use of the skills that ethnic groups such as the Sri Lankans possess.

The Sri Lankans cited three main barriers to employment: lack of New Zealand experience, employers not understanding job applicants from other countries, and difficulty with recognising qualifications.

Doctors, teachers and lawyers were most likely to have to sit New Zealand exams, while many accountants said that, despite British qualifications, they still had to pass local exams.

Racism was cited by a third of respondents, many saying their skin colour, accent and ethnic name counted against them in gaining employment.

Many believed that their prospects would improve if they changed their name to an English one.

Work and Income New Zealand came in for criticism from the Sri Lankans, 20 per cent citing the Government agency for discrimination.

One said: "Winz are useless. They fail to recognise our needs. For them, whether you are an engineer, doctor or a labourer is immaterial."

Another said: "Winz is not geared to cater to migrants, particularly skilled migrants. None of the qualified migrants who come here want to exploit the [unemployment] benefit, but Winz has yet to realise that."

A spokeswoman for the agency replied that staff were "aware of the issues that migrant people as a whole face in trying to find employment in New Zealand."

Equal Employment Opportunities is recommending that Winz improve its staff's capacity and skill to work with migrants. It is also recommending that the Qualifications Authority process applications for recognition of overseas qualifications faster, while employers are urged to understand the cost to the country of not using migrant talent.