PRINCIPLES BEHIND THE ISSUES TO
BE ADDRESSED

1. Self-Help

As immigrant women, we feel we have done a great deal over the past four or five years to improve our situation on our own as volunteers. Across the country, we have created what we consider to be highly inventive programs to address problems that immigrant women face at the grassroots level.

2. Partnership and Accountability

To resolve some of the problems faced by immigrant women today, we would like to work in partnership with the federal and provincial governments, with community colleges and school boards, with unions, social agencies, and mainstream women's organizations. Many of the questions we will address require joint action on the part of players in different jurisdictions and in the private sector. We do not want to be acted upon. We want to work in concert with you.

3. Integration not Ghettoization

Across the country, immigrants, whether women or men, have been seen as the preserve of separate departments. At the federal level, for example, immigrants are made to feel that they are the primary responsibility of Multiculturalism and to a lesser extent of the Immigrant Settlement and Adaptation Program at Employment and Immigration. We believe that this approach marginalize immigrant and visible minority women.

We face special problems, but they should be addressed not only by Multiculturalism and Employment and Immigration, but also by the Women's Program of Secretary of State, by Status of Women Canada, by the Women's Bureau of Labour Canada, by Health and Welfare and so on.

4. Concern for the Most Disadvantaged

In our presentation, we focus upon the most disadvantaged immigrant women in our society. In Canada, immigrant women tend to be concentrated into two groups: the highly-educated who enter the country with special skills usually as independent immigrants; and the semi-skilled and unskilled who enter in the sponsored category. Both groups face problems.

Studies show that one-third of immigrant women work in the low-wage sector where they emerge clearly as the most disadvantaged group in the overall labour force.

It is true that immigrants do have substantial representation in high status occupations (about 19%). However, studies show that, because their qualifications are often not recognized, and because of discrimination, many work in menial jobs for an unusually long period of time when they first arrive in Canada.