One of the members of the panel hosted by the Huron Immigration Partnership that discussed hiring immigrants was herself an immigrant, and now is the principal of Borders Immigration and a registered Immigration Consultant in Canada.
Kim Ly says immigrants to Canada are almost always attracted to the urban centres.
“We always have challenges with people wanting to stay in a rural community. They always want to go to urban centres. They also want to go to communities where people look like them and in rural communities you don’t have that. Housing for sure is one of the main issues and in a rural community, you don’t have that,” Ly explained.
Ly says it’s true that someone coming from a rural community might feel more comfortable going to a rural community in Canada, but she says the fact is most of the people in rural countries can’t afford to come to Canada, so the ones that do are most likely coming from urban centres. And Ly adds, those people are often bringing in a certain skill set that Canada doesn’t have. She says farmers in Holland had to develop skills that weren’t necessary here and they’re bringing those skills to Canada. Immigrants from other countries are bringing skills in other areas like IT, computer tech and security.
“We have all types of talent that come in bringing engineering skills, infrastructure. In countries that have to build really, really high buildings because of their land mass, they’re bringing that skill here in a country that has a lot of land mass but they teach us these different innovative technologies that we don’t have here,” Ly noted.
Ly concedes the barrier continues to be the lack of housing. We need immigrants to help build the houses but we can’t attract them because we don’t have housing for them. She says she’d like to be optimistic about that improving soon, but she’s still waiting to see.
