Immigration is a life changing decision for anyone who wishes to take it. It involves huge sacrifices on the part of the immigrant as well as his dependants. Migrant steps into a foreign land with many apprehensions and butterflies in his stomach. Every migrant irrespective to where he is heading to takes up this decision with big dreams of giving a new dimension to his career. However as a famous English idiom goes “the grass is always greener on the other side” the picture is not as good as it seems to portray. The hopes of the majority of the migrants crash the moment they come to terms with the partiality subjected to them in the employment sector.

Problems faced by the immigrants

A common problem faced by the immigrants once they have migrated is finding a job in the new place. In spite of having good qualifications and skills they are marginalized. The very fact that they are migrants and not natives prevents them from getting jobs which are at par to their standards. Inevitably and under the demand of the situation to secure means of earning a living, they have to be complacent with menial jobs. Most of them are segregated into unskilled and low paid work. Researchers have shown that there is a large concentration of the immigrants in those sectors having poor wages and enormous work pressures and thereby opportunities for career development are at its minimum.

Reasons for such injustice

Many factors can be put on table as reasons for the prejudices the immigrants are subjected to, thus resulting into discrimination. Racism is the first and foremost factor. This is all the more true in the case of minorities where racism does play a significant role. Moreover in most cases the migrants come from places which are completely contrasting to their new place. Therefore language barriers, cultural and religious differences make their integration into the employment market more dubious. The immigrants’ lack of knowledge of the labor market further hinders them to demand for standard wages and to top it all since the employer is not familiar with the background of the migrant he is less willing to shell out more money from his pocket. All these reasons put together compels the immigrants to work below their skills and education levels.

Government Assistance

In many cases the government has been blamed for formulating such policies which places the immigrants to secondary sector occupations. However with the economic condition of the immigrants deteriorating day by day the government has taken stern measures so as to ameliorate the situation. Today most of the governments have departments and programmers to ensure the well-being of the immigrants. The Canadian government has provided settlement assistance to its immigrants. They are given free language training called Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada. Even the UK government has widened its measures so that the migrants have a wide range of occupations to choose from. Thus with all these initiatives the plight of the working immigrants to improve can be considered