🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <D5pDsF.A9F@freenet.carleton.ca> ar231@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Karen Gordon) writes:
>From: ar231@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Karen Gordon)
>Subject: No job waiting? Yell RACISM !
>Date: Sun, 19 Mar 1995 19:50:38 GMT

>The following article is a real eye-opener - one that makes us all realize
>how easy it is to be called 'racist' in Canada....
>                        __________________
>(from The Vancouver Sun - March 14, 1995 - Stewart Bell):

No, Karen, that's not what it makes me realize.  It makes me realize that you 
can not hear tell of an immigrant to Canada offering a complaint about 
anything without going off the deep end about it.  It makes me realize that 
you just need to scapegoat immigrants for some reason.  What happened?  Did 
you apply for a job somewhere that an immigrant got instead?

I repost the article so that people can see what it actually says versus what 
you conclude from it, followed by my own comments.


>COLLEGE OF TEACHERS CALLED 'RACIST'

>Protais Haje loves teaching.
>His voice fills with energy and infectioious enthusiasm as he explains the
>joy he gets from challenging young minds and teaching students to think
>for themselves.

>But Haje doesn't teach anymore.
>Instead he sits at home COLLECTING WELFARE because the B.C. government 
>won't recognize his certificate from Namutamba Teacher Training College
>in Kampala, Uganda.

>"I have a lot of experience, but I have been denied a certificate by the
>BC College of Teachers," Haje, 40, said Sunday as he sat in the small 
>townhouse he rents with his wife and two children.

>"The only reason I can say is DISCRIMINATION."

>Haje is so convinced he is a victim of a racist school system that he has
>FILED LAWSUITS against the College, the Simon Fraser University faculty of
>education and the Surrey school district.

>He has also complained to the BC Council of Human Rights.

>He first brought his case to the human-rights council in 1992.  It is 
>still unresolved.  He claims all he wants is the council to FORCE the 
>College to tell him exactly what he must do in order to get a BC teaching
>certificate.

>Frustrated by the delay, he contacted his MLA, who just happens to be one
>of BC's most influential cabinet ministers.  Glen Clark wrote a letter on
>behalf of Haje, asking that the council 'expedite' the case.

>The letter, made public last week, sparked complaints by government critics
>that Clark was using his power to influence the human rights council, a 
>'quasi-judicial' body.

>But Haje doesn't see any problem with the letter.  Clark is his MLA; who
>else did people expect him to turn to, he asked.

>Born in Rwanda and educated in Uganda, Haje started teaching at age 19. 
>He was working at a United Nations school in Jinja, Uganda when his father
>was killed during then-dictator Idi Amin's campaign of terror.

>He escaped from Uganda into Kenya on foot and taught there at Farasi Lane 
>primary school, where he was head of the science department.

>In 1981, he immigrated to Canada, believing his education, experience and
>fluency in French and English (not to mention Swahili) would help him find
>a job.

>He was wrong.

>After working for several years as a substitute teacher in Surrey, he tried
>for a full-time position.  He was told he needed a BC teacher's certificate,
>but the College would not give him one, he said.
>                        ______________________________

>K. Gordon:
>Several things should be examined in this example:
>1.  Here we have an immigrant who is currently living on welfare, courtesy
>of the taxpayers,

may we note that he did work for several years as a substitute teacher? How is 
it that he was good enough to be a substitute teacher but can not qualify to 
teach full time?


 but he seems to have enough funds to launch law suits 
>against 3 different organizations.  (No, Legal Aid does not pay for civil
>actions against other parties). 

Maybe there are lawyers who believe in his cause doing this pro bono?  I
can see from your general attitude, Karen, that you would never do such a 
thing, but SOME lawyers do.  My point, though, as any lawyer would know, is 
that you are jumping to conclusions for which you have no supporting evidence. 
 It is NOT an obvious conclusion that someone on welfare who is engaged in 
lawsuits MUST be doing something "wrong".  There are lots of other 
explanations that might obtain; I have just offered one.  Instead of taking 
news articles that do not contain all the information and basing assumptions 
on them, how about doing some homework and finding out what the real situation 
is?  That would be of interest.  Your constant one-sided suppositions are 
really annoying.


 His backing may well be from 'immigrant
>groups' who are funded in large part by you and I,

And then again, it just as well may NOT be.  You don't know this, Karen,  you 
don't have any evidence of it whatsover.  In fact, in  my country (US) you'd 
be flirting with the libel laws at this point.  Doesn't Canada have any?


 or he is not declaring
>financial resources while accepting welfare.

You don't know this, either.

>2.  Anyone who knows about the plight of teachers in Canada trying to find
>full-time teaching positions, knows that this is one of the most critical
>job-shortage occupations in the country....many have left to go south across
>the border, and others have simply relinquished their teaching certificates
>due to work shortages.  Yet this new arrival to Canada is yelling 'racism'
>because HE cannot find the same work.

No, Karen, he is "yelling racism" because he is being told he is not QUALIFIED 
to do this kind of work (even though, apparently, he has already been doing 
it, IN CANADA), because his qualifications come from another country. I don't 
say he is right--maybe, in fact, his credentials are not the equivalent of 
those needed to obtain a BC teaching certificate, and he should be required to 
obtain one.  The article indicates that he is having problems even getting BC 
to say what more he needs to do to obtain such a certificate; maybe they are 
telling him he has to start over again with a bachelor's degree, who knows? 
 
My point is, whether he is right about the fairness of being excluded or not, 
and, if he is, whether that unfairness stems from racism or some other cause, 
he is NOT complaining because he can't "find full-time teaching positions," he 
is complaining because he is being told he doesn't qualify to hold one.  He is 
not saying that the country "owes" him a job, he is saying that the country 
ought to recognize his job qualifications and not eliminate him from competing 
for jobs. That is a very different complaint.  And if you have any 
intelligence at all, you know that.  So why do you keep distorting everything 
you read this way?

>3.  Cerification in other countries does not imply certification in Canada
>by any stretch of the imagination....as many doctors and other professionals
>from other parts of the world have found out.  Every country has its own 
>standards for its professions, and accreditation comes from new studies AND
>vacancies in those positions.

That's partially true.  Certification does come from new studies, in many 
instances.  But you know as well as I do that BC doesn't decide who gets 
teacher certification based on whether there are currently vacancies in 
teaching!  What a pile of crap, Karen.  If they did do that, there wouldn't be 
any out-of-work teachers, now would there?  Of course certification doesn't 
depend on how likely it is that you can find a job, it depends upon whether 
you have accomplished those educational and training tasks that the certifiers 
require.  Mr. Haje argues that he has.  BC says he hasn't.  At issue is 
whether BC says he hasn't for legitimate reasons, or whether it says he hasn't 
because of racial prejudice against Mr. Haje and/or his country and people of 
origin.

>This doesn't seem to matter to Mr. Haje, however.  He has learned the ways
>of Canada well enough to know that if he pulls the right strings, he can
>get what he wants...regardless of the numbers of unemployed teachers in 
>this country.

Karen, he hasn't "gotten what he wants" yet.  And we don't know whether he 
will or not, now do we?  And yes, accreditation varies from place to place, 
but I think it is not unreasonable to expect some recognition of previous 
training and experience, and a direct statement of what needs to be done to 
comply with regulations.  If Mr. Haje has not been able to obtain this, he is 
quite right to ask for it.

>And what is even more disturbing about this case, is that many Canadians
>who hear his cries of 'racism' will actually feel guilty about this man's
>predicament and start to believe that racism is a prevalent condition in
>this country....they will not see his manipulations and political acumen.

Karen, you are READING INTO this article a lot about manipulations and 
political acumen.  You COULD be right, but you COULD also be wrong.  I think 
it speaks rather well of Canada that many Canadians would be concerned about 
Mr. Haje's complaints, and that people like you, who leap to the thus far 
unwarranted-by-the-evidence conclusion that he is faking, are apparently in 
the minority.

>When I see the 'Stop Racism' buttons that are being circulated, I want to
>add to the bottom....'and abuses by immigrants!'
>--

Karen, there are doubtless abuses of the system by immigrants, some quite 
egregious.  There are also abuses by native born Canadians.  It is in the 
nature of political and social systems that they can be abused, and apparently 
in the nature of some people to abuse them.  I don't believe this tendency is 
any more heavily apparent in one race of people than in another.  Do you?  I 
have to tell you, if you do believe that, then you are, in fact, a racist.

If you don't believe that, then why are you scapegoating immigrants?  (I note, 
too, that the immigrants you pick on seem always to be third world non-white 
people.  Don't immigrants from the UK or the USA ever abuse the system?)

Jean