…and it will be a success.
At least this is what this “experiment” from Immigration Canada demonstrates. But, at the same time, it also shows some cracks in the structure that could be fixed…
Lack of Information or Lack of Interest?
In a news release published last November 28th, Citizen and Immigration Canada claimed that those immigrants that received a voucher saying they were entitled to receive Free Language Lessons at an immigrant settlement service centre provider of their choice. According to the information “within six months of the vouchers being sent, immigrants selected to take part in the pilot were more than 100 percent more likely to enroll in free language classes than those who were not part of the pilot”.
The news release from CIC also has another very interesting comments:
Among those immigrants who were sent vouchers and subsequently enrolled in free language classes, 60 percent were women, compared to 40 percent in the control group that did not receive the vouchers.
LINC is a wonderful program. My wife was part of it for a year, during our days back in Waterloo and she found it very, very helpful. As they say “immigrants learn not only how to speak, read and write English or French, but also important aspects of integration, such as their rights and responsibilities as future Canadian citizens”. But I wonder if this great success doesn’t have to do more with some other things (also). Let’s see…
- More people enroll with the vouchers… because the voucher let them know about of the existence of LINC. Probably CIC can improve the access to that information? Or may be the voucher is a good idea by itself just for this?
- Some facilities have daycare and that increases the chances for women to participate. What about giving a better hand on this side? The daycare problem in this Ontario at least is terrible!
- Some women from some cultures where males are very dominant see on this a possible “escape to freedom”. Studying, then working, then…?
Anyways… I salute the initiative. I think LINC is great and can really help newcomers. Some other day, though, we could talk about immigrants arriving without language skills.
Source: Vouchers work: more immigrants enrolling in language classes
Pic from chaosaddons.com
Zhu December 4, 2010 at 8:24 pm
edit
I also think LINK is awesome and I can’t believe how many immigrants don’t know about it! I told a lot of newcomers about it who had no idea it even existed.