Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Hire Canadians first law


Universities in Canada have regulations mandating that you can only hire foreign professors once you "close the Canadian market." This may end up actually working against Canadian professors. How? Suppose a University has five "top tier" candidates for a job. Three foreign and two Canadian. You lose the first two interviews because they are highly qualified and are lured away by other universities. Now if you want to go after the other three highly qualified candidates you have to "close the Canadian market," insuring that the position will be given to a foreigner.

I'll concede that there are other stories you can tell where the law works in the favor of hiring the Canadian worker. However, when you place restrictions on hiring practices for Canadian universities, you hurt students too. Given these two factors, I doubt that this law is something worth continuation.

-Credit Cornelis Van Kooten for bringing this to my attention.


1 comment:

Stephen Gordon said...

I don't know how this plays out in other disciplines, but these requirements are essentially ignored in the economics job market. I've never heard of any university that has forbidden an economic department from hiring a non-Canadian.

The only effect of the immigration laws is that Canadian candidates have an increased chance of getting first interviews at Canadian schools. But when it comes to the flyouts and offers, no-one looks at citizenship.