Riggi Ilano arrived in Canada at the wrong time. It was February 2009, and the financial crisis was crashing job markets while he was looking for work to support his wife and two children. Eight months later, the Philippine-born, Australian-educated financial analyst finally found work as a software technician.

“Everybody talks about their passion,” Ilano told the Straight by phone. “But when you’re a migrant, finding a job is hard enough. Finding something you call yourself passionate about, that is like a dream.”

Ilano maintained that although the economy is slowly improving compared with where it was when he entered B.C.’s job market, the slowdown continues to be especially hard on immigrants. “Now, instead of getting a survival job in eight months—like it took me and other people I’ve spoken to—it probably takes six months,” he said. “But it is still a dead-end street, because you can try your best”¦but you’re still never going to utilize your skills as much as you did in your home country.”

Ilano’s assessment of the situation is shared by Lower Mainland caseworkers who help newcomers find employment in Canada. Most say that when times are tough, they’re hardest for immigrants and visible minorities.

In a telephone interview, Leo Valdez, executive director for the Multicultural Helping House Society, told the Straight that it is obvious the struggling economy has hit visible minorities and immigrants harder than Canadian-born Caucasians. “There is just very little out there,” he said. “And those that are already here are getting the jobs, and those who are arriving are not going to get them as quickly as expected.”

Speaking about skilled immigrants who belong to visible minorities, Valdez maintained that the recession has knocked this group down a rung on the economic ladder.

For example, he explained, when Vancouver was seeing a boom in construction in 2006 and 2007, an architect could come from Manila and obtain a position similar to the one they were trained for in the Philippines. Then, as the construction industry slowed, an immigrant with the same experience might only be able to get work in Vancouver doing drafting. “And now he is working as a janitor,” Valdez concluded.

A paper recently published by Krishna and Ravi Pendakur, economists at SFU and the University of Ottawa, respectively, gives some indication of the situation before the recession.

Colour by Numbers: Minority Earnings in Canada 1996–2006 states that in 2006, Lower Mainland visible-minority males earned six percent less than Caucasian men with equivalent qualifications. (Interestingly, the situation was reversed for the opposite sex: in 2006, visible-minority women in the Lower Mainland earned 14 percent more than their Caucasian counterparts.)

Jennifer Madigan, director of learning at Vancouver’s L2 Accent Reduction Centre, works with francophone interprovincial migrants as well as immigrants to Canada. She told the Straight by phone that the economic crunch has definitely been harder on the latter group.

“When your competition pool is that much more competitive, it is more difficult,” Madigan said. “Canadian employers are looking for Canadian experience.”

It is this common demand from employers for “Canadian experience” that Alice Zhou, a high-tech recruiter with Altitude Recruiting, described as a major hurdle for immigrants seeking meaningful employment. However, in a phone interview, she took issue with anecdotal information that attributes employment gaps between immigrants and Canadian-born workers to discrimination.

“We are seeing a general trend where even qualified people are either taking a step back in their career, taking a lower position, or they are taking similar positions and they are taking $5,000 or $10,000 pay cuts,” Zhou explained.

She pointed to a June 2010 B.C. Stats report stating that although the province’s unemployment rate continues to rise—reaching 7.8 percent in June compared to 7.5 percent the previous month—immigrants currently account for 29 percent of B.C.’s labour force. That’s a higher percentage than any other province except for Ontario.

“I think everyone is given a fair chance,” Zhou said. “It is just that there are so many talented candidates right now.”

You can follow Travis Lupick on Twitter at twitter.com/tlupick.