When Katalin Hegedus and her husband emigrated to Canada nearly 25 years ago, they knew they were in for the challenge of re-establishing themselves.

In Hungary, Hegedus was a high school teacher, teaching English as a second language, and her husband was a physician. Both had been practising their professions for 11 years prior to the move.

As immigrants looking for a new life in Canada, they accepted that they would need to retrain and re-establish their professions regardless of already being certified in their home country.
Hegedus says  it is even more difficult for those coming into the country as refugees. They generally have nothing and are in a hurry to get back on their feet.
“We need to distinguish between who are immigrants coming here for a better future and who chose to come and so that’s fair game, they do need to prove themselves,” says Hegedus,
“But there are immigrants who did not chose to come to Canada but they had to, so I think in that scenario, when they go home, homework is not the priority and I can’t blame them for that,”
Coming to a new country with nothing was one thing but coming with an uncertified foreign profession was also a tough personal challenge Hegedus and her husband had to face.
“It’s difficult to be patient. It’s difficult to play by the rules because you feel like you need to re-establish yourself and the faster the better.”
Hegedus completed four years at the University of British Columbia to obtain her master’s degree in second language acquisition and her husband completed a four-year residency to become a certified Canadian doctor.
“It takes a long time but I always use my example in the classroom because we accepted the rules,” says Hegedus.
“We came to Canada and we knew that my husband would have to redo his training but we chose to come, we were not refugees. We do not blame anyone and nobody blames us. We knew.”
After finishing her degree and working at Red Deer College, Hegedus came to Lethbridge College in 2005. She had her Canadian qualifications but because of her background as an immigrant, she began working as an assistant regardless of her teaching experience of nearly 20 years.
“I said, ‘I need to prove myself to this department, so for half a year I had an hour a day assisting and then the second semester they hired me as a teacher and then they hired me as a co-ordinator. You need the company, community and society time to realize who you are.”
Hegedus now works as a co-ordinator for the LINC program at Lethbridge College. LINC is an English as a Second Language program, which federally funds immigrant and refugee-status students for a short term.
Hegedus says there are many struggles that her students face when they come to another country in hopes of studying in a post-secondary institution.
“When the government speaks about immigrants, the biggest issue used to be settlement and that meant taking care of everyday needs.”
 Hegedus says that this idea reflected on the LINC program.
“We were supposed to teach them survival.”
Towards the end of the ‘90s and early 2000s, Hegedus saw a major change in the governments’ attitude towards the needs of immigrants.
It became apparent to the government that survival was not enough for the new Canadians. There needed to be pathways available for immigrant Canadians to obtain education beyond ESL and re-establish professions they had in their home countries.
“I saw a distinct turn when the money became available and the government recognized that surviving is not enough, there has to be integration within integration there has to be professional integration.”
More funding became available to assist those trying to meet their basic survival needs and complete their schooling, however Hegedus says it is seldom enough.
“This is beautiful on paper, but in reality this is not happening and that’s why you see a lot of our students and a lot of newcomers working at what we call pre-entry level jobs.”
These jobs are easy to obtain, as they demand little training outside of the job itself and minimal communication for those with limited English.
This explains a lot of stereotypical scenarios we see in Canada. Hegedus refers to immigrant taxi drivers, Walmart and Tim Hortons workers to make her point.
“The government realizes that there is a need for integration but the newcomers need money, they can not go to schools, they can not retrain because they need money.”
She explains that many of her students take advantage of getting the jobs they can but they worry about getting stuck in those positions. The LINC program works to help students find a balance between what needs to happen now and how to advance towards a better future.
“We teach two catchy phrases: short-term and long-term goals. The short-term goal is just get the food on the table. The long-term goal is say, get your engineering certification in Canada.”
Hegedus says few students have enough English coming into the country.
They can’t get enough funding to complete the basic English requirements and go on the complete their college or university goals.
More commonly, students who are pre-trained in a discipline work in a job similar to what they were trained in, but that may not require as much schooling.
“An example is a foreign-trained doctor working as a nurse because she doesn’t want to go through all the exams and paperwork to get her credentials. That’s a total loss for Canada, a total loss for their home country and a total personal loss.”
Often immigrants with foreign credentials want to show that they have the ability and skill but Hegedus says it does not work that way.
“A foreign engineer might say, ‘I can fix your lights’ but they might die on the job because I do not know how much they know.”
Professional agencies have accreditations in place for gatekeeping, but also for everyone’s security.
“It is a hard reality but I think gatekeeping is there for a reason.”
Hegedus says as an immigrant herself, she knows sometimes immigrants feel they are personally discriminated against by the procedures of re-establishing their original profession.
“I once wrote a term paper saying, ‘I’m an immigrant I need special consideration but don’t treat me differently” says Hegedus.“That’s the oxymoron. We all want to be accepted, we all want to be treated the same but we need special consideration. As soon as you need special consideration, you can’t be treated the same.”
Hegedus says the process of re-establishment is a hard one. There is a personal desire to get back to where you once were and a quickly as possible.
“Sometimes immigrants appear to be a little bit in a hurry but I think it’s understandable.”
In her position at LINC, Hedegus does has many success stories of students who beat the odds and found their way into college and universities as well as professional jobs.