Over the last 2½ years, 9,867 Syrian refugees have arrived in Quebec, including 6,149 in Montreal.

They have settled into their own homes and finished their paperwork as permanent residents. The kids are enrolled in school, and many of the adults have completed their government-mandated French classes.

But how many have found jobs?

It’s a difficult question to answer. Quebec is enjoying a robust job market. In June, 5.6 per cent of Quebecers were unemployed, the lowest level recorded by Statistics Canada since 1976. But the Quebec government doesn’t keep statistics on refugee employment, and could only provide an unemployment rate for immigrants who arrived within the last five years: 15.1 per cent, compared to 7.1 per cent in the general population for that same period. And among immigrants, refugees are typically twice as likely as skilled workers to be unemployed. 

Those on the front lines say it’s clear far fewer have found work in their field of expertise.

“I have a doctor working at Adonis and a dentist at Walmart,” says Fatna Chater, a job counsellor at the Centre sociale d’aide aux immigrants (CSAI), the organization mandated to help government-sponsored refugees in Montreal. “Businesses are reticent to hire them because they don’t understand what a refugee is. But if no one gives them a chance, they’ll do basic work or volunteer.”

Despite government-sponsored programs like PRIME and Interconnection, which offer subsidies to firms that hire immigrants, employment is proving to be the most elusive part of the integration puzzle, she says.

Chater recently called each and every dental clinic in Montreal to place two Syrian dentists, both of whom had recognized qualifications and spoke fluent English and French. She even offered to pay half their salaries (through government subsidies).

But no one would hire them.

The one who works at Walmart also volunteers as a dentist at the Welcome Hall Mission.  

“For a refugee who didn’t choose to come here and has lost everything, taking away his or her profession is leaving them with nothing,” she says.  

At a recent job fair organized by CSAI, about 34 employers — from banks to bakeries to window washers — set up stands in the basement of Ste-Suzanne Church in Pierrefonds. SNC-Lavalin, the Société de transport de Montréal, Desjardins and Saputo were among them. 

“Here we’ve found people who really want to work and we understand their reality,” said Analia Tomaro, a human resources specialist at Saputo. By mid-day, Tomaro had collected 30 CVs for jobs at Saputo factories in Montreal and customer service work in outlying regions. “Mr. Saputo himself was an immigrant who made cheese in his St-Michel apartment. … But we can’t help everybody.” 

For Desjardins, hiring refugees is a matter of self-interest. The banking co-operative was there to recruit 15 people for training in mainframe programming as part of one-year internships subsidized by the city of Montreal’s BINAM, the agency for the integration of newcomers. And Desjardins needs to reflect Quebec’s multicultural reality in order to attract new clients, said Philippe Tremblay, a technology and creative director at Desjardins. 

“I’m humbled by their effort to speak the language and to integrate,” Tremblay said. “There are people who are qualified and would be loyal employees. And if we don’t give them a chance, how are they suppose to integrate?”  

Unfortunately, the good will — and government subsidies — will only go so far for the newcomers who filled the parking lot at the Pierrefonds church. 

About 250 candidates presented themselves to prospective employers, providing CVs that had been corrected — and Canadianized — by CSAI job counsellors.

Here are three of the candidates who agreed to share their stories. 

Zeina Babik, 23

Bachelor of science in biotechnology engineering

In Montreal since November 2016

To look at Zeina Babik is to see an outgoing, stylish 23-year-old. In the eight months since she settled in Montreal, she has mastered French and found a job as a salesperson at Ardène, a clothing and accessories store popular among teens and young adults. 

But Babik is a biotechnology engineer by training, and her bubbly nature masks her deep frustration at having risked everything, including her life, to end up selling nail polish and leggings.

Babik’s younger brothers left Syria in 2015 to avoid military service. But she stayed in Aleppo until September 2016 to complete her degree, despite the daily bombings and protracted siege of the city. 

“I had to choose between my degree and safety,” she says. “I chose my degree.” 

It was tough, Babik says, living at times without electricity, food or water — without a flush toilet, she specifies — and learning to shrug off daily tragedies.

“We became like animals. We lost a little of our humanity.”

But the worst day came in 2015 when the architecture department at the University of Aleppo was bombed while she sat for an exam.

The whole building began to shake. Her pen started to shake. But it was only when she went outside and saw the smoke and the mess of blood and bodies that she realized the extent of the casualties.

“I tried to call friends to make sure they were alive but there was no phone service,” Babik recalls, her eyes welling up. “I couldn’t call my mom to say I’m OK. More than 200 students died that day. I had some terrible days, but that day it was students, not soldiers, dying — the future of my country.”

Now that she works 40 hours a week, Babik has little time to search for a job in her field. She sent out 100 CVs and got zero responses. She wonders if it was all worth it.

“I fought so hard to get my degree and for what?” Babik asks. “I just want a foot in the door. I can work in any lab — at a hospital, or in milk testing, for example. I can do it. I don’t care about the pay. They’ll see I’m qualified. I just want to be in the right field so people around me can guide me. I’m 23; I can’t figure it out all alone.” 

“I’m thankful I’m here. I didn’t even have to pay for my plane ticket. But what happens now?”  

At the job fair, Babik was offered a job doing filing for an immigration consultant: 20 hours a week at minimum wage.

“It’s not enough hours,” she told the consultant, disappointed.

“Anyway, you’re overqualified,” he responded.

Gracia Beyloune, 57

Bachelor of science in biology and chemistry

In Montreal since February 2016

A middle-school chemistry teacher in Aleppo, Gracia Beyloune was told by a job counsellor she could be a pharmacist technician in Quebec.

But then they wanted to see her marks. 

“I left the war with what I could grab,” Beyloune says matter-of-factly. “I didn’t have time to go back to the university to get my marks.”

She arrived in Montreal in February 2016. It would not be easy to have a copy of her transcript from the 1980s sent from an institution that has been a target of bombing and shelling during six years of war.

Thinking she might have to redo her degree, she decided to switch gears.

“I hope to find work at a community centre or women’s group,” Beyloune says, as she peruses the stands set up at the job fair. “All of the people here have degrees. They have master’s degrees. But when you come here you need to take whatever work you can get.”

At first, Beyloune was distraught to have to give up teaching.  

“I was very sad. I’m not young,” she says. “And my husband is in his 60s. He was an agricultural engineer. At his age he can’t work eight hours a day at Adonis.” 

But the two had vastly different attitudes. While Beyloune perfected her French with conversation classes twice a week and remained optimistic, her husband argued in favour of going back to Syria.

“He preferred the war to taking handouts as an old man, and waiting around,” she says. “We made a bet. He said we wouldn’t make it. I said we would. He said no one would accept us in Quebec. I said they will and they are.”

As she looks for a paying job, Beyloune now volunteers at CSAI, helping newcomers move into their own apartments and find their way to appointments, just as someone did for her. Her husband, who also ran a photo studio in Aleppo, has found occasional work with a local photographer.

“We’re on the first step,” she says smiling. “You always have to be optimistic. I had a beautiful house and left everything behind. I used to be someone. But I can be someone again.”

The final impetus to leave Syria came when a bomb fell on a car, narrowly missing her daughter, but killing two other women. 

“I saved my family. I am happy. I can start over like I did before.”  

Milad Sabbagh, 59

Pediatrician

In Montreal since 2014

“We were collateral damage,” says Milad Sabbagh, thinking back on the truck bomb that flattened his house and killed four or five soldiers in Qamishli, in northeastern Syria, eventually forcing his emigration to Canada in 2014.

At the time he was the chief of pediatrics at two hospitals, and thought the violence would subside. “It was politics,” he says, “and I was a doctor.”

But when the violence continued to escalate, and Islamists started threatening him and his family, his brothers and sisters pressured him to follow them to Lebanon. Once he was recognized by the United Nations as a refugee, his family could then be sponsored by another brother in Canada, they told him.  

That was more than three years ago. His three children are now in CEGEP and high school, and his wife has taken a job at a grocery store. But he has not worked since he arrived in Canada.

“I love Montreal. You don’t feel like a stranger here. The problem is you can’t get a job. You need a diploma to fry eggs in Canada.” 

Sabbagh passed the Medical Council of Canada Evaluation Exam (at a cost of $1,780). But he would then have to pass two more exams at similar costs and be accepted for a residency in Quebec before he could practise.

“I’m not young, and when I saw many of my younger Syrian friends pass all three exams and still not be accepted for a residency, I stopped. I thought it would be a waste of time. But I miss my work. I miss my patients.”

He’s now looking for work related to medicine. “Something related to a stethoscope,” he says. “I’m looking for anything. But I don’t know how to do anything besides be a good doctor. I’m an idiot at everything else.”