Would appreciate any and all suggestions - as far as I know, the topic of professional accreditation/immigrant occupational licensing hasn't been touched on yet.[Name] You Got A License For That?
[Desc] At a recent state dinner held for the dreamy new Brancalandian Prime Minister, your dish of @@Animal@@ tartare was so delicious that you personally visited the kitchen to give your compliments to the chef. To your surprise, he tells you that he used to be a prestigious doctor in his home country of Dàguó, but due to foreign credential restrictions, was forced to find work as a chef. This has given your cabinet something to talk about over dinner on an otherwise slow news day - that, and the Prime Minister's hair. Phwoar!
[Validity] All
[option] "Back in Dàguó, I graduated top of my class in medical school," you remember the chef telling you. "Now in @@Country@@, I can only cook food for puff-haired heads of state! It's all to do with the greedy native-born doctors who keep immigrants like me out of the job market. More doctors means less demand, ergo less money for them. They refuse to recognize my qualifications despite coming from one of Dàguó's top universities. And it's not just doctors - my sous-chef is an East Lebatuckian optometrist, and the dishwasher was a tenured professor in Bigtopia! If you would only knock down these silly laws that prevent immigrant professionals with proper credentials from participating in the economy, we would all benefit!"
Effect: immigrants with theoretical degrees in physics find work as theoretical physicists.
[option] "The chef has a point," muses your Foreign Affairs Minister, picking her teeth clean with a knife. "But we can't let just whoever has a degree in whatever come here from wherever and set up shop. Giving out a license to every wacko Wezeltonian with a PhD can only lead to trouble. No, what we should do is establish a robust system of standards, so that developed countries with established institutions can send their best and brightest with minimal red tape. We should focus on knocking down barriers with our allies, while filtering out people who come from less, ah, desirable countries, with lower professional standards. You know, like Wezeltonia."
Effect: an immigrant's luck finding work depends entirely on their mother country's relationship with @@Country@@.
[option] Mick Xenophob, your Minister of Xenophobic Solutions, pipes up. "You're kidding me, right? Native wages are already being undermined by immigration as is, and you want to bring in MORE of those people to fill our most important positions? I don't trust a Lebatuckian to shine my damn shoes, much less check my eyes! What we should be doing is allowing professionals born in @@Country@@ to get licensed, and telling everyone else to get out! There ain't nothing a Brancalandian can do better than a @@Demonym@@ anyway... nice hair, though."
Effect: "@@Country@@ First" has replaced "Do No Harm" as the first rule of medicine.
[option] "The whole idea of professional licensure is a bunch of malarkey anyway," opines prominent economist Chilton Freeman in the latest issue of Orbs Magazine. "People don't need to be told whether or not they are allowed to practice their trade - any rational person is capable of choosing for themselves who they want their dentist, gardener, therapist or ice cream scooper to be. If someone is bad or negligent, people will know to stay away because of the uniformly terrible reviews. Instead of creating a competition between native-born citizens and foreigners, why not just take government out of the picture altogether and level the playing field? After all, the freer the market, the freer the people."
Effect: the town mechanic is now also the town abortionist.
