Despite recognising multilingualism as a reality and multilingual workforce as an advantage, language policies continue to favour certain languages over others. Using a case study of Canada’s language-in-immigration policy related to three federally administered immigration programs, this study is an attempt to understand how the macro-level policy represents Canada’s official languages (English and French) vis-à-vis the linguistic diversity that skilled immigrants bring to the country. A particular emphasis is given to the role of the Canadian points-based system and how it has emerged as a device to create power relations between the official languages and other languages. The findings reveal a disconnect between the macro policies and the social realities where a linguistic imbalance and inclusion of accountability measures have created a narrow model of social integration that expects multilingual skilled workers to integrate into the socio-economic culture through one of the official languages of Canada. Disregarding the multilingual reality of the Canadian society and not utilising the linguistic diversity of the multilingual workforce is a missed opportunity to benefit fully from these skilled workers and requires rethinking the current model of integration from a multilingual perspective.

Research in educational program administration provides insights into the operationalization of programs or organizational services; however, an area of research that is long due exploration and development is how English language programs (ELPs) differ in terms of planning, organization and services and the job English language program administrators (ELPAs) perform in their roles. This paper reports on collaborative autoethnographies of three ELPAs who share their experiences of encountering administrative challenges and devising effective strategies to address them. Employing a qualitative research design, data were collected through critical self-reflections, individual research discussion dialogs, notes sharing and a focus group. While we confirm that administrative challenges exist in ELP administration, the findings of this study add that the nature and extent of these problems (e.g. cultural diversity, course alignment, power relations, racism, recruitment) can be different from program to program and context to context. The main finding of this study is that successful ELP administration requires a good understanding of the macro-culture (e.g. national context, university culture, administration at large) as well as the micro-culture (e.g. program level policies and practices). This study has significant implications for leadership training in ELP administration and future research projects investigating context-specific leadership in English education.