Moving to the Western (developed) world with a foreign educational qualification, bad or good?

Reading widely on matters concerning sports, politics, business and community living has played a big role in influencing my decision to dedicate some of my free time to write my own opinions on a wide range of topics. Today, I would like to focus on the issue of immigrating to the west, and by that I mean moving abroad to study, live or work be it on a permanent or temporal basis. Since many countries can be termed as Western world, I will limit my focus to the country I know and understand well, i.e. Canada.
Whenever I have travelled to my home country, many of my friends, relatives and even neighbors have either requested me to give them information on how easy or hard it is to live and work in this country as an immigrant, especially those that have already graduated out there.
My personal opinion to those that have managed to come and for those who still have those ambitions of coming is that it can be extremely difficult and even next to impossible to get a decent career related job in this country if you only hold a foreign credential. Forget about your bachelors, masters etc that you have from Africa, too many questions get asked of you out here such as why an employer should hire you when they can get someone with local qualifications. Some employers may bring into question the genuineness of the educational qualifications you hold; for God’s sake who knows whether you may have even paid someone to fake the qualifications. If someone is going to come here with a foreign creditential, then be prepared to sell your skills considerably and also aggressively to the employers’ in order to show that you are better than those that have graduated here.
For those that are already here and plan to stay here, I would recommend that they enroll in local programs because in the end it will pay off to get that Canadian education. Good luck for those that plan to travel this way, and be prepared to sell your skills. Life is no longer about whom you know, but being able to show your skills in an equally competitive market.