There has been an expansion of the international mobility of academics in the last decade; however, immigrant professionals entering the academic sector as early career researchers have remained understudied. In Canada, highly skilled immigrants face a persistent labour market disadvantage, in particular, unemployment, underemployment, deskilling, and downward career mobility, contributing to uneven patterns of mobility and career progression. Specific studies on immigrant academics seeking work in higher education is limited - a gap we seek to address. Immigrant academics are individuals who possess a doctoral degree and/or relevant academic international work experience but are educated and enculturated in a different system of education than the one they are currently in or looking to enter. This group must cope with discrepancies in professional expectations, behaviours, and practices in a new social and professional environment, necessitating a reconstruction of their professional identities, which can leave them in precarious employment situations. We will present findings from a phenomenological study, drawing on conceptualizations of precarity as a labour condition and an ontological and embodied experience and nine reflective interviews with immigrant academic women. We propose that immigrant academics constitute a unique highly skilled precariat who find themselves between a rock and hard place. This group of professionals embodies strong professional identities and attachments and faces the dilemma of securing highly precarious employment (temporary, part-time and insecure) in a new academic environment or forgoing their professional attachment to seek stable employment in an alternate occupational sector. We reveal the affective, somatic, social, and cognitive dimensions of either career journey that proves costly not only immigrant academic women but also for professional ecosystem that is left vulnerable to talent waste in a time of crisis.