For sure there are common skills that all electricians share regardless of country, but there are still significant differences between countries, like in the UK ring circuits are common, but are against code in the USA.

licensing process that doesn't care about relevant unlicensed experience

The problem with unlicensed experience is that it provides no assurance of knowledge of code or safe wiring practice. Like when I found that my house had several MWBC's, but on one of them, the previous owner (or someone he hired) had replaced the tied-handle breakers with untied breakers, which leads to a very unsafe situation (another common mistake with MWBC's is moving breakers around and putting the hots on the same hot leg, which can lead to an overloaded neutral). Or worse, when I mapped out my outlets and found that the owner had put a 30A breaker on the 12 gauge wire leading to the garage outlets, presumably he was tripping the code compliant 20A breaker and "solved" that with a bigger breaker.

But if a guy who is a master electrician in El Salvador can sell himself as an electrician here, then a homeowner may trust him to do major electrical work "Permits? Naa, you don't need permits for this, that'll just make it more expensive. Trust me! I'm an Electrican and I've been doing this work for 20 years back home"

Where in live in the US, the housing market is exploding. It is impossible to find these workers, licensed or not.

He also does landscaping, tree removal, fence repair, house painting, trash hauling, electrical, plumbing and general dentistry (if you ask).