Wel­come to my new series, Ten Immi­grants, Ten Inter­views.

You guys all know my story by now, and you have a pretty good idea of what my life in Canada looks like. I thought it was time to let other immi­grants and new Cana­di­ans speak. I con­tacted ten of them, who each have their own story, their own rea­sons to come to Canada, their own point of view on how life is up North in the igloos. They all answered ten ques­tions, bring­ing a new per­spec­tive on immigration.

A new post will be pub­lished every Saturday.

Andres Berrio

Andres is a Work­force Spe­cial­ist within the New­com­ers Divi­sion of a not-for-profit orga­ni­za­tion. The pro­gram aims at pro­vid­ing employ­ment ser­vices to Inter­na­tion­ally Edu­cated Pro­fes­sion­als and trades peo­ple through group work­shops to assist in prepa­ra­tion for employ­ment, one-on-one coun­sel­ing, intern­ships, men­tor­ing, job match­ing and job development.

Guid­ing new­com­ers to accom­plish their pro­fes­sional goals and help­ing them to develop a deeper knowl­edge of the Cana­dian labour mar­ket has become his pas­sion. In doing so, he has cul­ti­vated a high famil­iar­ity with com­mu­nity and infor­ma­tion resources in Toronto, includ­ing train­ing and edu­ca­tion, immi­gra­tion and cit­i­zen­ship, hous­ing, health­Care, employ­ment etc.

Andres is also founder of “Com­mu­nity Tables”, a self-funded project that will pro­vide nutri­tious meals to ele­men­tary school chil­dren all year round. This South Amer­ica based ini­tia­tive aims at devel­op­ing a model that can be eas­ily dupli­cated. The first Com­mu­nity Table is expected to be opened in June 2010 in Bogota, Colombia.

In addi­tion, he is excited to be a part of a group of 5 incred­i­bly com­mit­ted indi­vid­u­als who believe that Canada cares deeply enough to under­stand that cul­tur­ally friendly foods can ease the cul­tural shock of the immi­gra­tion expe­ri­ence. This project, called “Flavours from Home”, is sup­ported by Diver­seCity Fel­lows pro­gram and the North York Har­vest Food Bank.

Andres envi­sions Canada as a coun­try where the ideal of ‘inclu­sive diver­sity’ is per­ceived and prac­ticed as the effec­tive and con­sci­en­tious imple­men­ta­tion of equal access poli­cies to employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties; an all-embracing and uni­fied soci­ety that pro­motes social equal­ity by strongly rec­og­niz­ing Arti­cle 23 of The Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights.

What brought you to Canada?

Late one after­noon in Decem­ber 2004, I arrived at a cen­tre for new immi­grants in Toronto. A heart full of dreams and expec­ta­tions warmed with ease the frozen state of my new home.

Orig­i­nally from Colom­bia, I had lived in Atlanta, GA for 3 years. I can­not explain my arrival to Canada other than through the con­cept of serendip­ity. It was not some­thing I pre­pared for or had planned in advance.

Did you find the immi­gra­tion process dif­fi­cult?

No. How­ever, it has been a long and inter­est­ing chal­lenge. At first, I could not believe that it took only three months to have a valid Driver’s License, a REAL Social Insur­ance Num­ber and a Health Card (I hadn’t vis­ited a doc­tor in 3 years!) But becom­ing a cit­i­zen is tak­ing longer due to unex­pected delays in my application.

I con­sider Cana­dian cit­i­zen­ship a priv­i­lege, a gift, an hon­our; some­thing I would wait for as long as I have to in order to receive. I can­not wait to gain the right to vote! After all, incom­pe­tent offi­cials are elected by apa­thetic cit­i­zens that would rather stay home watch­ing a game than walk­ing up to the elec­tion booth.

How long did it take you to find a job that you liked in Canada?

It took me around 16 months of per­sonal adjust­ments, vol­un­teerism, net­work­ing, job devel­op­ment train­ing and Co-ops. It was not easy to define/implement a job search strat­egy with pre­car­i­ous soft & lan­guage skills and an edu­ca­tional back­ground in Polit­i­cal Sci­ence. “Hey! It may not always be easy, but it is always pos­si­ble” – I kept telling myself.

Even­tu­ally, I became exceed­ingly good at help­ing pro­fes­sional new­com­ers to Canada to iden­tify their pro­fes­sional options, develop a self-marketing strat­egy, define a pro­fes­sional path (includ­ing short-term and long-term achiev­able goals) and deter­mine action­able steps to effectively/timely seize avail­able opportunities.

I love/value what I do and truly look for­ward to Mon­day morn­ings. Sure! I grieve over closed-minded employ­ers and feel frus­trated at times when I meet new­com­ers that would rather exclu­sively use workopolis.com and monster.ca instead of spend­ing some time devel­op­ing a linkedin.com pro­file. But I can­not and will not com­plain. This is my pas­sion, the per­fect envi­ron­ment for me to thrive: not-for-profit, diverse, full of col­lab­o­ra­tive team­work and where cre­ativ­ity and inno­va­tion are the dri­ving forces behind the intel­lec­tual work.

Where did you learn French/ Eng­lish? What was your sec­ond lan­guage level when you first came to Canada?

My French is, to this very day, non exis­tent. Merci beau­coup.

I learned basic Eng­lish in Atlanta, GA, but never had the chance to study it. I used to work at a fast-food chain called Chick-fil-A. Instead of “Char­grilled Chicken”, I thought peo­ple were ask­ing for “Chi Green”. It was hard to fig­ure out why food items are not usu­ally iden­ti­fied by attach­ing a colour to their names.

The first expres­sions I learned came to me in the form of shouts through the drive thru speaker. I tried to pay atten­tion to the cus­tomers’ requests: “Let me have”, “Can I get”… It didn’t make sense in Spanish.

Once in Canada, watch­ing Hol­ly­wood movies with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles, blog­ging and vol­un­teer­ing all played an impor­tant role in improv­ing my com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills.

What was your biggest cul­ture shock?

• The con­cept of “Net­work­ing”: I have finally come to under­stand that net­work­ing is inti­mately linked to per­sonal engagement/responsibility. It requires a self-imposed oblig­a­tion to con­tribute knowl­edge as well as openly and will­ingly share wis­dom and proac­tively stim­u­late col­lab­o­ra­tion. Nonethe­less, it is an extremely chal­leng­ing and com­plex notion, espe­cially because it is dom­i­nated by soft skills, which can­not be eas­ily adapted, devel­oped or trans­ferred as they are defined by culture.
• Resumes + the hir­ing process: Cover let­ters, resumes, online pro­files, social/professional net­work­ing, men­tor­ing, self-marketing strate­gies, infor­ma­tion inter­views, pre-employment work­shops, bridg­ing pro­grams, sec­tor spe­cific enhanced lan­guage train­ing, reg­u­la­tory bod­ies, reg­u­lated pro­fes­sions, pro­fes­sional des­ig­na­tions, pro­fes­sional asso­ci­a­tions, doc­u­ment trans­la­tions, cre­den­tials assess­ments, tele­phone pre-screening, per­son­al­ity tests, vol­un­teerism; first, sec­ond, third stage interviews!
• Dis­cov­er­ing and expe­ri­enc­ing the third largest pub­lic tran­sit sys­tem in North Amer­ica! And car insur­ance pre­mi­ums and auto main­te­nance costs in Toronto.
• Citytv is actu­ally a fran­chise! A Colom­bian media con­glom­er­ate pur­chased the rights for Bogota sev­eral years ago. I didn’t know the whole con­cept was devel­oped and is head­quar­tered in Toronto.
• Peanut But­ter: Colom­bian and Latin foods are emo­tion­ally sig­nif­i­cant to me and relate to many pleas­ant mem­o­ries. How­ever, they were not eas­ily acces­si­ble when on social assis­tance. I had to turn to food banks for help. Even­tu­ally, I real­ized the donated foods required as much adap­ta­tion as Toronto, ulti­mately col­lect­ing in excess of 20 unopened peanut but­ter jars. Although I under­stood the nutri­tional value of peanut but­ter, I was never able to develop a taste for it so I ended up donat­ing them back.

What haven’t you got­ten used to yet in Canada?

• Polit­i­cal apa­thy: the wide­spread col­lec­tive and indi­vid­ual indif­fer­ence towards polit­i­cal events.
• The con­cept of “Cana­dian Expe­ri­ence” and worst, the assump­tion of defi­ciency towards new pro­fes­sional immi­grants among pol­icy cir­cles, (most) reg­u­la­tory bod­ies and (some) employers.
• Sar­casm, neg­a­tivism, crit­i­cism, bad atti­tude, and blame, which unfor­tu­nately abound among new immi­grants; this is due in part to lack of strate­gic plan­ning when it comes to job search­ing. A pos­i­tive out­look DOES NOT guar­an­tee a pos­i­tive out­come, but it will greatly increase our employability.

Did immi­grat­ing to Canada match your expectations?

It exceeded them.

Do you find life expen­sive in Canada com­pared to your home country?

Not really. I am lucky enough to earn more than min­i­mum wage, which is “not even close” to being a liv­ing wage.

I am cur­rently inter­ested in under­stand­ing why the Yukon is cur­rently the only juris­dic­tion in Canada to peg annual increases in its min­i­mum wage to the Con­sumer Price Index.

Will you apply for Cana­dian citizenship?

I applied in May 19, 2009. I have received the let­ter of acknowl­edge­ment but have not heard back in regards to my exam date. I can­not wait!

What advice would you give to some­one inter­ested in immi­grat­ing to Canada?

I would like to invite all inter­ested read­ers to visit my blog.

Related arti­cles:

1. Natalia: From Colom­bia to Mon­treal… and Back to Colombia
2. Nel­son: From Venezuela to Toronto
3. Mehmet Kaya: From Turkey To Toronto
4. Neeraj: From India to Toronto
5. Adam and Eric: From the USA to Toronto