When Do You Stop Being An Immigrant?

For the first two years I was in Canada, it was fairly obvi­ous I was new to the coun­try. Not only I didn’t speak Eng­lish very well but the North Amer­i­can way of life was a nov­elty to me. I didn’t know the local cus­toms, prod­ucts and cul­ture. I never really researched Canada the way a lot of prospec­tive immi­grants do because I just hap­pened to land in the Great North Strong and Free by chance.

5 Best Cities to Find a Job in Canada

Sta­tis­tics Canada reported in Octo­ber of 2011 that a sur­pris­ing 61,000 Canada jobs had been added dur­ing the pre­vi­ous month, far beyond anyone’s expec­ta­tions. Although many of these new jobs Canada were the result of Cana­di­ans going into busi­ness for them­selves, the econ­omy did see an increase in the num­ber of tra­di­tional full time jobs.

5 Things to Do When You Land in Canada (That No One Told You About)

The Par­lia­ment of Canada, Ottawa, June 2011

It’s the end of the process and you finally received the let­ter say­ing your visa is ready to be issued. You are a soon-to-be landed immi­grant and you already have a list of all the prac­ti­cal things you must do after you arrive.
Let me add more to your plate! Here are 5 Things to do when you land in Canada (that no one told you about)!

Immigrating to Canada: 6 Years Later, What Changed?

Six years ago, I was one of the many appli­cants wait­ing for per­ma­nent res­i­dence in Canada. Cit­i­zen­ship and Immigration’s web­site was updated weekly, so every Mon­day I logged in to check my appli­ca­tion sta­tus. And every week, I sighted because the sta­tus invari­ably showed as “in process”.
One day, I read the magic words: “deci­sion made”.
So, immigration-wise, what changed since 2005?

Oui, I hablo Spanish!

A lit­tle while ago, Guillermo, my good blog friend and fel­low immi­grant in Ottawa, asked me if he could inter­view me. “No wor­ries!” I replied—hey, who doesn’t like being interviewed?

“The inter­view would be in Span­ish” he quickly added. See, Guillermo and is fam­ily are from Argentina and even though I know for sure he speaks Eng­lish flu­ently, the inter­view was for his Span­ish blog.

“Well, sure” I replied, men­tally review­ing who could edit my Span­ish replies.

“Oh, and it’s a recorded inter­view” he finally added.

The Lonely Immigrant

Immi­grants I’m in con­tact with often men­tion how chal­leng­ing it is to make new friends in their adop­tive coun­try. Sure, we can stay con­nected with “home” eas­ily through the Inter­net and social web­sites made it eas­ier to keep in touch. But meet­ing new peo­ple in real life can be tricky at first. I know. I’ve been there.

3 Unexpected Consequences of Immigration

You finally landed wher­ever you dreamed of liv­ing, some kind of visa in hand. You tack­led all the bureau­cratic obsta­cles on your way and went through an often lengthy immi­gra­tion process. You adapted to life in a new coun­try, got a job, learned a new lan­guage and made friends with locals. You are a new immi­grant and you embrace your sta­tus.
But were you pre­pared for these three unex­pected con­se­quences of immigration?

I Want Out… But How and Why?

This atti­tude is com­mon when it comes to immi­gra­tion. A lot of peo­ple want to leave their coun­try for polit­i­cal or eco­nomic rea­sons. I get emails through this blog that basi­cally say: “I’m des­per­ate to leave XYZ coun­try, how I can move to Canada eas­ily?” And when I start explain­ing that mov­ing to Canada is usu­ally do-able but that you have to meet a few require­ments, do research etc. their inter­est vanishes.