Tim­mies Cup Left Behind

How much can you com­plain about your new coun­try after you immigrate?

Some wish they hadn’t immi­grated to Canada and crit­i­cize every­thing and oth­ers praise every­thing but now hate their home coun­try. The truth must be some­where in between.

Immi­grants usu­ally go through dif­fer­ent phases. Love when every­thing is new, frus­tra­tion when the first dif­fi­cul­ties appear, and then even­tu­ally every­thing set­tles down as the per­son finds a place in society.

But some will never get over the sec­ond stage.

Immi­grat­ing is harder than one thinks. The paper­work part is easy even if it is frus­trat­ing at times — the real prob­lem is adapt­ing, and not every­one is equal.

Some think because they live in a “poor” coun­try life will be eas­ier in Canada. Immi­grat­ing is thus seen escap­ing for a bet­ter life — it’s gotta be bet­ter in North Amer­ica, right? Mate­ri­ally speak­ing, it may be true. Yet life can be tough in many ways. For exam­ple, those com­ing from coun­tries where fam­ily is very impor­tant may feel iso­lated with­out a help­ful social net­work. A few years ago, I talked with a young Moroc­can guy on a forum. He has mar­ried a Québec woman and couldn’t wait to go live with her. I had news a few months later: he had set­tled with her in a remote vil­lage, couldn’t find a job and he missed home and his fam­ily. His dream of a bet­ter life in North Amer­ica cer­tainly didn’t match his expec­ta­tions.

So, why do peo­ple fail to adapt?

I recently received a very angry com­ment to Top Ten Rea­sons I Love Canada. The author, “Can­sick”, said:

Cana­di­ans, par­tic­u­larly in Toronto are worst that peo­ple from Paris. They are rude, they dis­crim­i­nate and they don’t help you. They think that they have the per­fect sys­tem, soci­ety and way of life but far from that. What amazes me more is that the Toron­to­ni­ans, think that they are per­fect but they aren’t.
Peo­ple, if you are think­ing in com­ing to Canada, be pre­pared to the Cana­dian “I don’t care” and rude­ness. Yes, peo­ple think that the so men­tioned polite­ness and kind­ness are so but in fact, they are pas­sive agres­sive atti­tudes. […]
Cana­di­ans, and Toron­to­ni­ans par­tic­u­larly, don’t tol­er­ate your level of prepa­ra­tion, that’s why they don’t allow you to be a med­i­cine doc­tor, a teacher or an archi­tect. […] Again, my descrip­tion is not rossy. I don’t like them, and they are not as you are describ­ing them.

Beyond his angry words (and of course, the spam for some “I hate Canada forum” that I removed), I can tell this per­son didn’t research Canada very well and had high expec­ta­tions that weren’t met.

I can under­stand that: I sort of “ended up” in Canada and I really didn’t have a life plan when I came here. At times, I found the sys­tem frus­trat­ing. Come on, you guys know it: I’m the French woman who had to take a French as a sec­ond lan­guage test at uni­ver­sity to be admitted!

But I think that at one point, immi­grants have to take their respon­si­bil­i­ties. Sure, the sys­tem could be better/ faster/ eas­ier etc. Yet, over 250,000 peo­ple make Canada their home every year! One of the main issues remains the prob­lem of for­eign cre­den­tial recog­ni­tion. To select skilled work­ers and to not let them work in their pro­fes­sion is an eco­nomic non­sense. That said, the prob­lem is well-known espe­cially for reg­u­lated occu­pa­tions such as doc­tors, engi­neers, accoun­tants etc. If you are deter­mined to work as a doc­tor in Canada, great. But you know it won’t be easy. You can try to beat the sys­tem (some suc­ceeded) but don’t bitch about it if you choose to immi­grate to Canada with full knowl­edge of the facts. And get­ting these facts is your job as a prospec­tive immigrant.

As for those who claim Cana­di­ans are racist… Do all Cana­di­ans accept mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism? Maybe not, even though open hate towards immi­grants is not tol­er­ated. You may have to fight some stereo­types, espe­cially in smaller towns. It is also worth not­ing that Cana­dian immi­gra­tion poli­cies are rarely ques­tioned — worse case sce­nario, the debate is about rais­ing the num­ber of immi­grants accepted every year.

Landed immi­grants are cer­tainly not second-class cit­i­zens. How­ever, set­tling takes time. Accept it. When I was teach­ing, I met new French immi­grants whose atti­tude really got on my nerves. On her sec­ond day at the school as a teacher, one of the women who was about my age took me aside and said to me: “this job really sucks, I can’t believe I’m down to doing that”. Excuse me? I worked in a call cen­ter, as a sec­re­tary, as a recep­tion­ist… hell, I even sold flow­ers in front of LCBOs before I could even get that job! Holier-than-thou atti­tude gets you nowhere… if you think you are too good for that job, go out and look for a bet­ter one.

Immi­grat­ing is indeed a learn­ing process and you need an open mind for the chal­lenge. If you are not happy, that’s fine. You can try to make things bet­ter by adapt­ing, look­ing for help, get­ting involved in pol­i­tics or lob­by­ing for change. Or you can take your respon­si­bil­i­ties and ques­tion you deci­sion to immi­grate. But sit­ting around, bit­ter and all, and blam­ing the sys­tem with­out doing any­thing won’t get you anywhere.

Related arti­cles:

1. The Cana­dian Immi­gra­tion Taboo: Those Who Go Back Home
2. The Lonely Immigrant
3. Mehmet Kaya: From Turkey To Toronto
4. Nui: From Thai­land to Ottawa
5. 3 Unex­pected Con­se­quences of Immigration