Neeraj: From India to Toronto

Born 200 kilo­me­ters North­west of Mum­bai, Neeraj was raised in India. When his par­ents decided to move to Canada in the mid-1990s, he was trans­planted into a totally dif­fer­ent cul­ture. Maybe that’s what prompted his wan­der­lust sev­eral years later.

Nelson: From Venezuela to Toronto

This sec­ond inter­view of the series is the chance to meet a very new immi­grant cou­ple: Nel­son and his wife, from Venezuela, landed in Toronto just a few weeks ago. Com­ing to Canada had been a life­long dream for Nel­son, who wanted to com­plete his stud­ies here.

Nui: From Thailand to Ottawa

We will start today with Nui, from Thai­land, who recently arrived in Ottawa. After years on the move around the world, Nui and her Canadian-German hus­band decided to set­tle in Canada. They lived in Kingston for a while and are now in Ottawa, where Nui is launch­ing her small business.

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.

How to Avoid... Immigration Fraud

I recently com­plained about the num­ber of scams going on in Thai­land but I must admit Canada is not per­fect either. While the gov­ern­ment and the police are rel­a­tively corruption-free, and the coun­try is very safe, we have a fair num­ber of scam and fraud problems.