Beach Bumming in Tulum

Immi­grant, tourist, vis­i­tor, cit­i­zen, for­eign worker — admin­is­tra­tive vocab­u­lary, sticky notes on my face. But who am I?

Some days, I feel like I have been there for­ever. I left France when I was 18 and barely looked back. Going back was never really an option: call it inno­cence, naivety or pride, I wanted to see the world and to adopt a new coun­try. I have been there for­ever. My first resumes, the inter­views for jobs I was going to hate, being com­fort­able dri­ving a car, learn­ing to cook, to take care of myself, to make friends — friends who wouldn’t nec­es­sary look like me — to man­age money, credit cards, taxes and over­drafts… Canada. Not France. It’s been for­ever in a way.

But on the other side, I still carry a French pass­port. I will only apply for cit­i­zen­ship this sum­mer and it will take as long as 18 months to get the pre­cious blue pass­port. I attended uni­ver­sity in France, even though I was in Canada for most of my stu­dent years. My degrees are French. I can speak Eng­lish just fine but please, don’t make me say “When a twister a-twisting will twist him a twist, For the twist­ing of his twist, he three twines doth intwist”.

Doors are clos­ing as I’m list­ing these facts. Canada is an open-minded coun­try, but I still feel I belong to the “them” group rather than the “us” group. No mat­ter how I feel, what I may think, my cit­i­zen­ship, my edu­ca­tion, my mother tongue and cul­tural back­ground define me. Can’t erase, got to improve. But how?

Some weeks are frus­trat­ing. I have been work­ing in my cur­rent job for for almost three years now and even though I love teach­ing, I’m think­ing of a change. Money-wise, first of all: I have been paid by the hour all my work life and I’m dream­ing of a rel­a­tively steady monthly salary which would do great to my bud­get. But here is the trick: I’m pretty con­fi­dent I could quit tonight and start another job tomor­row, but unfor­tu­nately, it will be the same kind of job I did before when I was des­per­ate for money. With my French degrees and my immi­grant resume, I have trou­ble fit­ting in. Some jobs are mostly for Cana­di­ans cit­i­zens (gov­ern­ment jobs) and oth­ers just don’t want to see my French degrees. On top of that, I’m “only” twenty five and my past expe­ri­ences reflect my immi­gra­tion. I barely worked in France and I worked all the minimum-wage jobs when I first came to Canada. Employ­ers don’t seem to real­ize that it’s not because I worked for two call cen­ters for a cou­ple of months five years ago that it’s my dream job. As for teach­ing, the step above for me would be being hired by the Cana­dian government…and well “Mis­sion Impos­si­ble” if you’re not a citizen.

Nev­er­mind. Given that I wasn’t not too busy this sum­mer, I had decided to sign up for a sum­mer class at the local uni­ver­sity. I was within the dead­line, chose my class, showed up to reg­is­ter and… And it turned out that because I’m French, I needed to prove my Eng­lish lan­guage pro­fi­ciency. I speak Eng­lish, I have been liv­ing in Canada for a few years now, I took Eng­lish in uni­ver­sity, but all that doesn’t count. I’m French. Back to square one. The per­son at the reg­is­trar office was nice and she was sorry for me. I wasn’t angry. Just dis­ap­pointed. I feel like I’m get­ting nowhere.

Note that it’s not my first attempt to go back to uni­ver­sity. I’m a life­long stu­dent and I’d love to get an higher degree. I vis­ited the U. of Ottawa quite a few time and dis­cov­ered that my French degree didn’t really count and that I would need to start all over again. Plus, because grades are dif­fer­ent in France (papers are graded out of 20 and trust me, at uni­ver­sity, it’s rare to score over 15/20, except maybe in sci­ence) I was way behind the rest of the stu­dents. Basi­cally, if you con­vert my grades, I’m barely above aver­age, even though I stud­ied my ass off. Good luck get­ting into an high-demand program.

I may sound bit­ter but I’m not. I’m look­ing for a way out, I’m look­ing for solu­tions, I know I will even­tu­ally find a way. I did it before. I remem­ber how sick of Canada I was after I had spent over a year on a tourist visa: I couldn’t do any­thing then because, well, offi­cially I was a tourist, even tough I was start­ing to set­tle off the record. I don’t know if I would have come back if I hadn’t got­ten the work­ing visa after­wards. I remem­ber how dis­cour­aged I had felt when I learned about the immi­gra­tion process. It had seemed that my life was in the hands of a bored office worker, some­where between Veg­re­ville Alberta (where I had sent the fist part of my appli­ca­tion) and the Cana­dian Enbassy in Paris (where the sec­ond part even­tu­ally ended up). And I was here, lit­er­ally stuck in the mid­dle (I was fly­ing back and forth) and hop­ing for the best: the best pro­cess­ing time, the best out­come. Even­tu­ally, it got bet­ter. Even­tu­ally.

But am I ever gonna be as good as the locals? Am I ever going to be able to apply for a posi­tion and not being ques­tioned about my Eng­lish or my French? Not being asked for my immi­grant sta­tus? For my pass­port? Am I ever going to speak and write in Eng­lish as well as I used to in French? Am I ever gonna be at home?

I adopted Canada — but has Canada adopted me yet?

Related posts:

1. Two Soli­tudes And One Loneliness
2. Four Years, Already…
3. When Do You Stop Being An Immigrant?
4. French And Eng­lish (3÷10)
5. The Lonely Immigrant