We learned a few days ago that we will have to wait almost a year to get in line for immigration again. This is so hard. When families are separated, lives together are on hold as lives alone go on. How can this be good for families? Perhaps expecting compassion from governments is the definition of foolishness and optimism. A government, this one or that one, is something to endure. This immigration process is such a test of endurance and faith. It's strange how similar our societies are when viewed through the prism of our bureaucrats and officials. Give someone a little power over people and watch them misuse it. It's the same everywhere.
So now we face up to a couple more years of late night phone calls, webcam visits, 4 hour flights with our friends at Air Canada...Lord willing, we will survive. That is my prayer...
My eBook, How To Immigrate To Canada For Skilled Workers: The Authoritative Guide To Federal And Provincial Opportunities is available now on Amazon and other online retailers. Get your copy of the essential guide to Skilled Worker class applications today!
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Thursday, May 12, 2005
Monday, May 02, 2005
Memories in the waiting time
Those of you who live in Tornto full time probably, and i'm making an assumption here, take the city for granted. I know it's true of Seattle, where I spend most of my days right now. All I have to hold me while I wait for residency and try and save the little money I have is the many phone calls each day with my love, the CBC and Pulse 24 on the Net, and memories...
I remember a snowy winter day walking home from the AGO after seeing Yoko Ono's show...the wind whipping the flakes into a white-out as I walked east, then north to catch College, obscuring everything.
I remember nightime walks with my love - the Philosopher's Walk I think it's called...cutting a path through the U of T...young lovers holding hands in the dim light cast by the few lamps here and there as she showed me a piece of her past and her own fond memories.
I remember meeting friends at...Mesis, Tony Bolognas...La Paradis...for long dinners where everyone shared everything...nights filled with laughter and potential....secrets shared and kept...Nights where you connect in a way you'll always treasure. Those were nights I thought were left in my youth, but in that magical city I experienced those nights again.
I remember beautiful spring days sightseeing at Casa Loma....catching the train uptown, then taking a nice long walk to the site. By that time I felt like I belonged, like her love had made this place mine. She is so wonderful and encouraging and inclusive. It makes these memories sweeter.
I remember sitting on the benches at Nathan Phillips Square watching children skate, getting poutine from the big blue van that parks there.
I remember Saturdays eating brunch on West Queen and reading the Star in a booth at Bar One...then off to adventure in the shops as we made our way hand and hand back to Bay Street.
These are only a few sweet dreams I keep. I offer them to remind you of how lucky you are to be albe to enjoy them each day. God willing, many new memories await us all in that beautiful City...maybe I'll see you there soon.
I remember a snowy winter day walking home from the AGO after seeing Yoko Ono's show...the wind whipping the flakes into a white-out as I walked east, then north to catch College, obscuring everything.
I remember nightime walks with my love - the Philosopher's Walk I think it's called...cutting a path through the U of T...young lovers holding hands in the dim light cast by the few lamps here and there as she showed me a piece of her past and her own fond memories.
I remember meeting friends at...Mesis, Tony Bolognas...La Paradis...for long dinners where everyone shared everything...nights filled with laughter and potential....secrets shared and kept...Nights where you connect in a way you'll always treasure. Those were nights I thought were left in my youth, but in that magical city I experienced those nights again.
I remember beautiful spring days sightseeing at Casa Loma....catching the train uptown, then taking a nice long walk to the site. By that time I felt like I belonged, like her love had made this place mine. She is so wonderful and encouraging and inclusive. It makes these memories sweeter.
I remember sitting on the benches at Nathan Phillips Square watching children skate, getting poutine from the big blue van that parks there.
I remember Saturdays eating brunch on West Queen and reading the Star in a booth at Bar One...then off to adventure in the shops as we made our way hand and hand back to Bay Street.
These are only a few sweet dreams I keep. I offer them to remind you of how lucky you are to be albe to enjoy them each day. God willing, many new memories await us all in that beautiful City...maybe I'll see you there soon.
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Germs
When you travel a lot, back and forth between countries, germs are part of the risk. This has been a particularly bad year for my love and I. In the past four visits she has made out here, one or both of us has become ill. Either she got a bug from someone on the plane, or I got one from her, or we both got one from someone at the airport...it's been crazy and maddening. I can see why people travel with those doctors masks now. I'm thinking of doing the same. I am so tired of getting sick from careless, thoughtless folks who are ill. It not only takes time away from my limited time with my love, but it's expensive (drugs to buy and work missed) too.
So listen up - if you are sick, don't travel. Give us all a break. Sharing the air with 150 other people for 4-hours and leaving your germs everywhere is just RUDE and thoughtless. You should be ashamed.
So listen up - if you are sick, don't travel. Give us all a break. Sharing the air with 150 other people for 4-hours and leaving your germs everywhere is just RUDE and thoughtless. You should be ashamed.
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
I have skills! So you'll hire me, right?
One of the biggest hurdles an immigrant faces is finding employment in their new home. Even more difficult is finding it in the field in which they may have worked in the past.
Canada is known in the US for having cabbies with MBA's and PhD's. Same thing probably goes on here, but our businesses seem to be more open to accepting or ignoring (to the benefit of the job seeker) the credentials of other countries, and - face it - we have no idea of what the rest of the world says about us because our media protects us from that!
That last sentence calls for an aside...do you need credentials in the US? I have worked here for close to 20 years now. I have a BA degree from a good school. Has ANY employer EVER verified this? Have they verified ANYTHING? No - not to my knowledge. Here in the States getting a job is about 1. what you know 2. who you know 3. what's your rate? The end. There are any number of interviews that I have been on where my ENROLLMENT in an MBA program is mistaken as HAVING an MBA degree - even though I'm very specific about not having completed the program yet.
If you have a work permit, or are eligible for one (a little harder since the tech bubble burst) and can talk the talk and have connections, you have as good a chance as any in getting a job in your field. Especially if you're cheap and the employer thinks they can take advantage of you...Ahhh...America.
I honestly don't know how much of a problem I'm going to have in Canada finding work in my field, although I've read the stories that it will not be easy...Still - I'm optimistic. Now I have also read a lot of critical reporting on how Canada has a immigration policy specifically trying to attract skilled workers - tech professionals like myself, for example - and then doesn't do anything to assist their assimilation into the workforce.
I also know that steps appear to be in the process of making non-Canadian credentials (especially for Doctors and other health care workers who are in demand) acceptable - or at least not making professionals obtain and entirely new education in Canada for what they already know and have practiced for years.
So I have hope. And I have skills! So you'll hire me, right?
Canada is known in the US for having cabbies with MBA's and PhD's. Same thing probably goes on here, but our businesses seem to be more open to accepting or ignoring (to the benefit of the job seeker) the credentials of other countries, and - face it - we have no idea of what the rest of the world says about us because our media protects us from that!
That last sentence calls for an aside...do you need credentials in the US? I have worked here for close to 20 years now. I have a BA degree from a good school. Has ANY employer EVER verified this? Have they verified ANYTHING? No - not to my knowledge. Here in the States getting a job is about 1. what you know 2. who you know 3. what's your rate? The end. There are any number of interviews that I have been on where my ENROLLMENT in an MBA program is mistaken as HAVING an MBA degree - even though I'm very specific about not having completed the program yet.
If you have a work permit, or are eligible for one (a little harder since the tech bubble burst) and can talk the talk and have connections, you have as good a chance as any in getting a job in your field. Especially if you're cheap and the employer thinks they can take advantage of you...Ahhh...America.
I honestly don't know how much of a problem I'm going to have in Canada finding work in my field, although I've read the stories that it will not be easy...Still - I'm optimistic. Now I have also read a lot of critical reporting on how Canada has a immigration policy specifically trying to attract skilled workers - tech professionals like myself, for example - and then doesn't do anything to assist their assimilation into the workforce.
I also know that steps appear to be in the process of making non-Canadian credentials (especially for Doctors and other health care workers who are in demand) acceptable - or at least not making professionals obtain and entirely new education in Canada for what they already know and have practiced for years.
So I have hope. And I have skills! So you'll hire me, right?
Monday, April 11, 2005
I love Vonage
When love first blossomed, so did my phone bill. It wasn't too bad if you used the calling cards and watched what time you were calling and made the most of each conversation, but let's face it - love knows no timetable, and there is a three hour difference between my cities. When I was yet again between homes, my cellphone bill rocketed to $400 a month! I was desperate! Then I got curious...how far had voice over IP come since I had first checked it out?
I knew it worked pretty well in chat applications, but it's not connecting to the wired that matters - it's connecting to the land-line world. That's when I found Vonage...and life changed.
Now I have local numbers in Seattle and Toronto, I pay a measly $35 USD a month for the service and I can make unlimited, anytime calls anywhere in Canada and the US. My friends and family never pay long distance to call me from the GTA, and despite a few occasional service quirks, no one can tell I'm talking to them over the Internet.
Vonage has made it easy to call anytime for any reason when my love and I are apart. I can sing her to sleep and then leave the line open while she drifts off to sleep. I don't have to count minutes and pennies.
If you are dealing with the distance issues I am, check them out at www.vonage.com - it really is a simple way to make communication with long distance loved ones so much less a burden on everyone.
And, no - I'm not making any money from this post and I don't work for them.
I knew it worked pretty well in chat applications, but it's not connecting to the wired that matters - it's connecting to the land-line world. That's when I found Vonage...and life changed.
Now I have local numbers in Seattle and Toronto, I pay a measly $35 USD a month for the service and I can make unlimited, anytime calls anywhere in Canada and the US. My friends and family never pay long distance to call me from the GTA, and despite a few occasional service quirks, no one can tell I'm talking to them over the Internet.
Vonage has made it easy to call anytime for any reason when my love and I are apart. I can sing her to sleep and then leave the line open while she drifts off to sleep. I don't have to count minutes and pennies.
If you are dealing with the distance issues I am, check them out at www.vonage.com - it really is a simple way to make communication with long distance loved ones so much less a burden on everyone.
And, no - I'm not making any money from this post and I don't work for them.
Sunday, April 10, 2005
The great abyss
I'm tired of Seattle. I'm tired of being away from my love. She's in Toronto, and I'm here and we've both been waiting for over two years for my permanent residence application to go through. Of course, there are no promises with immigration. Except the promise that you will wait. And wait we have.
First you get all of your application materials together, which is time consuming, nerve-wracking and full of self-doubt. Gather your licenses and passports and credit card statements and phone records and pictures and videos and emails and cards and letters and ticket stubs accounting for the 100,000 miles you both have travelled keeping love alive everything you can think of that will tell someone with power over you that you have a family-class level case. Then fill out application after application and be very careful to follow the directions to the letter. Read all the guidelines and then read them again. Read case law - don't make the same mistakes others have - they are there to guide you.
Then comes the great abyss. For us it was somewhere in Buffalo, NY. A case number is assigned and then you watch the website to monitor processing times. They are only estimates.
In the meantime, flights and visits back and forth, bad food, sketchy Air Canada service, too many colds from too many strangers on too many flights, and too many questions from too many immigration officers. The suitcase is either too big or too small, as we ferry pieces of each other back and forth.
In the meantime, don't make plans - you can't do it. Save yourself the frustration. You are in limbo. We are in limbo. It's the greatest pressure on our relationship and at times it tears us at the seams - we want so much to be able to be like normal couples who can makes plans for their future and try and make them come true, but in this time of living inthe abyss, no plans can be made, because plans involve time and we don't know when that time will come.
If God wasn't there with us in this time of waiting, as we wander this dessert of immigration, I honestly don't know what we would do.
First you get all of your application materials together, which is time consuming, nerve-wracking and full of self-doubt. Gather your licenses and passports and credit card statements and phone records and pictures and videos and emails and cards and letters and ticket stubs accounting for the 100,000 miles you both have travelled keeping love alive everything you can think of that will tell someone with power over you that you have a family-class level case. Then fill out application after application and be very careful to follow the directions to the letter. Read all the guidelines and then read them again. Read case law - don't make the same mistakes others have - they are there to guide you.
Then comes the great abyss. For us it was somewhere in Buffalo, NY. A case number is assigned and then you watch the website to monitor processing times. They are only estimates.
In the meantime, flights and visits back and forth, bad food, sketchy Air Canada service, too many colds from too many strangers on too many flights, and too many questions from too many immigration officers. The suitcase is either too big or too small, as we ferry pieces of each other back and forth.
In the meantime, don't make plans - you can't do it. Save yourself the frustration. You are in limbo. We are in limbo. It's the greatest pressure on our relationship and at times it tears us at the seams - we want so much to be able to be like normal couples who can makes plans for their future and try and make them come true, but in this time of living inthe abyss, no plans can be made, because plans involve time and we don't know when that time will come.
If God wasn't there with us in this time of waiting, as we wander this dessert of immigration, I honestly don't know what we would do.
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Everyone's a suspect
TheStar.com - Passport required to enter U.S. within two years
Everyone's a suspect in America. With each passing day we become more and more simply prisoners in the Land of the Free. By 2007, US citizens will not simply be able to show their driver's license - a State form of acceptable ID to cross our own borders and enter our own country - we'll need a Federally Approved documents, soon to include biometric data. The no-man's land between borders just got a lot scarier. You are neither here nor there, you know. You have no power. You are, after all, a suspect - and you are guilty, never innocent. Don't believe that lie for a moment.
Why? Because America is afraid - deeply afraid. We're still afraid of 9/11. William Burroughs wrote of walking backwards into the future. This statement is an accurate description of this nation. We are looking back in fear, doing now what we think should have been done before then to change what can't be changed and to prevent what can't be prevented - walking backwards.
The destroyers in the world are like mice in the house - they come in through the little holes we can't see in the foundation - not through the front door. But protecting the front door makes for good political capital. Looks like we're doing something, eh? Hey - that's nice big deadbolt you have there!
But all these measures really do is create a database somewhere in Fortress America where we and all of our neighbors in North America will have our every intercontinental movement tracked. That's all - don't be fooled.
One in Four Americans has a passport - pushing this burden and expense to the other three is a nice way to raise some Federal Government revenues too. Now, how many of you are going to take that vacation to Canada now? You have to fork over another $100+ a head - oh and it might take 6-months to get the passport - so be sure and plan ahead (and that's NOW - before the forced demand...)
Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) - You'll be able to thank this acrynom in the next few years for the drop in tourism between nations, as well as continuing the new tradition of straining relations with Canada and Mexico. Hi Canada - we don't trust you. Hi Mexico - unless we can exploit your labor, we're really not interested in you.
It's times like these when I long for home on Lake Ontario. Reason is in short supply here.
Everyone's a suspect in America. With each passing day we become more and more simply prisoners in the Land of the Free. By 2007, US citizens will not simply be able to show their driver's license - a State form of acceptable ID to cross our own borders and enter our own country - we'll need a Federally Approved documents, soon to include biometric data. The no-man's land between borders just got a lot scarier. You are neither here nor there, you know. You have no power. You are, after all, a suspect - and you are guilty, never innocent. Don't believe that lie for a moment.
Why? Because America is afraid - deeply afraid. We're still afraid of 9/11. William Burroughs wrote of walking backwards into the future. This statement is an accurate description of this nation. We are looking back in fear, doing now what we think should have been done before then to change what can't be changed and to prevent what can't be prevented - walking backwards.
The destroyers in the world are like mice in the house - they come in through the little holes we can't see in the foundation - not through the front door. But protecting the front door makes for good political capital. Looks like we're doing something, eh? Hey - that's nice big deadbolt you have there!
But all these measures really do is create a database somewhere in Fortress America where we and all of our neighbors in North America will have our every intercontinental movement tracked. That's all - don't be fooled.
One in Four Americans has a passport - pushing this burden and expense to the other three is a nice way to raise some Federal Government revenues too. Now, how many of you are going to take that vacation to Canada now? You have to fork over another $100+ a head - oh and it might take 6-months to get the passport - so be sure and plan ahead (and that's NOW - before the forced demand...)
Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) - You'll be able to thank this acrynom in the next few years for the drop in tourism between nations, as well as continuing the new tradition of straining relations with Canada and Mexico. Hi Canada - we don't trust you. Hi Mexico - unless we can exploit your labor, we're really not interested in you.
It's times like these when I long for home on Lake Ontario. Reason is in short supply here.
Sunday, April 03, 2005
Losing Touch
There's a well noted phenomenon that comes with living between a couple of countries, in my case Canada and the US - it's been described as becoming illiterate in two cultures. While most of my time is still spent in Seattle, I couldn't begin to tell you what's going on in this city as far as the politics, and I have only bold outlines in my head of the big city projects and priorities. Are they still going to replace the viaduct? What's happening with the monorail project? Is that Nichol's guy still the mayor? How long has he been mayor? I don't know.
I do watch the local news in the morning, but it's FOX, so it's not really news, but infotainment. I'm a weather fool, so I typically know what's happeneing there locally, still - I don't really feel like I'm in touch.
Now every evening, my news is Canada Now on CBC, and I guess I'm more in touch with the issues that are going in Canada overall than I am in the US. I watch with a touch of disdain the Gomrey Commission spend more money on an investigation than the Sponsorship scandal that they are investigating, I wonder when the US will open the border to Alberta beef and BC softwood lumber...I wonder why the country doesn't flex it's muscules around water and oil and help the US understand it's place a little better. I don't know why Canada suffers us so much, but they do.
I'm up on a lot going on in Toronto, but there also, I know that I am missing that essential connection that comes from being settled. Like here in Seattle, I know the big picture, but the details are a little fuzzy.
I wonder if Seattle will ever feel like home again once I completely relocate to Canada, and if Toronto will ever feel completely like home, ever. I think once you become a wanderer in your heart, and I've been one for many years now, that there's no place like home, and no place to call home - home like you knew with certainty when you are a child. If I get really internal about it, I'm sure it started way back when - We didn't move a lot, but we moved anough. I remember at least three homes between birth and age 11, and home was always somewhere else. As an adult, I can count nine different places I've called home in Seattle. I loved them all - I cried when I left most of them behind, because it so true - you never can go home again. In this life, we live and we leave. I've lived and left more than many I guess. I envy my brother - he's much more settled than I will ever be. I guess it's just not the path God had in mind for me. It's a good thing I embrace adventure and can find in each place he sets me down, something to call home.
Maybe that's just become magnified over the years as now it seems home will be an entirely other country. Canada is not the US - not by a long shot - and it gets more and more foreign in comparrison to the US in the essential elements of how the culture thinks, acts and what it values, each and every day.
I wonder how much of America I will leave behind when it's time to leave again, hop on that 319 and not consider when I will see this skyline, those Olympic Mountains again?
I do watch the local news in the morning, but it's FOX, so it's not really news, but infotainment. I'm a weather fool, so I typically know what's happeneing there locally, still - I don't really feel like I'm in touch.
Now every evening, my news is Canada Now on CBC, and I guess I'm more in touch with the issues that are going in Canada overall than I am in the US. I watch with a touch of disdain the Gomrey Commission spend more money on an investigation than the Sponsorship scandal that they are investigating, I wonder when the US will open the border to Alberta beef and BC softwood lumber...I wonder why the country doesn't flex it's muscules around water and oil and help the US understand it's place a little better. I don't know why Canada suffers us so much, but they do.
I'm up on a lot going on in Toronto, but there also, I know that I am missing that essential connection that comes from being settled. Like here in Seattle, I know the big picture, but the details are a little fuzzy.
I wonder if Seattle will ever feel like home again once I completely relocate to Canada, and if Toronto will ever feel completely like home, ever. I think once you become a wanderer in your heart, and I've been one for many years now, that there's no place like home, and no place to call home - home like you knew with certainty when you are a child. If I get really internal about it, I'm sure it started way back when - We didn't move a lot, but we moved anough. I remember at least three homes between birth and age 11, and home was always somewhere else. As an adult, I can count nine different places I've called home in Seattle. I loved them all - I cried when I left most of them behind, because it so true - you never can go home again. In this life, we live and we leave. I've lived and left more than many I guess. I envy my brother - he's much more settled than I will ever be. I guess it's just not the path God had in mind for me. It's a good thing I embrace adventure and can find in each place he sets me down, something to call home.
Maybe that's just become magnified over the years as now it seems home will be an entirely other country. Canada is not the US - not by a long shot - and it gets more and more foreign in comparrison to the US in the essential elements of how the culture thinks, acts and what it values, each and every day.
I wonder how much of America I will leave behind when it's time to leave again, hop on that 319 and not consider when I will see this skyline, those Olympic Mountains again?
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