来干啥啊?? 还是别来了。这边的情况也不是不知道。女人小孩,老弱病残,没有劳动能力的来加拿大还算适合。
看看下面最近的文章就知道了。(昨天《多伦多星报》)
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Apr. 21, 2004
Turned away from every door
Carol Goar [Toronto Star]
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Co...geid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1082499012959
In spite of all he's been through, Muhammad Usman Ali thinks Canada is a beautiful country.
The Pakistani lawyer wishes he'd never come here. He'll warn other professionals in his homeland not to expect a warm welcome in Canada. He'll return to Peshawar this summer, chastened and hurt.
But he refuses to make harsh generalizations. "I don't think badly of all Canadians or of Canada in general. It is a beautiful place. I met some wonderful people. But as an immigrant, you knock at every door and you're always turned away."
Ali and his wife Nisa agreed to tell their story in their threadbare Mississauga apartment to make other newcomers feel less alone and to persuade Canadian immigration authorities to stop deceiving foreign professionals about the life that awaits them here.
The couple had done well in Pakistan. Ali, 44, was deputy registrar and director of legal affairs at the University of Peshawar, one of the top-ranked academic institutions in South Asia. Nisa, 40, was a chemistry lecturer working on her Ph.D.
They had a comfortable house, two cars and parents who were proud of their success. But they dreamt of giving their children more.
Canada, they had heard, had the best education system in the world. It had a Charter of Rights that forbade discrimination on the basis of race or religion. And it needed highly skilled workers.
In March, 2000, they applied to immigrate at the Canadian High Commission. They were fluent in English (and spoke five other languages). They had the $20,000 the Canadian government requires to cover their settlement costs. And they were willing to leave everything behind: Family, friends, academic prestige, secure jobs.
Looking back, Nisa recalls a remark that struck her as odd at the time. One of the officers said: "I don't want your husband to drive a taxi."
She assured him that they were both willing to upgrade their qualifications to get into their professions; Ali as a lawyer or university administrator, Nisa as a chemistry professor or teacher.
They arrived in Toronto on July 12, 2002, found a two-bedroom apartment through Pakistani contacts and immediately enrolled in training courses. Nisa earned an Ontario teaching certificate. Ali took a nine-month course in education administration.
They began their job searches full of confidence. But both faced rejection after rejection. Sometimes they were told they lacked Canadian experience. More often, their requests for interviews went unanswered and their follow-up calls elicited chilly rebuffs.
They were puzzled at first, then frustrated, then desperate.
In October of 2003, with their money running out, Ali took a job as a loader in a grocery warehouse. The pay was $10 an hour. His shift began at midnight and ended whenever the supervisor sent him home.
At the warehouse, he met eight other South Asian professionals ― five civil engineers, a mechanical engineer, a computer programmer and an agricultural scientist ― whose plights were similar to his. All had lost everything in their quest for a better future.
He quickly learned the unwritten rules of the shop floor. The immigrants got heavier loads and shorter shifts than their Canadian counterparts. They were accused of being supporters of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. When they complained, they were told to go back where they came from. "You could feel the hatred," Ali said. "There may be a Charter of Rights, but it wasn't reflected in our experience."
In early April, after protesting once too often, the nine were fired.
Ali and Nisa have decided not to stay in Canada.
Nisa will leave on May 22 with their 3-year-old son, Aqdas, and stay with her parents until she can rent a house in Peshawar. Ali will follow with the older two children, 14-year-old Naaimah and 12-year-old Wahhaj, when the school year is over and the family's affairs are wound up.
"We are victims of our dreams," Ali said. "But we never abused the system. Even when our money ran out, we did not ask for social assistance."
"All of our skills are nothing here," said Nisa. "We were willing to start at the bottom, but they wouldn't even allow us to do that."
The couple's parents and friends know little of what happened in Canada. Ali and Nisa kept their communications vague and reassuring. They said the children were doing well in school, Ali was working and Nisa was looking for a job.
They hope no one back home will ever find out the whole humiliating truth. "We will hide whatever you publish," Ali said.
But they feel they owe it to other starry-eyed immigrants to lay bare their experience. And they'd like to prod the Canadian government into either suspending the recruitment of highly skilled immigrants or giving newcomers the support they need to integrate into the workforce.
Occasionally, Ali still finds himself fantasizing about the land of opportunity that he expected to find here.
He caught glimpses of it during his two years in Canada. But he was always an outsider looking in.