Who am I?
Diaries of a Reluctant Immigrant
I came to Canada in the year 1992, cold damp February 22nd . I still remember as if it was yesterday. But how could I possibly forget? I should have started my diaries then. It was a big change. A huge one. To become an immigrant, just like that.
I came reluctantly to this country. I call myself Reluctant Immigrant. It’s my secret name. Not a secret anymore, because I‘ve just told you. Please, do not tell anybody, I do not want people to laugh at me.
I always wanted to be positive and proper and like everybody else. You see I came from a communist country. A former communist country.
Everything was falling apart in 1992. It was called “perestroika”, that means like ”renovation of a society”. Rebuilding. Politicians are notorious for inventing of beautiful meaningful names, that in reality carry very little sense or even quite different meaning. Just more hardship for simple people like me. Poor people became poorer and suddenly we had rich people too. In Russia they were called “novyie russkyie” – “new Russians.
I do not want you to be confused, I am not from Russia, though my native language is Russian. I was born and raised as an immigrant in a small place that belonged to a huge power. USSR. It was hard. Your grandparents were deprived of everything for socialist ideas; your parents were forced to fight for the same ideas. And now it is even harder to comprehend. What are you suppose to fight for? Where is that f* Promised Land? Where is prosperity and abundance for everybody as promised?
I went to my country in 1999 for a sad occasion. Everybody suddenly developed mass amnesia and conveniently forgot state language (Russian). Even currency is different now.What you are supposed to believe now?
It is very hard when there is no party line to tell you how to live. It’s even harder for a whole county, than for a single person, I think, because no one really knows what to do and how to live any more. Socialist values devaluated, others are yet to be learned. After everything is
destroyed what you believed in or tried to believe in .You have to build something completely different. Who can tell you what is right and what is wrong?
People are like a flock of scared sheep. Do not know where to run. And where the hell is the Sheppard? Trial and error began.
I ran away with my family. It was not easy. Was it worth it? I do not know. Sometimes I feel guilty. I feel that by running away, by becoming an immigrant again, I betrayed my country, I abandoned it. My poor beloved country, it is so poor now… 12% + unemployment and no money to pay international loans… People are disappointed and bitter and angry.
Some other time I will tell you about it but not today. I did not want to emigrate anywhere because I loved my country. It’s so small and beautiful. Clinging to the Baltic Sea, torn by national hatred and prejudice, old historical grudge and new hunger for freedom and better life and just plain hunger….
I did not want to become an immigrant. It’s just sometimes happens that you have to go, you just do not have a choice.
One day I might tell you about that too. When I feel like it and if you want to listen.
I love Canada too. When you live in a country long enough it sort of grows on you.
At first I did not like it at all. Too different, too alien, or was it me who was alien? I did not know then, I still don’t know now. It’s not easy to be an immigrant. I was a reluctant immigrant remember?
The one thing I know, that it is a good, decent sort of a country and I love it. Not as my own country, in a different way but still love it.
You can keep your dignity here and be yourself. You do not have to pretend and hide and it is a good thing. You do not have to be something you are not, you can be what you are and if you are nobody then you are nobody and no one cares.
You can live a very good life here and be happy as far as you can if you can. You have to work very hard and sometimes you achieve very little as a result…
People come here from different parts of the world and everybody wants a piece of good luck, but not everybody knows how to get it. There are lots of choices here, good and bad.
But if you are not very greedy, you can get whatever you want if you know what you want. But if you don’t, you can always learn.
Of course it’s better, when you come with some money, it helps a lot. But you can get something without money just the same, you just have to work harder and run longer so to speak.
They have lots of food in this country by the way. Not all of it good though. I might tell you one day about my experience with all that food, and the way I learned how to deal with that “plenty- ness” of it, because when you are from a communist country you have to learn not to be greedy when food is around..
Not just food, here, in this country you see the abundance of everything, human resources too. People come from different countries: rich, poor, educated, not very, knowing their goals, having not a foggiest idea why the hell did they come, persecuted in they own country, or just plain bored, bored to be rich, or tired to be poor, legal or illegal, black, white, yellow, clever, talented, stupid, dumb as a… you’ve got the idea.
Of course at first you have to get some money (if you do not have any already) and status (you can not be illegal forever, it might get on your nerves or on the nerves of the government and they might do something stupid like sending you back, for example).
How can you get the money? You can rob a bank of course, that’s what people usually do when they desperately need money (at least they constantly show it in the movies as a wise solution to financial problems). You can go to work too, only in that case it will take you a little bit longer and you might not get that much satisfaction. Again, the authorities might not like your illegal ways of earning money and intervene (those meddlers)!
Though nowadays they do not keep that much money handy at the banks either (that’s what they say I never had a chance to check it). I read about one dude who robbed the bank and got $500! He was mad! His gun cost more.
The problem in this country if you are an immigrant, you have to have a certain amount of money to live on. First of all you have to pay rent and it is not cheap unless you agree to live in a closet with lots of people around in one place, it’s called shared accommodation and it is still not that cheap, though it is cheaper than a normal apartment.
But then I am not sure how legal it is. Normally you are supposed to rent one bedroom apartment if you are single. If you are trying to save some money and renting somebody’s basement, you better be a corpse. Are you asking why? Just read any rental ad in a newspaper: no pets, no kids, no smoking, drinking, no parties, prefer truck driver (one that absent all the time). No, guys, just rent to a corpse, he is not going to smoke, may be stink a little…
Seriously, if you have another grown up member of your family living with you, you are supposed to rent 2 bedroom apartment, even if you have enough space in one bedroom, they just do nor let you rent it (by my experience). If you do not have a well-paid job or you are on a single income with several people you support, you’ll be paying for rent practically all your earned money at least in a big city like Toronto. If you live in a small town, that’s another problem. Problem you can express in two words: NO JOBS. Especially not for an immigrant, not for a stupid reluctant immigrant with alien education. And education from a communist country is considered very alien even if it is very good by any standards! You just cannot prove it.
Of course you can live under a bridge, may be. Never tried. Might be kinda cold in winter. But some people do survive that way. Still I think it’s easier to survive here in this country than back there.
You really have to be very smart to survive in a communist country! First of all you have to learn how to be politically correct from early age (the earlier the safer for you)!
When I came to Canada we moved to the small town. I knew nothing about anything. Unemployment, hostility of provincial people towards aliens (I mean stupid immigrants), and I do not blame them. If you speak with an accent or do not speak English at all, then you look pretty dumb, it’s a fact. Then isolation... I have lived in a small town in Canada for almost 10 years, I know, what I am talking about.
You may ask: why didn’t I leave it and didn’t go to a bigger city? That’s another story...
Now I live in Toronto in a relatively inexpensive (for my area) very run down, screaming about renovations apartment with my two kids, one a student, another still in search for his place in life. In order to have some food (for my two cats too) I have to have another job on Sundays. In my area apartments are not very cheap. Well I am not complaining, as long as I have a job, I will be fine, but for how long? Right now I work, it’s a good thing and with some moonlighting I survive. I am very lucky, am I?
Nowadays it becomes harder and harder for an immigrant to get a job even in a big city like Toronto, because lots of manual low paid half-legal (under the table) jobs just disappeared together with half-legal employment agencies providing them.
So if you do not have very required skills or talents, it becomes harder and harder to get something that looks like a job!
That can be very stressful for people who lost their jobs or who are in the process of loosing it, or who are just thinking: who’s next? Please, not me!
Hopefully global economical down spiral will get better and people will learn how to get by with lot less and how not to waste resources and be more frugal.
Actually, when you are from communist background, certain things can be very difficult for you in a different system, for example, it is harder to feel independent, not to be afraid of authorities, to trust the law, to become a businessman (businesswoman).
At the same time to be frugal, to save, to pinch pennies for most immigrant people like me from modes background comes quite naturally. That’s what you had to do in your old country to survive. Socialist system gives you more security (even if it is a false one), no unemployment, almost no firing, your job is guaranteed to you, same as pension and free medical help, “free” (well, you are not paying from your pocket) education, and so on and so forth, but, no it is a BIG BUT! It’s rather a false security, because equal pay (salary) to everybody translates into a very miserably small salary for everybody. And if you did not read George Orwell:”1994”,I am begging you, please read. You will appreciate your country more and you will learn, that : ”Some people are more equal than others!” It will definitely help you with self-esteem.
Cheap housing translates into sharp unavailability of this housing.
You have to wait for 25 years to get 2 rooms (not bedrooms) apartment for your family without hot water or build a house with no money to do that like my parents did, sacrificing everything in a process (like food, clothing, rest, health basically and so on). So you’ll learn to be frugal big time! Well I crawl from under breaking Iron Wall (it was not iron after all) and came to Canada.
When I came to Canada I was so surprised that so many people here live above their means (credit cards galore) and so many of them just waste a lot of everything. Water, money, electricity, as if there was no tomorrow.
I remember that popular saying: “Buy more – save more.” People were busy into spending. Even at school here in Canada, I remember at my son’s class third grade or second, they would build pyramids from sugar and flour and painted it with colors and after class was over, they threw away everything. I am not saying that they should have eaten that, but still…To see that for a reluctant immigrant from the county were food was sacred and never plenty was more than strange!
So after more than 10 years in Canada, being a legal citizen of it, do I want to go home? You bet! Am I going? No way!
Whatever problems are here, over there they are hundred times bigger! Do I want to be part of that mess? No, I am not a hero and I do not believe I can change anything there, that’s the point. And I do not like discrimination and racism.
So whether I am reluctant immigrant or not, I am staying. Reluctantly. And please do not ask me to leave, because I won’t.
Long live Canada, my family and the Queen, naturally.
Have a nice day, everybody. Till next time.
Diaries of a Reluctant Immigrant
I came to Canada in the year 1992, cold damp February 22nd . I still remember as if it was yesterday. But how could I possibly forget? I should have started my diaries then. It was a big change. A huge one. To become an immigrant, just like that.
I came reluctantly to this country. I call myself Reluctant Immigrant. It’s my secret name. Not a secret anymore, because I‘ve just told you. Please, do not tell anybody, I do not want people to laugh at me.
I always wanted to be positive and proper and like everybody else. You see I came from a communist country. A former communist country.
Everything was falling apart in 1992. It was called “perestroika”, that means like ”renovation of a society”. Rebuilding. Politicians are notorious for inventing of beautiful meaningful names, that in reality carry very little sense or even quite different meaning. Just more hardship for simple people like me. Poor people became poorer and suddenly we had rich people too. In Russia they were called “novyie russkyie” – “new Russians.
I do not want you to be confused, I am not from Russia, though my native language is Russian. I was born and raised as an immigrant in a small place that belonged to a huge power. USSR. It was hard. Your grandparents were deprived of everything for socialist ideas; your parents were forced to fight for the same ideas. And now it is even harder to comprehend. What are you suppose to fight for? Where is that f* Promised Land? Where is prosperity and abundance for everybody as promised?
I went to my country in 1999 for a sad occasion. Everybody suddenly developed mass amnesia and conveniently forgot state language (Russian). Even currency is different now.What you are supposed to believe now?
It is very hard when there is no party line to tell you how to live. It’s even harder for a whole county, than for a single person, I think, because no one really knows what to do and how to live any more. Socialist values devaluated, others are yet to be learned. After everything is
destroyed what you believed in or tried to believe in .You have to build something completely different. Who can tell you what is right and what is wrong?
People are like a flock of scared sheep. Do not know where to run. And where the hell is the Sheppard? Trial and error began.
I ran away with my family. It was not easy. Was it worth it? I do not know. Sometimes I feel guilty. I feel that by running away, by becoming an immigrant again, I betrayed my country, I abandoned it. My poor beloved country, it is so poor now… 12% + unemployment and no money to pay international loans… People are disappointed and bitter and angry.
Some other time I will tell you about it but not today. I did not want to emigrate anywhere because I loved my country. It’s so small and beautiful. Clinging to the Baltic Sea, torn by national hatred and prejudice, old historical grudge and new hunger for freedom and better life and just plain hunger….
I did not want to become an immigrant. It’s just sometimes happens that you have to go, you just do not have a choice.
One day I might tell you about that too. When I feel like it and if you want to listen.
I love Canada too. When you live in a country long enough it sort of grows on you.
At first I did not like it at all. Too different, too alien, or was it me who was alien? I did not know then, I still don’t know now. It’s not easy to be an immigrant. I was a reluctant immigrant remember?
The one thing I know, that it is a good, decent sort of a country and I love it. Not as my own country, in a different way but still love it.
You can keep your dignity here and be yourself. You do not have to pretend and hide and it is a good thing. You do not have to be something you are not, you can be what you are and if you are nobody then you are nobody and no one cares.
You can live a very good life here and be happy as far as you can if you can. You have to work very hard and sometimes you achieve very little as a result…
People come here from different parts of the world and everybody wants a piece of good luck, but not everybody knows how to get it. There are lots of choices here, good and bad.
But if you are not very greedy, you can get whatever you want if you know what you want. But if you don’t, you can always learn.
Of course it’s better, when you come with some money, it helps a lot. But you can get something without money just the same, you just have to work harder and run longer so to speak.
They have lots of food in this country by the way. Not all of it good though. I might tell you one day about my experience with all that food, and the way I learned how to deal with that “plenty- ness” of it, because when you are from a communist country you have to learn not to be greedy when food is around..
Not just food, here, in this country you see the abundance of everything, human resources too. People come from different countries: rich, poor, educated, not very, knowing their goals, having not a foggiest idea why the hell did they come, persecuted in they own country, or just plain bored, bored to be rich, or tired to be poor, legal or illegal, black, white, yellow, clever, talented, stupid, dumb as a… you’ve got the idea.
Of course at first you have to get some money (if you do not have any already) and status (you can not be illegal forever, it might get on your nerves or on the nerves of the government and they might do something stupid like sending you back, for example).
How can you get the money? You can rob a bank of course, that’s what people usually do when they desperately need money (at least they constantly show it in the movies as a wise solution to financial problems). You can go to work too, only in that case it will take you a little bit longer and you might not get that much satisfaction. Again, the authorities might not like your illegal ways of earning money and intervene (those meddlers)!
Though nowadays they do not keep that much money handy at the banks either (that’s what they say I never had a chance to check it). I read about one dude who robbed the bank and got $500! He was mad! His gun cost more.
The problem in this country if you are an immigrant, you have to have a certain amount of money to live on. First of all you have to pay rent and it is not cheap unless you agree to live in a closet with lots of people around in one place, it’s called shared accommodation and it is still not that cheap, though it is cheaper than a normal apartment.
But then I am not sure how legal it is. Normally you are supposed to rent one bedroom apartment if you are single. If you are trying to save some money and renting somebody’s basement, you better be a corpse. Are you asking why? Just read any rental ad in a newspaper: no pets, no kids, no smoking, drinking, no parties, prefer truck driver (one that absent all the time). No, guys, just rent to a corpse, he is not going to smoke, may be stink a little…
Seriously, if you have another grown up member of your family living with you, you are supposed to rent 2 bedroom apartment, even if you have enough space in one bedroom, they just do nor let you rent it (by my experience). If you do not have a well-paid job or you are on a single income with several people you support, you’ll be paying for rent practically all your earned money at least in a big city like Toronto. If you live in a small town, that’s another problem. Problem you can express in two words: NO JOBS. Especially not for an immigrant, not for a stupid reluctant immigrant with alien education. And education from a communist country is considered very alien even if it is very good by any standards! You just cannot prove it.
Of course you can live under a bridge, may be. Never tried. Might be kinda cold in winter. But some people do survive that way. Still I think it’s easier to survive here in this country than back there.
You really have to be very smart to survive in a communist country! First of all you have to learn how to be politically correct from early age (the earlier the safer for you)!
When I came to Canada we moved to the small town. I knew nothing about anything. Unemployment, hostility of provincial people towards aliens (I mean stupid immigrants), and I do not blame them. If you speak with an accent or do not speak English at all, then you look pretty dumb, it’s a fact. Then isolation... I have lived in a small town in Canada for almost 10 years, I know, what I am talking about.
You may ask: why didn’t I leave it and didn’t go to a bigger city? That’s another story...
Now I live in Toronto in a relatively inexpensive (for my area) very run down, screaming about renovations apartment with my two kids, one a student, another still in search for his place in life. In order to have some food (for my two cats too) I have to have another job on Sundays. In my area apartments are not very cheap. Well I am not complaining, as long as I have a job, I will be fine, but for how long? Right now I work, it’s a good thing and with some moonlighting I survive. I am very lucky, am I?
Nowadays it becomes harder and harder for an immigrant to get a job even in a big city like Toronto, because lots of manual low paid half-legal (under the table) jobs just disappeared together with half-legal employment agencies providing them.
So if you do not have very required skills or talents, it becomes harder and harder to get something that looks like a job!
That can be very stressful for people who lost their jobs or who are in the process of loosing it, or who are just thinking: who’s next? Please, not me!
Hopefully global economical down spiral will get better and people will learn how to get by with lot less and how not to waste resources and be more frugal.
Actually, when you are from communist background, certain things can be very difficult for you in a different system, for example, it is harder to feel independent, not to be afraid of authorities, to trust the law, to become a businessman (businesswoman).
At the same time to be frugal, to save, to pinch pennies for most immigrant people like me from modes background comes quite naturally. That’s what you had to do in your old country to survive. Socialist system gives you more security (even if it is a false one), no unemployment, almost no firing, your job is guaranteed to you, same as pension and free medical help, “free” (well, you are not paying from your pocket) education, and so on and so forth, but, no it is a BIG BUT! It’s rather a false security, because equal pay (salary) to everybody translates into a very miserably small salary for everybody. And if you did not read George Orwell:”1994”,I am begging you, please read. You will appreciate your country more and you will learn, that : ”Some people are more equal than others!” It will definitely help you with self-esteem.
Cheap housing translates into sharp unavailability of this housing.
You have to wait for 25 years to get 2 rooms (not bedrooms) apartment for your family without hot water or build a house with no money to do that like my parents did, sacrificing everything in a process (like food, clothing, rest, health basically and so on). So you’ll learn to be frugal big time! Well I crawl from under breaking Iron Wall (it was not iron after all) and came to Canada.
When I came to Canada I was so surprised that so many people here live above their means (credit cards galore) and so many of them just waste a lot of everything. Water, money, electricity, as if there was no tomorrow.
I remember that popular saying: “Buy more – save more.” People were busy into spending. Even at school here in Canada, I remember at my son’s class third grade or second, they would build pyramids from sugar and flour and painted it with colors and after class was over, they threw away everything. I am not saying that they should have eaten that, but still…To see that for a reluctant immigrant from the county were food was sacred and never plenty was more than strange!
So after more than 10 years in Canada, being a legal citizen of it, do I want to go home? You bet! Am I going? No way!
Whatever problems are here, over there they are hundred times bigger! Do I want to be part of that mess? No, I am not a hero and I do not believe I can change anything there, that’s the point. And I do not like discrimination and racism.
So whether I am reluctant immigrant or not, I am staying. Reluctantly. And please do not ask me to leave, because I won’t.
Long live Canada, my family and the Queen, naturally.
Have a nice day, everybody. Till next time.
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