Is poverty a bad word?

Yes, I think it is. It feels like a weak, helpless sort of a word.
There is so much desperation and helplessness in it.
Poverty.When you are poor there is no way out, you are at the bottom of social ladder, at the bottom of everything. You are a looser. You feel like one, an you expect people to feel the same. People are polite in this country, they are not going to laugh in your face, to call you names or anything.
They politely turn away and pretend that they don't see you, that they are not embarrassed by your poverty.
Poverty is especially badly felt when you see so many people around, who look prosperous and happy, with nice new cars and rich looking houses. They have businesses and money, they are not poor. You subconsciously or consciously feel envy.
You think: why me? Why am I poor,without money and hope, without future?
It's easier I think when you grow in poverty, you don't know anything better.
I wonder sometimes: how does it feel when you've lost millions suddenly and you don't have anything?
Do you feel like a poor person, or not? Is it a matter of tolerance, tolerance to stress and disaster?
Can you handle a big loss if you are accustomed to move around, to manipulate big money? Well, I never had a lot of money, but I know how poverty feels and I don't like it a bit. I prefer comfort and money. At least some comfort and some money, if you please.
I don't imagine living in a shelter or without running water or shower is all about poverty, though I lived like that in my old country for many years, but never considered it a norm. There is no norm in indignity. I never could get used to it, or accept it.
I will probably will be struggling to maintain that level dignity as long as I live and hopefully I will never see my extreme poverty in this rich country, it would be extremely unfair.
Though who knows? They say in my old country:"you can't claim your stake against prison or poverty."
I guess when you came to a new country with nothing but holes in your pockets, you have to run pretty fast to outrun the ugly toothless face of poverty, smirking at you from all corners of your life. But so be it. I am not going to complain.
I am still running.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_threshold

What do you have to lie about if you immigrated to Canada?

Every year about 250,000 permanent residents come to Canada. Sometimes more, sometimes less.

New immigrants come to seek old things: better life, more money, something better for themselves and their children.

Most of them are not rich. They saved some money, they are qualified to come and live in Canada, but most of them still facing on of the biggest problems: finding a job.

For me it was never a problem to find a job in my old country, but when I came to Canada and became immigrant, everything changed. Nobody needed me there.

To make things worse we moved to a small town south of Hamilton and there a middle aged immigrant woman with a thick European accent that betrayed you right away, without local experience and local education was completely out of place...

The worst thing was that nobody told me anything. I was walking around trying to find a job in all wrong places, places that would never in a million years hire me because they have a lot of qualified people with Canadian experience, who is eager to take the position: just pick and choose. But they never told me that and I continued to walk around, to send my resume, trying to get noticed, to get an interview.

And they would invite you , polite listen to you and very politely tell you that they will call you next week as soon as they would make a decision. And you sit and wait and they never call, because they never intended to call anyway.

That faceless politeness was more damaging than real rudeness.

It took me quite a while before I realised how everything worked, what unemployment meant to a reluctant immigrant, to any immigrant for that matter.

I was not better or worse than anybody else. It's just every employer tried to hire the best and I definitely did not fall into that category.

I needed a lot to learn. Well, if I was alone without a family, I would have left for sure and went to a big city, like Toronto, to get more chance and more experience, but I had to consider my family so I had to stay. I tought it would be better, I was wrong...

We bought a house, kids were going to school. I spent 10 long years in a small town of Brant county, without a job or education, reluctantly. Of course I was busy, helping my kids, my husband's business. Helping, helping, helping... Nothing to myself.

Finally I got some job at Tim Horton's. I had to lie about my education. I did not put on my resume that I was a University graduate, you do not need that to serve coffee and donuts, that's for sure. I learned that in order to get any small job, you have to go down, you have to forget a lot of stuff that you know in order to earn some money. You have to lie.

Now I am in Toronto. With my present employer I did not have to lie about my education.

May be because I work for a company, that was created by my compatriots, who needed me with all my education and more. But sometimes I think: what if I tried to get the same job but in a similar Canadian company, were all my bosses were Canadian born people, would I've been hired, especially if I did not lie about my education? Probably not.