Close Reading

Just more than a year living here in Canada realizations:\n\n1. So cold. Not everytime you can be so productive because the weather is a big hindrance\n2. As an immigrant, you will start from scratch. There will be great opportunities, sometimes really fast promotions or salary increase but workplaces are always short staffed that the amount of work is not worth it with how much the salary is. \n3. Some people still have preferences and you will really feel discriminated.\n4. People are polite, I am very impressed but so individualistic, it's sad. Growing in a country with a very collective type of community, you will really fee the void once you try living in Canada. you can't fully relate to everyone, be free to talk to them about everything because you rarely have common ground or understanding. I feel bad for the Canadians, its so hard to build relationships here in this country. Some of them might never experienced living that everyone of their schoolmates understand and laughs at the same meme because all of them have the same backgrounds and can relate.\n5. Housing prices are so high, it is so surprising for a country with big land mass but with very few population. Like how can be the house this expensive when winter is long, houses are wood and not stone and groceries, mall and other recreational areas are far?\n\nOverall, it's like a big scam going here in Canada. The biggest thing positive here is how powerful the currency is and the country being part of G7 and neighbor of US. Also it has very well preserved environment, scenic views. Aside those, others you can live without.

I am an immigrant living in the US and what you are saying applies to the US also. There is no work-life balance. I take home every weekday with about 2 hours of work to do at my home. The only difference is the US is a bit more interesting with many activities and cultural places to go.

I am also an immigrant but can tell you that Medical school in Canada is extremely competitive. Foreigners don’t have a clue the extremely amount of work (top marks, volunteering, MCAT, Casper, interviews, etc) it takes to at least be called for an interview. In some countries you leave high school and can go straight to a private medical school and pay for your medical license. So, I hope Canada keep appreciating people from here.

Everytime I look at Canada I tell myself wow, what a beautiful country, but then I realized how depressing life is here in Canada. As an immigrant I have so many thing to be thankful for living in Canada,but also so many more things why I am planning to leave. Housing is unexplainablly expensive, cost of living is going too high for wags to catch up, drug problem visible in every city, mediocre jobs , unwilling government that has zero Desire to make this country grow to its full potential the list is endless. I will always love Canada, but life here isn't as good as it's portrayed to be. People just live so they can work so they can live to work again and can't even break even, many are too depressed and end up on drugs rising homelessness.

There are many problems with anti-immigrant rhetoric and one of them is the classification who is and who isn't an immigrant and the question of when does a person stop becoming an immigrant and become a Canadian? A significant portion of people living in Canada are first/second/third generation Canadians and so, how do we classify these people, are they immigrants or are they not? And what of their parents/grandparents who immigrated, are they? It's very important to note that without their ancestor parents, all these first/second/third gen Canadians will not be here and they are now 'Canadians' today because we had pro-immigration laws. Also, the idea of accessing services is by itself, very problematic. I spent the first 4 years of my life here paying high tuition fees as well as tax that are used to subsidize fellow Canadians' tuition fees yet I'm not able to access any government services. Following graduation, I worked as a worker on visa where my tax was no less than an average Canadian yet government services were very much inaccessible to me. It was only after I became permanent resident, that somehow everything suddenly became available to me. I have been tax paying 6-7 years before I became a PR here yet all those years, I wasn't able to access a single thing yet somehow, after I became PR, I'm eligible for everything? The tax argument doesn't make sense at all. I will be eligible to apply for citizenship in like a year and does that mean now I am one of you, Canadians?