Immigration

The Snows of April


When I first moved here I encountered many natives who were concerned that I might have difficulty dealing with the harsh Canadian winters. Frigid temps. Elk high mounds of snow. Dark depressing months that saw less sunlight than the toes of a very fat man. But I did rather well. I ventured out when Canadians were cowering in their homes. I didn’t don long-johns until November and had them off a month or more ago. I come from the Midwest people, not California. As the snow began to melt and the weather warmed, I was ready for my first Canadian winter to melt into spring, a clear victory for me.

The weekend before last was a beatific example of spring. Warming winds and sun. Jacket doffing, capri and short weather. This last Saturday it started to snow. A lot. This morning it stopped. There is now more snow on the ground than accumulated all winter long. 

I survived winter quite well, thank you very much. Winter is nothing here in Canada. It is the spring that is a bitch in heels. She will take some getting used to.

Immigrating/Emigrating? Becoming a Canadian is not as Easy as it Looks


The Immigration people called me on my honeymoon. We had, they said, overpaid a fee and would I like to use the overpayment to now apply for an open work permit or have it refunded? I can’t work right now regardless of status because my daughter is only in school half-days and though there is daycare, I had to put her in d/c when she was 7weeks old because I was the primary breadwinner in my former marriage and I just can’t put her back in it. She had so little of me during her early years mainly because her dad was so sick and I had too many boats to keep afloat. But I decided if they wanted to grant me a permit, why not? Keep your options open, as Rob told me. Today I returned home to a phone message saying that they were sorry but there wasn’t an overpaid fee after all and they would keep the OWP application on file should I want to send them a check to process it in the future. Just an FYI, when Immigration tells you that you can have the OWP this means you have got first approval on your permanent resident application. That was the second part of today’s message – first approval. The third part was that they would be requesting additional details from me/us and that would be detailed in the letter that was being sent this week, which means I will get it next week some time – and you Americans think the Postal Service down there is slow. The letter I am now waiting for is being sent from a town about 45 minutes away from where I live. So what do I do? I jump online, baby, and google to try and figure out what the heck this all means. Turns out that it could mean just about anything. Good. Routine. You’re fucked. It’s like playing Zelda or some other idiot video game where your character wanders from locale to locale searching under and over and between every freakin’ movable object and chatting up anything that looks like it might talk and provide you with a clue as to what/where/how. Rob, my solid Virgian rock, says – don’t get your panties in a twist. Wait for the letter. And isn’t that what I tell people? Don’t panic until you are told? But I am not panicking, I am just weary of non-information. Immigration (and my homeland is a primo example) should not be as mysterious a process as becoming a member of the Skull and Bones. It shouldn’t be grueling, the mental/emotional equivalent of water-boarding. Straight answers should greet simple questions. There seems to be an awful lot of creative interpreting going on by those in the know and those of us out here in the dark could use a little less of that and a lot more information.

Illegal Immigrants: The New Underclass


Fears that America will be damaged or neutered or whatever by large numbers of immigrants who don’t share “our values” as a country and have no wish to do so is not a new thing. According to the article Rise of a New Underclass by Ellis Cose, we have been down this road before and it proved untrue.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/81598

Part of our problem today however stems from the fact that there doesn’t seem to be consensus on what it means to be a citizen of the United States. What makes us Americans? There are probably as many answers as there are American citizens, and while many of these definitions are likely quite similar, it make might sense to focus the immigration debate on exactly what we mean when we talk about assimilation beyond a common spoken language. We Americans have this odd sense of freedom that often seems to be something that we want for ourselves and those like us and would like to curtail in others who are “not us” so to speak. And here lies our problem. We welcome those who come and submit to the “American Dream” but anyone who wishes to retain aspects of themselves that don’t fit within the narrow span allowed, or who wish to redefine the dream, are deemed undesirable.

Illegal immigration gets all the attention, but what we have is an overall immigration problem within which illegally entering our country is but a symptom – albeit a large one. And it really all starts with identity. But is it one we all share? And if not, where are the overlaps? How can we expect immigrants to assimilate if we can’t answer that question with a united voice?