It took me less than 15 days after arriving in Canada to make 3 new friends (one of whom helped me find an apartment in a day!) and a smattering of acquaintances, further expand my 'Canadian' LinkedIn network, land 2 informational interviews with one of those leading to an immediate application for an internal position, get a contractual project management gig with a startup for a variable commitment of 20-40 hours/week, apply as a volunteer to assist other immigrants on language skills, translation advise and settlement support at the immigrant welfare centre and start off my Canadian credit history by getting a credit card.
Is that the usual immigrant story? No. Will you have exactly the same story? Unlikely. Does it have relevance to you? Depends.
I've written more about these on scattered threads elsewhere on the forum and
I'll probably get around to posting some of those links to this post as well so that there is a sense of continuity but, for now, suffice to say that I'm still settling down despite what I managed to do in the first few days. No one promised me that this was going to be a walk in the park. Immigration doesn't work that way. It was easy to write what I achieved but it will be incredibly hard to give you a checklist of the things I did before, while and after coming to Canada. Even if I could do that, it's never going to be exactly the same for another person so there is little merit in deep diving into details on a forum like this. Learn from the generics and fill in the details for yourself based on your particular situation.
1. Network hard. That's the ONLY way anything works. Reach out to people you know in Canada before you arrive here. Connect on social media, ask friends/family to connect you to people they know. Ask, beg, squeeze out informational interviews at every possible opportunity. If you're only seen and heard, you're forgotten. If you spend 10 minutes talking with someone, you're probably remembered. If you stay in touch after being seen and heard, you'll start getting somewhere.
2. Improve your communication skills. It is a lifelong process. Most immigrants probably did not have English as their first language for most of their lives. But you're moving to a country where English (or French, to a lesser degree) is the only option. If you're good at it, get even better. If you're bad at it, get trained. There are a lot of places where you can get this for free. Explore the provincial and federal support systems in the first few days. Not all of them are great but some of them are really nice places staffed by people who are eager to help you settle down.
3. Don't cut ties back home. Not everyone is going to succeed in the immigration roulette. Life unfolds differently for each of us and sometimes things just don't work out for whatever reasons. Have the courage to admit that this adventure didn't work and go back. Failures aren't as bad as one imagines - not everyone who embarks on an expedition makes it to the summit but the smarter ones know when to stop almost as well as knowing when to keep going.
4. Set deadlines in stone. Even before you arrive, make sure that you have HARD deadlines and milestones for getting the SIN, bank account, credit card, drivers license, health card, informational interviews, actual interviews, first job, first acceptable job and giving up on the dream if nothing works out. Those deadlines would probably largely be defined by your settlement funds and your ability to adapt. But those are your personal deadlines - no one can set them for you and no one should. And those deadlines should not be negotiable. Part of the reason why people take survival jobs and get sucked into that vicious circle is because they don't set or stick to their personal deadlines.
5. Seek support from the community. Canadians are warm and friendly people but, in the early days, you'll probably feel more at home within your own community. If you're like me who think of themselves as global citizens, this probably doesn't apply to you. But even you can benefit from having some familiar faces and voices around. It's human nature and nothing wrong with it unless you cocoon yourself from the surroundings and become increasingly comfortable with just your own community - Avoid doing that. Remember that those emotions which keep families together and those which make Donald Trump and his followers xenophobic are basically on the same continuum. You can always choose where you want to be on that line.
Be realistic. About yourself. About your choices. About your chances. About your abilities. About immigration.
On average, you'll always hear more bad stories than good. That's how the World works. Bad news spreads faster and mutates much more than good news. But that doesn't necessarily mean that failures outnumber successes. On average, probably there will be more successful immigrants than unsuccessful ones. But who ever won a Pulitzer for pointing out something good? Media houses have their own limited political agendas and their stories reflect editorial and boardroom decisions. Not necessarily the real World. Not necessarily your perception of the real World. I refuse to be pessimistic about Canada or bearish on the loonie just because some media outlets run a story about that. I further refuse to let that influence 'my' own relatively insignificant life. The markets can fluctuate, Saudis and Iranians can hold the World to ransom, Chinese can do a Houdini trick every quarter and India can grow while the World watches in stunned silence but those are all macroeconomic indicators. I refuse to let them affect my life. If they infringe on my aspirations, I have the choice to either get better at what I do so that I'm the last person laid off from the team or learn something else to do so that I can use the combination of my older (and not so much 'in demand' now) and newer skills to adapt to a changing World. If you've ever had a repeat flu infection, you already know that something as insignificant as a Virus can adapt to changing circumstances. You've a cerebrum, use it.
Some of you might feel like pointing out that this post was a largely theoretical exercise. I take the pleasure of pointing you back to the first few lines of this post - that's real. But are those likely to help anyone but me and the organization(s) I work with? Nope. Will the rest of the post help someone plan their life better? I sure hope so.
All the best!
