Reflections

It is almost impossible to forget one’s country of birth. The migrants carry a lot of memories of their homeland in their heart. Some of them are good and some are bad. Many of these memories are old and migrants keep the old image of their homeland in their imagination. The countries that they left move on and change with time, but the countries remain the same in migrants’ imagination. People remember their childhood spent in their countries of birth. They remember their friends, relatives, their good and bad times in their countries of origin. Initially these memories haunt them, but they fade with time.

There are a lot of things that can trigger migrants’ memories. If a migrant sees something different in the new country, he or she compares it to what it was like in his or her country. Therefore, even small things can remind them of their homeland. Any special occasion or celebration can remind somebody of the good times he or she had in his or her country. Sometimes, if I talk to my family over the phone and they tell me about something that happened back home, it makes me sad because sometimes I just want to be there with them. If you are alone in a new country, anything like even looking at a family having good times together can make you home sick. But sometimes, there are also bad memories of homeland that a migrant would never want to come the surface. Some people move because their live are risk. If they arrive in a safe country, they would never want to be reminded of the hardships they faced. 

A day in the life of Vij's

We all know that when people migrate to new places, they take their food, culture and tradition with them. These day we see a lot of mixing in food and culture. There are so many Indian restaurants in Canada and Indian food is liked by majority of people. Many people are doing a very good job in the food industry. I recently saw a video of an Indian restaurant in Vancouver. The video is amazing. Since we are taking a course on Migration and culture, I decided to post this video in my blog.

http://video.citytv.com/video/detail/782942811001.000000/a-day-in-the-life-of-vijs-punjabi-subtitles/omni/

Begumpura: The Wives Colony

There is a small community of Muslim women living near Square One area in Mississauga that has been named Begumpura. These women live with their children and are waiting to get their permanent residence while their husbands work in the Middle East. There are more than one documentary films made on these women. A number of articles has also been written. In order to know more about this area and to read stories of these women go the link:

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/weekend/2011/February/weekend_February79.xml&section=weekend&col

OR

http://video.citytv.com/video/detail/786313901001.000000/begumpura-the-wives-colony-hindi/ (language –Hindi)

Irregular Migration and migrant workers' issues

The number of people moving illegally is increasing every day. Most of them move from developing to developed countries. In many countries migration smuggling is done in a very organised manner. In the book “International migration”, the author Khalid Koser mentions that migration smuggling is a business for many people and I completely agree with the author. These so called agents charge huge amounts of money and they have links with people all over the world. Their business is like multi- national companies. They can smuggle people from anywhere in world to any other place. If they fail to do so, they are very difficult to be arrested and they people who were being smuggled lose their lives. The agents play havoc with the lives of these people.

When I was in India, I heard so many stories about people being smuggled from there to different parts of the world. Many of these smugglers were caught in many cases, but they bribed the police and are safe till today. Most of the times, they do not even tell people how they will be smuggled and people get caught in their plan either because of lack of awareness. From India, mostly young people are smuggled because many of them are unemployed or they simply think they can earn better life in some other country.  Even though I have heard all these stories about migrant smuggling from India, I was really shocked to read the article written by Julie Lopez on migrants entering USA illegally through Guatemala. Here is a link to this article : http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2011/05/17/india-migrants-guatemala-provides-path-illegally-entering-united-states/

Furthermore, the film documentary “El Contrato” made me realize that a third world exists in a country like Canada. Before, I always used to think of Canada as a country that welcomes migrants with open arms. I cannot even imagine that the contract signed between Mexico and Canada gives almost no human rights to migrants . Even one of the workers mentions that slavery has not ended and in this case they are slaves. It is so sad and shocking that they were being called donkeys by one of the employers. I could not believe that a country like Canada can be so ignorant towards these migrant workers. How can they be sent home if they don’t work hard or they get sick? Why are they treated like machines? Margaret Ingratta(one of the green –house owner) says that she understand Mexican workers’ value, but she might understand their value as workers not as human beings or as family members. The growers have huge houses and their children don’t have to worry about anything, but the Mexican workers’ families have to suffer a lot just because they cannot get better jobs in their own country. 

Migrant interview

I interviewed Yuri Zvarych who is an immigrant from Ukraine. He is in Computer Engineering program at Humber College. He is my classmate and my friend also. He is basically from Ukraine from where he migrated to Israel for a better living standard. Even though he got a nice job there as a Mechanical Engineer, it was not safe there according to him. Therefore, he ended up moving to Canada and is now Canadian citizen.

After interviewing him, I feel I know him a lot better than before. I feel just like Yuri, every immigrant has a different story of struggle and these are all real stories.  Yuri is really a smart person and has received many awards at Humber College for his academic achievements. He has a degree in Mechanical Engineering and has worked as an Engineer in Ukraine and Israel. But here in Canada, his education is not recognized and he ended up working in a factory. I felt so sad because a person who is well educated, experienced and skilled has to go back to school at an age of about 51 years. His skills are being wasted in this country just because he is an immigrant. I asked him why he does not want to go back then because now his country is different than before? He said he personally does not like Canada a lot, but he is here because his children are mixed up with other children and they do not want to go back. His story made me worried about my own future. I am so scared that what if after spending so many years for my life, I too do not get a job in my field of education? Moreover, being an immigrant myself and listening to Yuri’s experience I feel it’s really difficult to leave all your friends and relatives behind and living in a completely different society.

Economical problems of migrants

In the article “Mr. Tube Steak and the schoolteacher”, the author Stephen Osborne mentions that Mehrab Arbab used to teach English, history and geography in Iran. When he moved to  Dubai, he had to work at odd jobs in Dubai for ten years to raise the $4,500 that he needed for papers and passage to Sweden. It is so sad that a person who is so well educated has to work so hard and even then he is able to raise only $4,500 in a long period of ten years just because he migrated to a new country. Lack of recognition for foreign qualification poses a huge problem  to migrants because despite of having full qualification and experience, they have to upgrade their degree or diploma. If they cannot afford to study further, they have to work at any job they get in order to survive. Moreover, sometimes these migrants also have to support their families  living back home. 

Migrants have to work at low-income and low-status jobs that the local people refuse to do because they have no other option. They have to earn their bread and butter somehow. Sometimes, they even work illegally. For example, many students who come to Canada work without getting SIN and work permits. These students pay almost 3 times more tution than the domestic students and they have to live on their own.  International students have to wait for six months to get their SIN and open work permit. But they have to earn something for their everyday expenses; therefore, they start working without legal documents. Often, the employers do not even pay them minimum wages. They are willing to hire such employees because they do not show them as their employees and pay them cash money. They do not pay CPP or other taxes for these employees.  Even if these students get their work permit, they do not get a job on SIN and they end up working illegally on cash.

Mr. Tube Steak and the schoolteacher story made me realize that the people I see on streets have so many incredible stories about themselves. These are true stories of the struggle they have to face. In Canada, we can see so many immigrants and each one of them has a different story. Moreover, not all the people working at low-status jobs are less qualified. They are really smart and experienced people who unfortunately end up working at these places. Not all the migrants have to struggle really hard for long time. Some of them end up working hard in the beginning and then set up their own businesses and are really successful.

   

BORDER

In the short story “Toba Tek Singh”, the author Saadat Husan Manto has mentioned the effects of partition or national borders on common people. It made me think about the suffering people go through during the partition of any country. He has highlighted the sad part of independence. On one hand some people (specifically politicians) were celebrating the freedom from the British rule, but on the other hand common people were losing their families, their own lives and were told that their country was not their anymore. Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs were separated just because they had different religious believes despite of the fact that they had been sharing their joys and sorrows for years and were so attached to each other. In the article “Splitting the difference”, the author mentions a question asked by the novelist  Khwaja Ahmed, “Did  the English whisper in your ears that you  may chop off  the  head  of  whichever  Hindu  you find, or that you  must plunge a knife in the  stomach  of  whichever  Muslim  you find?". I am from India and in the high school history, I studied that the British followed the divide and rule policy to rule India. Therefore, I think they were responsible for dividing people on the basis of religion, caste, colour and race. Here is a link to a scene from the movie “The legend of Bhagat Singh” that shows how the British mistreated Indians in their own country : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVd_K7UWA2w

National borders make people feel that they are different just because they belong to a specific piece of land. I don’t even understand the purpose of the evening ceremony called “Beating Retreat” that is performed every evening at the Wagah border. What do they want to prove? That they hate each other so much? I have been to that border once and I have seen that ceremony. It was a very sad and terrifying experience. I felt like I was in some warzone. I cannot understand how people can be so much divided based on religion. Why don’t they understand that we have only one religion and that is “Humanity”?