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”?