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.