- Editor’s Note.
As we seek greener pastures home and abroad, we may be oblivious of the hazards of our search for better life. I stumbled on this piece and wish to share it with you, our dear audience.
It’s not to discourage ourselves or loved ones from seeking greener pastures abroad, but to avail us of some challenges we may encounter living abroad.
As presented by Michael Rose.
“1. Lack of professional job opportunities, but lots of menial and temporary jobs. It’s really hard to get a job here due to massive competition. Even Canadians find it hard to get jobs. I work in the Engineering profession and I have seen first hand how Canadian Engineering graduates struggle to get jobs. It’s even tough for people in health care except they move up north or to tiny towns where no one wants to go. Bigger cities are saturated and very tough to muscle out the competition. I used to live in Calgary, and there were lots of registered nurses and pharms that can’t find stable employment. Lots are also unemployed. I had to move to a smaller city before I got a well paid stable professional job in a government cooperation as a tech. However, those with some specific IT skills are lucky. There seems to be a demand for them in the Toronto area. Tradesperson are doing well too if they are willing to move to far away from large urban centres. Housing markets keeps trades inside large urban centres busy. (Summary: some immigrant can’t stand competition and do not want to move away from large urban centres due to the diversity they offer i.e Toronto, montreal, vancouver, Calgary etc, so they go back home).
- Cold weather. People really have no idea of how cold Canada is till they experience it.
- High tax. When you eventually get that good job after 3 to 5 years, tax , cpp, EI, other deductions would ensure your take home pay is circa 60% to 65% of your gross. Some don’t like deductions or much tax from their salary. They are used to low deductions from their originating country.
- High cost of living. Houses are expensive here for reasons I do not understand. Monopoly is common among big cooperations so cost of services is well inflated.
- Some just miss their family back home.”