Immigrating to Canada
Community Forums/General Help/Immigrating to Canada
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| I do not want to bother anyone, anyone know if it is possible that in Canada anyone help me with a job, study and training to earn an honest living?. I'm a group demobilized in Colombia illegally constituted and am part of a program called ACR. http://www.reintegracion.gov.co/Es/Paginas/index.aspx I just want a chance to be someone in life with my daughter and my wife. Greetings. |
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| I can't really help you here, other than offer a tip: If you are seriously considering relocating to the North, the most important thing you could possibly do to help yourself succeed is to learn English. Get books from a local library if you have one, or look online for free basic language training tools, whatever it takes -- if you don't speak the local language it much harder to find a job than when you do, especially if you are interested in doing anything other than low-paying seasonal farm work or landscaping and the likes. (also, if I remember correctly it's easier to qualify for migrating to Canada if you speak either English or French, than it would be if you don't)_ |
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| Response of the Canadian Embassy in Colombia Dear Sir / Madam, Thank you for your correspondence regarding your interest in resettlement to Canada under the provisions of the Source Country Class of humanitarian-protected persons abroad. Please note that on October 6, 2011, the regulatory provisions that defined the source country class of protected persons (Colombians living in Colombia) were repealed. It is therefore no longer possible to apply for permanent residence in Canada through this program, as this immigration category no longer exists. Applications received on or after October 6th, 2011, will simply be returned to the applicant with no further action to be taken by this office. Persons in Colombia in need of protection are encouraged to seek other durable solutions to address their security problems. Several humanitarian organizations, both within and outside of Colombia, offer support services to Colombians in need of protection. For more information please visit: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/refugees/outside/index.asp Thank you. |
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| What about Spain instead? Warmer than Canada, drier than Columbia and they speak spanish. Or consider almost anywhere in EU if you can speak english, french or german. |
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| I think that with your situation, your best opportunity is to become a freelancer in your country. The cheap cost of living in your country is an advantage if you have access to the internet and to a bank account. That's all you need to sell your services or products. Consider that the cost of living in a rich country is high and the unemployment is high too these days. (i don't know in Canada but in the US and in the EU the situation seems bad.) If i were you i would learn english the best i can and provide either programming or translation services or become an affiliate and help to sell products in your country. Being in a rich country will not make you rich, i see plenty of young people in my country living in cars, in vans, in the streets, in the woods, return to their parents home. The situation in Spain seems to be even worse these days. |
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| Not to say ... the only company that offers prepaid internet is UFF here in Colombia. I have no access to a savings account, talk about low life consisted of Colombia, and to save for a computer .... I need several months, I would go to cut trees in another country, possibly remained poor, but better quality of life. Speaking English, study, total waste of time with my age. Spain would be a good choice, but everyone talks about the global crisis. |
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| If you can't find a job in a rich country and you can't pay the rent or buy a land and a home, then you will be even more poor here. And the winter is colder than in Colombia i guess. What if you manage to go to spain, then you will compete with all people from maghreb and africa to do hard work for a small wage. Not the best plan to get rich... |
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| What a tragedy .... A beggar on the street can tell you exactly the same ... at no time spoke of getting rich, being poor can have a better quality of life, the street mendijo can stop sleeping under a bridge and go to a house, however will remain poor, and repeat at any time I talk about get rich, unless you return to my old life, to be rich would first have to be born into a wealthy family, or second at 11 years studying at a school and not a knife beheading another human being, then at 16 finish high school and hopefully go to college, get a house that has no moisture, have more than one meal a day a good job with a good salary, but that's not to be rich. I can understand that as your words I have to resign myself to live like I am therefore excused necesistas your awareness that the world is shit and not everyone has access to goods and services that the system can offer. And talk about a rich country, of course Colombia is a rich country, only 17 percent are the rich the rest are middle class and the poor majority, the only way to get rich is Coca peddling, peddling weapons and we are clear a rich country, where many people have no access to education or basic water and gas, the problem here is that a congressmen earn a lot of money per month, while I earn 250,000 pesos contant hopefully ... I firmly believe that in the end you do not know what you mean.  |
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| Most people would love to go to Colombia due to the beauty of the country, the beautiful women, etc. It is sad that such poverty lives under the veil of paradise. |
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| Another thing in the EU (speaking for the UK) most jobs require a degree or some such qualification, this is the barriee that quite a few of our teenagers hit when leaving school. To come here you would need qualifications to get anywhere |
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| Cartagena is a beautiful city in Colombia, Spanish architecture, each year doing the beauty pageant, but as this happens if one day you tread ground in Cartagena, poverty is immense, once an American president came to Colombia, can not remember his name, you know you did, hid all the beggars in the streets that day were given a meal, cut their hair and when the American president went back to the streets again. Cartagena promotes something underhand is turimos of Colombian children prostitution and drugs, if you come from europe safe here little that will bring a fortune to get into drugs and spend on hookers, no offense to anyone but that's the reality. I with the same story, I have nothing in life, just looking for an opportunity to at least aspire to a better quality of life, three meals a day for me and my daughter, shelter, access to health and education, is not However big deal to eat and I have not think of another country emigar is the illusion that keeps us alive .... It seems as appointments with a psychiatrist, well I feel good. |
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| I can understand that as your words I have to resign myself to live like I am therefore excused necesistas your awareness that the world is shit and not everyone has access to goods and services that the system can offer. No, what i say is that even if it is easier to access to many material things in the EU, it does not mean that everybody has access to it. You will need money, but the cost of life is higher here than in your country (especially for the rent or the cost of a land/home) and you may have difficulties to find a well paid job in spain if you have no skills or experience in a specific area, knowing that the low paid jobs are already occupied by many people from maghreb and africa. I haven't said it is not possible, i have said that i think it is not the best way to earn good money. |
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| You will need money, but the cost of life is higher here than in your country (especially for the rent or the cost of a land/home) and you may have difficulties to find a well paid job in spain for comparison, see this: http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_result.jsp?country1=Colombia&country2=Spain Plus there's the small detail that traveling from South America TO Spain (or Canada, or...) will cost you at least a few thousand dollars as well. Now, the biggest problem: Unless you are highly educated and in a sought-after profession (e.g. doctors, scientists, etc.) it will be hard to move to a different country at all. Most countries strongly restrict who is allowed to settle in their borders. (All countries that you'd want to move to, at least) Even if you can cross the border to visit a country, you can't just get a job somewhere: you need to get a work permit and tax ID from the government to be allowed to take a job, and it is illegal for employers to hire you without such a work permit. In reality: Unless you are one of the following: - highly educated professional - Oppressed minority in danger in your own country (Political asylum seeker) - Have historical / family ties to a specific country - Foreigner marrying a local citizen - Have a lot of money and are investing in / creating jobs in a country - Sometime have religious ties (e.g. Jewish people can move to Israel) - Go to an undeveloped country where the government doesn't really care The unfortunate reality is that you have little chance to be allowed legal access to move, settle, and work in a different country. Most of the 'rich' countries don't just want to open their borders and end up helping out millions of poor foreigners moving in, using up resources. In the end, the more 'desirable' a country is, the harder it is for others to get in and settle there. If you are a doctor and there are no local people available, a hospital can petition for a work permit for you and be allowed to hire you and fly you over. but for 'uneducated work (farm worker, factory worker, janitorial worker, etc.) there are countless of unemployed local citizens that can do that kind of work too, and the government would tell a company to hire one of them instead and won't give out a work permit to get more foreigners. (And even educated professions like computer programmers and such don't necessarily qualify for work permits - it depends on how much of a demand there is that can't already be filled by the local labor force) After all, each and every country's government's primary responsibility is the best interests of its own citizens, not foreigners -- no matter how 'unfair' that may seem for those unfortunate enough to have born in poorer countries. |
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| Speaking English, study, total waste of time with my age. Waste of time? I don't know how old you are, but I'm 38 - and I'm back on University to get a degree - I'm tired of loosing jobs and oportunities because I don't have one. Also, it's never a waste of time to learn something new. Specially in this case, and in your case: as a programmer you MUST know english. Every published paper/tutorial or anything new will be first published in English. Good lectures, from well known programmers/producers are always in English. Even the programming languages are in English! Not to mention that whatching movies, tv series or even cartoons in their original language is much better than translated/dubbed/subbed stuff - you loose a lot of meaning when translating from one language to another. Learning English (or another language) can improve even your "leisure" time - not only your professional skills. Here in Brazil even taxi drivers are learning English - they want to be able to talk to all the tourists coming for 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics. With that kind of attitude - thinking that study is a waste of time, you have no hope of improving your life *anywhere* |
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| xlsior>>Thanks for the link. I don't know if it is accurate but it gives an idea. |
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| I'm a group demobilized in Colombia illegally constituted This line has appeared atleast twice and I am not sure if bable fish (other online translators are available) mangled that line or what, I am not sure what to make of it without jumping to conclusions. That being that you lived somewhere in Colombia and were forcefully removed (illigally perhaps by drug cartels to grow crops on your/ your village's land) and are now living 'somewhere' perhaps in a shanty town of sorts going by the 'mud' walls I recall reading in this or the dead pc thread. If that isn't what you mean, then I have no clue what those words mean in a cohearant sentance. But as has already been posted, just upsticks and moving to another country doesn't necessarily mean it's all sunshine and unicorns. Many people have looked to the west (or the north in your case) and sought a better life in greener pastures, but once there the chances of getting a job using your computer skills become nill, hell in the late 90's early 2000's you could not get a data entry clerk job (a very low rung) without needing MSCE certification, data entry, not sys admin, corps were fudging the numbers of MSCE employees to get Certified status. You may very well be happy taking a wage (perhaps under minimum under the table cash in hand) to put a roof over your and your families head, but you may find that although you may earn in a week what you might rake in in a year (going by how long a PSU would take you to save for) your rent alone could eat up a vast amount. I am paying for a room what my brother pays for a house and in a week I will be chacing any job going in a town that prefers employees to have letters after their names and being unskilled as I am (what I had are now vastly outdated). The UK is not known for having slums and shanty town's nor is Europe in general, but we do have new housing being built on a semi monthly basis yet still empty buildings lay empty and derilict, you could find yourself moving from one street corner doorway to another, just in a different colder environment. edit: I had been meaning to post to this thread for a few days but never actually logged in to do so and thought I was up to date on all posts but missed the last few, notably Waste of time? I don't know how old you are, but I'm 38 - and I'm back on University to get a degree - I'm tired of loosing jobs and oportunities because I don't have one. I am the same age and one of my options is to enroll in September into some full or part time course, preferably work related, but as I never knew what I wanted to do with my life, I don't know if I would be picking a career or wasiting time money and effort on a job I would hate and eventually quit. In the mean time I am chasing NMW and lucky to push supermarket trollies if I can. Not to mention that whatching movies, tv series or even cartoons in their original language is much better than translated/dubbed/subbed stuff - you loose a lot of meaning when translating from one language to another. Learning English (or another language) can improve even your "leisure" time - not only your professional skills. I have often thought if the American's dissowened the English language at the end of the war of independance and chose French (to really rub it in) we in England would be bilingual instead of English and loud pointing at things English we (and the Americans) are stereotyped to be when abroad. To watch any hollywood movie, we would have to understand French, the same with TV shows. When I was younger and Manga Entertainment had only just started outputting Anime to the UK on home video (notwithstanding the decades of TV imports) I did get a hankering of moving to Japan when I was older, I guess a fair few of us thought the same and there are alot of things about Japan you didn't know about youtube vids out to dispell myths that we in the west believed about Japan due to the cultural output that is Anime, although I had moved onto live action Japanese/Asian movies, not feeling anime was for kids, far from it (urotsikdoji sp tom and jerry it aint), but I got more of a feel for the country even if stylised with a 60's yakuza flick or Sonatine (one of my faves that I can recall a title for that is not Battle Royal), yes most were Yakuza flicks and that is kinda their westerns, but you got more of a glimps into real Japan with that than anything kwaie. When I was younger I would be very envious of Enay (and when he was there Anthony Flack) as they would make it abroad where I had not, but as I got older I nolonger compared myself against my peers and looking at a celeb who would be my age would be so self defeating that I don't recall ever doing so. TLDR I would love to live in Japan but I know that I would not be able to live in Tokyo and TBH Tokyo is the main apeal to westerners, living in a fishing village on the southern island? hardly what people think of when envisioning themselves abroad. |
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| There is a popular saying. A dog thinks the other side of the fence, the grass is greener, I think the same thing happens. Estuidiar, if correct I agree, but I will summarize as follows: Study hungry is not the best, yet it takes time, investment costs for the eduación demand and especially for an adult who is married and has one daughter. I'll have to resign, is the most appropriate in this regard. Summary my expectations at age 34 are having a Job Information with the minimum, that would make me happy. When I speak of demobilized in Colombia is that armed conflict is lived for decades and since I was eleven years dabbling in the war, now in 2005 I left the armed conflict simply because I had a daughter, but this time they spend days when I have to go to bed without eating give you my daughter, I'm not a meal worthy of a cup of coffee and toast. Well this is very complicated and the story is confirmed, there are always people better than others, and why not push grocery carts, I can not do that here, or wash a toilet, ... Well nothing more to say, I think this does not lead to anythi. |
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| The conclusion I have reached is that I need a little capital to do something, that would make the difference between having a better quality of life and continue to live as I live. For example with a capital of $ 5,000 which are the minimum wage of a Colombian in a course about two years, I'd buy a machine to make ice cream and sell them on the street, or have an internet room, something, but when you're nobody in life, you can not have access to banks for a loan of capital, because there is no backup, I have no words that drop dead. I think it'll be a lot more than one day get tired of shouting to the world that lives in poverty. |
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| Just goes to show you what you take for granted. I'm on a minimum wage job. Money is a bit tight, but I have shelter, food, entertainment, health care and a car. Your story saddens me... Don't give up though and don't think you'll never do anything with your life! |
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| Out of curiosity, how much does a computer cost over there? |
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| I know you are too old for this, But if you have younger relatives who wish to here is some info. When Spain dropped conscription, the number of applicants for the army dropped, and so they allowed anyone of Spanish heritage to enlist from south america and nationalise after service. (I think it was one great Grandparent, you would need to look it up) For your age, last time I was in Spain they had a news report about Spanish speaking South Americans being given housing in Villages for free as long as they agreed not to move to the cities and to raise children in the villages. No Info other than that you would need to look it up |
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| @Ross C 1.000 millon pesos colombianos = 600 o 500 US. Making accounts, one euro in Colombia means buying the following for breakfast. 1 Euro 4 chicken eggs. 1 bag with milk. 5 loaves It seems strange, if it did win in euros at work and more negligible millionaire would spend it here, but obviously winning in euros and spend in euros not profitable. @H & K It's a shame I'm too old. |
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| Yue, please check your email. |
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