For this issue, it is important for me to properly address who this article is directed to. Conflicts in the last few years have blurred the lines between skilled immigrants and those whose circumstances are complicated by humanitarian crises.
Most of my readers are high-skilled workers who immigrate for better career prospects. That is, these are people for whom immigration was a choice made in the absence of fear of safety for themselves, loved ones or any such compelling circumstances.
Please keep this context in mind in the reading of this article.
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It comes in many flavours.
Middle-eastern countries offer good salaries, no or low taxes offset by limited freedoms and rights, career prospects and a forever-temporary status.
Western democracies have historically offered various levels of professional opportunity, salaries and quality of life and taxation, balanced by the prospect of eventual citizenship and the promise of belonging.
That promise has been shaky lately - that eventual permanence is becoming harder to attain. In short, terms of the social contract have changed.
As a temporary residents, your few sub-optimal choices then, are-
Accept the new terms and continue on long-term temporary status
Fight like hell for permanent status (if that’s even possible)
Leave for your home country, or
Move to a 3rd country that does give you a real shot at permanent status
There’s no such thing as a wrong choice in this situation. Just people optimizing for different things. But, clarity matters.
An unambiguous understanding of just what you are signing up for with any choice you make, matters.
Because immigration choices leave their imprints all over your life. The range of outcomes they impact is dizzying -
How much you will be involved with your family back home. Where your kids will be raised. Whether your partner can work. Who you can work for. How much you can travel internationally. What your finances look like over your lifetime. What your career shapes up to be. Where you can retire.
There’s this other quieter element to immigration clarity. That it IS a choice - no matter how frustrating it feels.
So, what does a clear-eyed view of immigration reveal?
Choosing long-term temporary worker status makes your career the driver of your life.
As long as you’re on a visa, a foreign country will accommodate you as a worker. Your needs as a person are not fully accounted for. This realization may not quite land at first. The realization often hits at a low point - when health issues, family needs, job loss or economic downturn derail business-as-usual.
When you strip it to the studs, temporary worker status is a contract -
If you can work, you can stay.
If your ability to work fails, your relationship with the country is over. Or, at the very least, must be radically renegotiated.
The happiest temporary workers I know have this clarity. And they’re ok with it.
They don’t stress out about immigration much. If it doesn’t work out, they’ll pack up and move on to the next thing. If you’re this sort of build-as-you-go person, temporary immigration is just fine for you.
You can skip the Economics and Politics sections and I’ll meet you down in the “Culture” section!
Take a break! Go for a walk. Enjoy a cup of coffee.
Finish that YouTube video you left halfway over dinner last night.
The rest of you…walk with me. Because I suspect we have a lot in common. 😊
If the thought of losing your immigration status is your worst nightmare. If you are not singularly driven by your career. If you dream of immigration freedom. If you are putting off major life decisions due to immigration uncertainty…
Your needs are not aligned with your immigration reality.
Because you folks (like me!) are NOT build-as-you-go people. You are planner-executers. What you want is life as your entree with career on the side. You see a distinction between living abroad for work and building a life abroad.
And for that, you need legal stability - Permanent Residence at least and citizenship, at best.
The other happiest people I know understood this about themselves, fought like hell for Permanent Residence abroad (and citizenship eventually) OR moved back home. They then built lives that aligned with their needs and values. Often with careers on the side 😉
Step 0 in immigrant life is finding out what kind of immigrant you are - “build-as-you-go” or “planner-executer”- and working on an immigration reality that aligns with your needs.
Immigration is now the issue where you see some of the sharpest collisions of politics, the economy and culture of a country. What this means is that you now need to be aware of these elements.
Your cousin from 15 years ago likely got PR in Canada or a Green Card in the US with a LOT less awareness of politics, economics and culture in the country. They had different struggles - there was far less cultural acceptance, more overt exclusion and racism, less accessibility to ethnic foods and travel, telecom was expensive - you don’t have those problems.
For immigrants today, much of those things are a given. But, you also don’t have the luxury of sleepwalking to PR. As with driving, the busier an intersection, the more alertness and skill you need to navigate it.
And it starts aligning “What do they want?” with “What do I want?”
Immigration is an economic and strategic decision for a country.
It is essentially, a national HR decision. And you should approach it as such.
The question then becomes:
Why is the country accepting immigrants? What are they looking for in prospective immigrants? What makes for excellent future citizens in the near-term?
Asking these questions makes sense because immigration is most successful when there is a good fit between immigrant and host country.
Think of immigration like job-hunting in a few ways.
You have to put in some work
In our current economy, job hunting is an active, sometimes draining process.
Immigration stability is similar. If PR has not come to you through the usual channels, it is time to paddle towards it.
You need alignment between role and skills
What do you start with, when you are looking for jobs? The job description, of course!
And who are the people that get jobs most easily? The people whose skills and needs align with the requirements of the role.
It’s the exact same thing with immigration.
A decent place to find these answers is a country’s immigration priorities.
Taking Canada’s example, the Express Entry program has dedicated streams for: French language proficiency, Healthcare and social services occupations, STEM occupations, Trades, Agriculture and agri-foods occupations and education occupations. [1]
This economic evaluation can help you set yourself up for success. There are 2 ways to do this, depending on your age -
You are done with education: Understand the economy and find countries where your skills are in high demand
You are young: Find high-demand sectors. Consider education in those sectors.
This means you need to spend time reading about the issues and pain points of the countries you are considering. Not just blindly following your friend, cousin or uncle.
If you want to go deeper on this, here are some pointers -
Demography - What does the country’s population look like?
Many developed countries (Canada, US, UK, Japan) are aging rapidly. This means they need help taking care of a seniors.
This translates to opportunities in nursing, medicine, healthcare management, care-workers for seniors etc.
Look for areas of labour shortages
An aging population means that broad labour shortages are coming. If you are looking at higher education, pick programs with the greatest labour shortages in the country you are going to.
Use AI tools to ask for government sources on areas of projected labour shortages. Some sources are in the references for Canada, so go check those out!
Don’t pick “popular” courses just because they are popular
I see lots of international students in management-adjacent courses. Not because they have any burning passion for management, but because they are following the herd.
(To be clear - I’m not dunking on management here!)
PR is increasingly a crowded field. How are you going to distinguish yourself if you are doing exactly the same thing as everyone else?
Consider the impact of AI
The developed world is feeling the tremors of AI already. If you are studying today, you MUST consider whether or not your job is replaceable by AI.
Ironically, the work that most involved the human touch - nursing, landscaping, plumbing, construction, education - are far more immune to AI than many traditionally “prestigious” white-collar occupations.
In December 2015, I got married in India. I was working at the time on the employment authorization program available to international students in the US (STEM-OPT).
I would have preferred to get married in mid- or even late- 2016. So, why didn’t I do it?
A court challenge was going on to end the 17-month STEM-OPT program that I was on. STEM-OPT has been a political hot-button issue in the US for a long time. I didn’t know any of this at the time.
But I DID keep an eye on the news that was relevant to me.
If you are on temporary status and want to stay, keeping an eye on politics is not optional. Just like me and my wedding date, it is entirely possible that you will need to anticipate changes/ disruptions and calibrate some decisions based on elections, changes by immigration agencies etc. - all based on politics.
Not to draw too fine a point here, but anyone who isn’t living under a rock has probably seen recent political shifts and immigration restrictions lately across the western world - I’m not saying anything path-breaking here!
If you are abroad and thinking of immigrating, let me share a perspective from a wider arc. I moved to the US in 2012 from India. I moved in 2021 to Canada.
I’m in my mid-30s and yet, 2012 feels like a whole other era right now. Hell, 2021 feels like a bygone time.
Immigration follows its own weather patterns. Its oddly cyclical. And backlash seems to follow openness.
This next one is a my personal view so please take it as such - If a country you like has opened up immigration and you want to move, consider taking action. These windows of openness seem to have limited shelf life.
I hear from many, many immigrants in the US right now that regret not attempting PR in Canada when it was relatively accessible. That door is pretty much shut now to those abroad.
And that’s just one example.
Nice to see you back, Build-as-you-go’ers! Thanks for sticking around, Planner-executers!
The reason we are all back together in this section is that no matter what our goals from immigration - whether to work for a short stint or build a life abroad, its worth our while to make the most of our experience while we are at it.
Many of you are worrying about jobs, cost of living and immigration right now. As hard as all of that can be - and it certainly has been a tough few years - it is in some ways simple.
You either have a job you like or not. You’re either saving enough or not. Your PR is Approved or Denied.
Black or White. It or Out. There’s an odd sense of comfort in that determinism.
This business of building belonging is sooo much fuzzier. There is no pathway, guide, manual or professional to go to.
Hell, its not even clear what “belonging” looks like, much less how to build it?!! But what is clear is that belonging matters. It matters that you feel part of the greater whole. You know it when you have it. And you long for it, when you don’t.
So…how do we crack this?
With no clear “success” criteria, all I can offer are my own ideas from personal experience.
Belonging is acceptance. Opening up space in your life for something new. New family, friend, workplace, city, colleagues and yes, country.
When you move abroad, however long that’s for, it starts with expanding your definition of home.
Home is the ultimate feeling of belonging. It is safety, ease and comfort. And you cannot feel at home in a foreign country and culture, if you are resisting large chunks of it.
But damn, that’s hard, isn’t it? Everything is SO different.
It all starts with meeting differences with curiosity, openness. Seeking to understand before evaluating has helped me turn discomfort into growth. Finding value in wildly different perspectives is almost a pre-condition to building belonging in your new life abroad.
There are some areas worth interrogating here -
Why did you wanted to live abroad? What does a well-integrated life look like for you? How much openness do you expect from the native population? And are you treating them with as much openness as you expect?
The answers will vary for each one of us.
For many of us this journey started with a narrow want. For me, an exposure to international education kicked it all off. But, while immigration starts there, it cannot end there.
Here’s the short version: If your home and family life is centered around building the closest approximation to life back home as possible just with a hefty lifestyle upgrade, I’m afraid you’ve lost the plot on belonging. And immigration 🙂
Things may be in need of a re-think.
We have all had that one co-worker that won’t do anything at all outside their core role. Literally anything else is “not their problem”, right? They won’t contribute to the office collective - making sure the stationery closet stays stocked, the kitchen countertop is clean, cleaning up after a colleague’s birthday party.
They seem oblivious to contributing in all the little ways that keep the wheels turning. Not for nothing, the not-my-problem guy tends to be disengaged and unhappy at work.
This reveals a fundamental truth that’s relevant to immigrant life.
Engaging with the whole is what brings you into it. This is an act that transcends the typical zero-sum economic reasoning . Contributing does not leave you with less.
Sharing in your host country’s culture, problems, collective ideals and values, don’t just make you valuable to it. It adds to your satisfaction and belonging. It is a positive sum situation.
We teach our kids this - Relationships are built on a balance of give and take. The rules of adult life just aren’t that different from kindergarten.
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