I am nobody

And I am fine with it

How do I know? I was told, more than once in my life. Now I want to own it, but believe it or not, this is not about me. This post is about immigration.

One of the earliest memories of my childhood was my uncle saying goodbye to the family in the dying days of the Hungarian rebellion against their soviet communist rulers. I was four, he was sixteen.
We lived in Pécs, close to the last open border to Yugoslavia. He ended up in France, smack in the middle of its colonial war for Algeria. He was asked to join the Foreign Legion, he declined. When, in due time, he applied for French citizenship, he was simply told: “When France needed you, you were not there for her, so now, she doesn’t need you.” He met a girl from Quebec, married her and moved to Montreal.

I started corresponding with him in my teen years and when I finally managed to get out of Hungary, I contacted him again. He offered me some contacts in Paris, but I had plenty of my own.
I wanted to come to Canada, which I saw as a toned-down version of the USA. I definitely did NOT want to stay in Europe. It was just a lucky coincidence that I had an uncle living in Quebec.

I wanted to assure him that I did not expect much from him in a letter explaining that I have no intentions of staying in French Canada, I will want to live in the Anglo-Saxon world and I will not be a burden on him. I mentioned to him that I may want to go to university which I was forbidden to do in Hungary.

He was supposed to sign two sponsorship documents, one for the federal, one for the provincial government. He told the immigration office that he will only sign the federal papers but not the provincial ones because he learned that I have no intentions to stay in Quebec. His ‘mistake’ delayed my move by several months.

I learned about this when I was summoned to the French embassy in Paris. Immigration to Canada at that time was based on a desirability point system. Work experience, minor children, mastery of either of the official languages, education, desirability of trade, money, etc.
My French was already good enough to handle a conversation, but I took a friend, who was fluent, with me. We hardly stepped into the office when the representative of the Canadian Government started shouting at me: “How do you dare to expect the Canadian Government to pay for your education??” He stood up shouting at me: “Vous êtes un ZERO, monsieur, VOUS ÊTES UN ZERO!!”

I have never been so badly insulted and humiliated. Not before, not since.
Then I learned about my uncle’s ‘disclosure’. I had to swear that I will never aspire to be anything more than what Canada needed at that point: a cook.
That is how I learned, from an official source, that I am a nobody. A Zero. That is how Canada sees me.

The point of this post is immigration and its perception, but in my case, it was a little more than that. The insult of that embassy jerk stung because I felt it to be true. I am a nobody and I wanted a chance, an opportunity, but I was put in my place in no uncertain terms.

I don’t like to talk about it because, for me, it is what it is. A baggage I had to carry and live with. I don’t see my life as miserable; I still see it as an adventure. In many ways I was very lucky, I just had more hurdles to clear than most. I was born a bastard (see: Abortion); I had a rough childhood in a seriously abusive household. My escape was reading and any excuse and opportunity not to be at home. I was not allowed to go to high school, I had to chose a trade. I picked cooking. I did only a year and a half before I became sick and bed-ridden for eight months with myocarditis.
The situation at home got so bad, that I was taken into government foster care and I was able to start high-school (two years late). I turned 18 when I was in second grade. After finishing the school-year, no longer a minor, I was let loose, I had to fend for myself. I did an equivalence test for grade 11 in December, got jailed in March (see: My story). I was 21 when I did my final high-school equivalence test, but by that time, I also had a criminal record with a stipulation that I cannot apply to a university for ten years. Eventually, I learned that there is an exception to this restriction. The Marxism-Leninism University of the Party required only a workplace party secretary’s recommendation, not a criminal record check. I was able to finish that in 1979; I did all my exams, but exactly a week before the diploma ceremony, I finally got a passport. The next day I was out of the country, I never picked up my useless diploma.

I had my encounter with the Canadian immigration bureaucrat a few months later.
My life had several resets to ZERO (the last one was a bankruptcy with over-extended investments in real estate).
My life did not have an easily relatable path. I never looked for trouble, but trouble always found me. It seems that some of the most defining events in my life were beyond my control. I am not complaining and I would not want to change it. I am the product of my life and I am at peace with it.

In a way I can also understand all the negative, and at times insulting assumptions I had to deal with. I spent enough time of my life disproving them.
Accepting it all is, in a way, liberating. I am not an officially recognized anything about anything. If I make an argument or express an opinion, it must be judged on its merits alone.

I could write a much longer list of all the good things that happened to me, all the lucky breaks I got, the wonderful people I met, the fascinating fields of interests I wandered through and the many jobs I had, but maybe some other time. For now, let’s get back to immigration.   

My humiliation happened 44 years ago, but I also know how immigration was for Hungarians after 1956 and for the Czechs after 1968. These immigrants/refugees were dropped of in the prairies to fend for themselves. No government assistance whatsoever. The prize was that they let you in. If you needed help, you had to find your social network and turn to civic organizations, churches and charities. All of these immigrants found their place eventually. There was no need for a point system. 

In 44 years I have not asked for or received a single penny from the Canadian government. I am, and always was a net contributor to the Canadian economy.
I got sponsored by my uncle, but many of my acquaintances did get government assistance. Some abused it shamelessly. A buddy of my youth came here two years after me with a wife, one child and another on the way. In 42 years, he did not work more than two years altogether. He fancied himself as an artist and ‘retired’ (as he put it) at the age of 50, meaning that he was declared chronically unemployable. He is probably collecting more in government pension than I do.

I was still a fairly new immigrant, when sitting in a friend’s place, I found a letter on his coffee table. He told me to read it. It was from a girl, my age, pleading my host for help to immigrate to Canada. She was also the product of the foster care system and a clearly talented artist. The letter was full of little sketches, that’s why I noticed it. I decided to help. I found four more sponsors whom I was able to talk into signing the documents taking financial responsibility for her for ten years. It was a risk we all took. I finished my basement to create a place for her. Eventually she married a Dutch guy and moved back to Europe. I don’t think that the she ever became a burden on Canada.

I consider this, sponsorships, the best way to handle immigration. It would give the bleeding-heart leftists an opportunity to put their money where their mouth is, but somehow, I think that it would make immigration not only more manageable but far more conservative as well.

This is how Canada treats illegal immigrants today:

The RCMP is working like bell-boys ushering illegals into the country.

“When we combined our estimates of taxes paid and benefits received, we found that the average recent immigrant in Canada imposes a fiscal burden of $5,300 annually.” (source)

How times change…
Between 1997 and 2002 thousands of Hungarian gypsies applied for refugee status in Canada, following a wave of Czech gypsies a few years prior. We knew few people who acted as official translators for them. Each of these translators had a personal crisis for ‘assisting’ the rip-off of the system by diligently translating obvious lies. Most of the Roma were sent back eventually, but they all had at least a one to two years well paid vacation. I could entertain you with the stories of the rip-offs, but that is not the point.

Canada today seems to accept just about anybody. Does that mean that – unlike me - they are somebodies? More than just a bunch of ‘zeroes?

In the US, Europe and Canada, all pretensions of merit-based immigration were dropped to serve political goals. Leftist politicians are trying to increase the dependent population in the hope of getting some political capital out of it. It is not about charity or benevolence.
I want to leave you with just two thoughts:

• The problem is not immigration per se, but the way it is done.
  Not enough control, far too much social assistance, far too much government involvement.

• The real problem is not immigration, but the attitude trying to use it to ‘solve’ existing social and economic problems. (Declining birth rate, aging population, unsustainable debt and government liabilities.)

As I am finishing this post, I dislike it already, but I had to let it out of my system.

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