Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
Like most Canadians who live in the larger cities I know lots of immigrants personally and their immigration paths vary widely.
There are those (1) who have a negative view of the U.S. (both society and its place in the world) and who never even considered immigrating there. Quite a few of them will wait quite some time after landing in Canada before visiting the U.S. - especially if they don't have relatives down there. Citing the fact that they "want no part of it". A friend of mine was like that and lived here for 25 years before setting foot in the U.S. A few years ago he took his family down to NYC during the summer (partly at my urging) and they all loved it. He said "you know, Americans aren't so bad!".
There is another subset (2) who applied to Canada, the U.S., Australia, etc., and Canada simply said "yes" first. Of these most put down roots in Canada, and learn to like it. Fairly quickly they no longer yearn for the U.S. as they've built a whole life in Canada (including kids) and the differences in outcomes generally aren't really that great in any event.
And then you a have another group (3) which is probably the smallest of the three, who couldn't get into the U.S. and are trying to use Canada as a stepping stone to get into that country. Some of them succeed, some of them don't and get frustrated and bitter, and some of them eventually end up in group (2) above.
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I have a lot of family that emigrated from the UK around the turn of the century; my grandfather, his siblings, cousins, parents, etc and while some including my grandfather and his family wound up in Upstate NY, most of the clan moved to Vancouver with some in the Toronto area and seemed to be very content there considering new York state was an economic powerhouse at the time.