Personal experience: why emigration is not an option

Russian store on Brighton Beach. Photo: Pavel Terekhov

Journalist and former expat Anastasia Mironova, which in 2010 returned from London to Russia, in column for the Russian edition of Gazeta.ru outlined her vision of how immigrants live abroad. ForumDaily publishes excerpts from its article.

Only those who have not been there laugh at the truth about immigration. And those who, with a laugh, are trying to brighten up their bitter life abroad. I tell you, as a former immigrant.

Emigration is always a fall in social status. Few who manage to emigrate with preserving career.

... A person who has left the program for highly qualified specialists loses several years to nostrifying a diploma, learning a language. Were in Russia a successful doctor or lawyer - in English-speaking countries spend years confirming the profession. Even if, by Russian standards, your foreign language was brilliant, it will not be enough for a career abroad. Therefore, only one language will throw you a few steps down.

A variety of journalists, cultural scientists, economists suffer a fall because of the elementary ignorance of local texture. Only those who are hired in the foreign bureaus of our media are moving to good places - the rest are forced to start from scratch. Our well-known presenter, expert, author with the name will at best find the place of an ordinary correspondent. The only exceptions are super-qualified specialists who leave on special invitations. They are negligible, and they do not make statistics.

Ordinary people with university degrees who find themselves abroad after marriage with a foreigner, having left for language courses or under the resettlement program, almost always start the same way - even with what kind of work. For men, it often becomes a building or gas station, for women - work in a restaurant or shop ...

... Career abyss awaits almost all without exception "passport" - women who were married for citizenship. Because such marriages are often unequal in the sense that an educated, successful woman finds a husband - a forklift driver. "Passport" are in difficult conditions, because they leave for poverty.

Their fate is often shared by those who travel with a highly qualified husband. A classic example: a husband receives an invitation to the university (soft-company), takes a wife by spouse visa, she gets the right to work. And I’m forced to work, because I’m not going to live in the UK for one salary of a young scientist, especially if he continues to study, or an ordinary IT engineer. The wife, unlike her husband, is not strong in science, the language knows poorly, therefore she goes to work in the pub. If she wants to study, she still goes to work in the pub - there is no way out.

Women invariably go to low-skilled part-time work in Russian families, and the family relies on a man’s career.

Фото: Depositphotos

And in a year or two the wives completely lose the chance to catch up. In the meantime, their husbands somehow cling to a new job. After a few years, there is a squall of divorces - a professor of mathematics with a waitress is not interested in living.

All sorts of repatriates, displaced people and other people who went abroad on relatively free conditions find themselves in an unenviable career position (here's your legalization, do what you want with it). Immigrants in Israel, Germany, Finland find themselves in conditions where there is not only work on status, but in general any work. Life on welfare, the need to engage in low-skilled labor - alas, these are not horror stories of patriots, but the realities of immigrant life. And often people are forced to cheat, deceive, so as not to lose benefits. They also hide new equipment, and have worn out costumes for going to social services. Large transactions (buying and selling cars, renting houses, money from their homeland) are made only in cash, so that social security agencies do not see the money and do not deprive them of benefits. There are often cases when fictitiously divorced so that a wife with children receives social housing and payments.

Almost everyone thinks that in wealthy countries for a device to re-learn quickly enough. But quickly you can learn only not very skilled work.

After a six-month programming course you will not find a good job, because the market is full of competitors with diplomas from the best technical universities in the world.

Few people grow up to their pre-emigration status abroad. There are many reasons for this. In addition to losing several years, a person in a new country falls into an unsuccessful starting position. We are social creatures, our career, our success, our relevance largely depend on our environment, acquaintances, and connections. A biologist who communicates with the staff of a scientific research institute will more easily find a place in the department than his former classmate who is forced to work at a gas station or in a pizzeria. This is the bitter truth. And it determines the future life of an immigrant much more than he would like.

A separate sad discovery becomes a children's topic in immigration. People leave, find work there and only then find out that you cannot get to the hospital due to illness of a child in Europe or America. Although there is feminism and equality, but parental leave is paid only in Scandinavia. It is impossible to leave the children alone, and the nanny is very expensive, and often the woman is forced to work, even if her earnings are not enough to fully pay for the babysitter or kindergarten, because otherwise they will take up a job.

Фото: Depositphotos

And still our people still do not understand what a school is in Western Europe or America. That a bad school in primary school can guarantee a bad profession in the future. They do not know that in the UK is prestigious grammar school raises property prices in the whole district. So much raises that it is sometimes more profitable to carry a child to school for 30 miles from home. Settling in a cheap area, migrants condemn their children to poor education. Because in some countries, if a child after moving to a poor school with a low rating, he simply will not be able to pass exams to prepare for the university, even if he is very smart and knows English brilliantly. And not to make money on correcting mistakes is not enough strength and health.

Any visitor a priori should work more. Because he is obliged to catch up with the local. And make a trip to Russia. Nostalgia eats surplus income from an immigrant.

Immigrants if they go anywhere, only to their homeland - for the rest of the trips they have neither money nor time. Vacation is issued once a year - it is carried out in Russia. Two holidays a year? Saving up for two trips home! They have no time to see the world.

In the end, people really lag behind life. Immigrants in rich countries often develop an inferiority complex, inferiority, poverty. After all, they constantly compare themselves with the local ones, who probably have housing, there is a newer car, they have credit money available. In most attractive for immigrant countries without resident status, that is, without a residence permit or a long-term visa, you will not open a credit limit, will not give a mortgage. This complex, coupled with the fact that immigrants live in cheap areas, in poor housing, can permanently traumatize.

Add to the trauma the shame of not speaking very well, and you get a person who sometimes loses the will and motivation to change. And falls into a vicious circle of poverty...

Brighton Beach residents choose free products that are about to expire. Photo: Pavel Terekhov

... Find out whether you are adapted to immigration can only be there. Departurers never take this into account. Most of those who left will always be sad and live alone in their new homeland. Ready for this? Set off. There is no shame in this. I am ashamed to lie to others that you are happy in a foreign country.

I returned to 2010 from a fairly prosperous life in London. Meanwhile, the people of Russia fled so that the oncoming flow almost washed me away. And what about today? Those who then ran away are now chatting with Russians, traces of grief and drunkenness have appeared on their faces, they hardly have about a dozen foreign friends on Facebook. I have visited 7 new countries over the years, and they have not been anywhere. One of them in 35 years rents a room in London, not an apartment. Another one in Germany drinks deeply. The third in the States lives henpecked, married for an American. The fourth, also in Germany, started from a longing and constant nostalgia on a romantic spree, lost her husband, and threw the child at the Russian grandmother. A microbiologist with a degree from the St. Petersburg State University in the Netherlands spreads pizza. Two in Israel live on benefits. A journalist in Kiev is repairing equipment and raising money for the treatment of a not very serious illness.

And all of them, I am sure, are now amicably laughing at my story about the bitter side of emigration.

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