| September 18, 2003
The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration
Canada announced today an adjustment to the pass mark for federal
skilled worker applicants. Effective immediately, all new skilled
worker applicants and those currently in the system who have
not yet received a selection decision, will be assessed with
a pass mark of 67. Until today the pass mark was 75.
Vancouver Sun, October 15th, 2003
'I
fell in love with Canadians'
In the end, a lovely bouquet of white roses made her choose
Canada.
by Yvonne Zacharias
Vancouver Sun
Emma Andrews, shown here in Honduras, always
had horses before coming to Canada. She wasn't interested in
moving to the U.S. because she couldn't forgive the Americans
for meddling in Honduras, which was used as a base for the U.S.-backed
Contra Nicaraguan rebels.
CREDIT: Ward Perrin, Vancouver Sun
Lawyer Emma Andrews, who grew up in Honduras, came to Canada
in the 1980s and married a Canadian. Her parents never forgave
her.
Her country was in turmoil.
So was her life.
Emma Andrews had a proposal of marriage in Honduras,
one which she wanted to get out of. She would wake some mornings
to find the streets littered with dead people who had been killed
in a battle for control of the country.
But in the end, the Vancouver lawyer credits
her move here to a bouquet of white roses.
They were handed to her by the crew of the now-defunct
Canadian Pacific Airlines back in 1984 en route from San Francisco,
where she had a stopover from Honduras, to Vancouver.
She was smitten.
"They were so nice, so gentle," she
said of the airline crew. "I fell in love with Canadians.
As I was leaving, they gave me white roses. To me, that was
Canada."
She had been travelling here to learn English
at the University of British Columbia language institute. She
never intended to stay. After the two-year course ended, she
would go back to practise law in her native country.
But life has a way of interfering with plans.
Life, in this case, refers to her husband, Graham,
and his Tsawwassen family, particularly his father, who embraced
her as their own.
The turning point in her life cost her dearly.
The decision to stay meant having to go through law school twice.
And her parents never forgave her for the move and the marriage.
They had raised her to think independently,
but when she did so, they weren't pleased.
They had wanted her to marry someone they knew,
like the lawyer who was her fiance back home. He was from such
a nice family who they knew.
Now, this.
Her parents have never visited her here because
of her decision. "That's the punishment," she explained.
"They always wanted me to go back. They wanted my husband
to be someone they knew. They had very high expectations. They
said you will never be the same. My dad said I would just be
rolling around."
When she decided to stay, she was turning her
back on a lifestyle that wasn't for her. She wasn't ready for
children and for the traditional life of a Honduran wife. As
a practising lawyer in Honduras, she would have been forced
to live the straight-laced life.
She wouldn't be able to go to discos anymore.
Andrews loves discos.
"I wasn't going to be myself anymore."
The reasons for uprooting from a birth country
and transplanting into a new one aren't always crystal clear.
Andrews can't be sure if she left Honduras to escape the proposal,
but she thinks it was always there in the back of her mind.
There were other reasons, too.
In the early 1980s, Honduras had become a battleground
for clashes between troops of the leftist Sandinista government
of Nicaragua and contra Nicaraguan rebels who were backed by
the U.S. Contras set up bases in Honduras and raided Nicaragua
from them. Sandinista troops sometimes entered Honduras to attack
the contras. The country was a mess.
The safe life of a girl who had grown up in
wealth and in the calm of a hacienda, or large cattle ranch,
deep in rural Honduras was shattered.
Suddenly in the capital, there were checkpoints
and soldiers stopping her car under bridges, demanding her keys.
That was particularly scary for a woman.
Suddenly, the discos were clogged with Americans
in the U.S. Army. She used to know everyone on the dance floor.
An air of suspicion choked the capital. She
had friends whose parents were members of an army. She had to
be very careful about who her friends were.
It was an eerie feeling to discover that a bomb
had gone off in a spot she had frequented. People were being
kidnapped, then found dead in the street. Some of her classmates
had been killed.
"You would feel the limits every day. You
didn't know what could happen to you. The future was uncertain."
So she made the decision to come to Canada to
study English.
The only other option would have been to go
to the U.S. and, for her, that was out of the question. She
couldn't forgive the U.S. for the way it had meddled in Honduran
affairs.
The decision to leave Honduras wasn't difficult
because she thought she was coming back.
She missed her connecting flight in San Francisco.
That's when this airline she had never heard of, Canadian Pacific,
came to her rescue.
They quickly arranged for her to take an evening
flight and tried to help her in every way. Then at the end of
the flight, the white roses.
"I fell in love with Canada."
She will never know exactly why she was handed
that bouquet, or whether others on the flight received flowers
as well; it was just a very special gift to her.
Her two years at the language institute were
filled with highs and lows.
She had left behind a good life in the Honduran
capital with lots of friends, lots of parties, disco nights
and a nice job after graduation from law school. She had a car
and a house cleaner.
It wasn't so much that she suffered from poverty
when she came here. That wasn't the case. It's just that things
were different.
She had friends back home. The ones she made
here tended to be Japanese students at the language institute
who kept leaving to go home. She was homesick for friends, her
parents and the beautiful beaches of Honduras.
"I didn't like the beaches here. There
was no white sand, no big waves."
Sometimes, it's the small things, like disco
hours, that prove unsettling.
Back home, she used to study until 11 p.m.,
then head to the disco which remained open until 5 a.m. Here,
the discos closed early. "It was not as vibrant here. Something
was missing."
Her first Christmas here, she fell into a deep
psychological pit. She kept visualizing her mother preparing
the traditional meals of the season. All she wanted to do was
sleep. She went to a doctor who told her she did not want to
accept reality.
Still, in some ways, she was having a great
time, learning to skate and to ski, "things I never would
have done at home, not even in a dream."
Then there was Graham.
So where did she fall in love with him?
Andrews corrects the reporter.
Actually, it was his father she fell in love
with on a trip to Mexico. Love with the son came next.
Although she was the first foreigner to join
the family, her father-in-law opened his arms to her. He had
travelled extensively and had been exposed to a variety of cultures.
They got along well.
Surrounded by a few friends, she married Graham
while attending the language institute. No big wedding. Just
a few friends. "I went home and told my parents I was married.
That was it."
She went back several times to visit Honduras
and thought of moving back a number of times, even after her
marriage.
But life was moving apace here.
After completing her language training, she
enrolled in a legal assistant program at Capilano College. She
completed a six-month practicum with the Legal Services Society,
where she gained some insight into what it meant to be a refugee.
She found employment as a community counsellor for the Latin
American community with MOSAIC, a multi-cultural agency that
provides services to immigrants and refugees.
Here, she could see how difficult it was for
immigrants to access services because of language barriers and
cultural misunderstandings. She thought MOSAIC should start
providing in-house legal services. Working with the Law Foundation
of B.C., she established a legal clinic at the agency where
people could get in-house poverty and immigration law services.
But in the back of her mind, she always knew
she wanted to be a lawyer again. She was delayed in the goal
when her husband had a bad car accident, but finally in 1996,
she went to law school in Victoria and now has a practice on
Burrard Street.
There always seems to be a point when an immigrant
decides that they are never going back to the country of their
birth. Sometimes, it is a small thing that clinches the decision.
For Andrews, that decision came during a return
visit in 1999. Her father was not at the airport waiting for
her as he had always been in past visits.
Crime had grown so rampant in Honduras, her
parents had decided to avoid travelling.
"It was not there for me anymore."
There are some things she will always miss.
"I don't have a family here. Family is
a big deal. Family is important." She had always grown
up with horses. "I don't have a horse here. I don't have
a big place to have a horse."
She doesn't think too much about the person
she would have become if she had stayed in Honduras, although
she suspects she would have been rather prominent.
So after almost 20 years in this country, is
she more Canadian or Honduran?
"I am myself. I am Emma. I like Emma. I
chose this life."
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