From our correspondent – two deaths in the emigration/immigration market:

(i) Consyl Publishing went into administration earlier this month. They published two newspapers for Australia & New Zealand and claimed: “The newspapers are produced in this country and are distributed all over the UK. Each month we have 5000 printed of each title, with 2000 of these going to individual addresses.”

This is somewhat at odds with information furnished by the liquidators, who say: “Further to our recent telephone conversations please be advised that from what I can tell there is 57 Names and addresses on the subscription list for the New Zealand Outlook and 110 Names and addresses on the subscription list for the Australian Outlook”

(ii) Emigrate Magazine – has sadly migrated to the hereafter after just 8 issues.  Published by the Johnston Press (-£450,000,000 debt and counting)- its final issue contained a pyrrhic speech by editor Paul Beazley who celebrated its editorial integrity, but sadly not its complete absence of readers…

NZ HERALD: A global survey shows that New Zealand’s popularity as a migration destination is that high that the country’s population would increase to more than 11 million if it would take in all the adults who wish to settle here.

POPULAR: New Zealand ranks third in the list of popular immigration destinations. (pic: GALLUP)

What is called the Gallup Potential Net Migration Index measures the estimated number of adults who wish to leave a country permanently minus the estimated number of people who wish to immigrate to the country.

New Zealand ranked third after Singapore and Saudi Arabia and before Canada and Australia.

Worldwide there is a number of 700 million people desiring to migrate permanently. – read the whole story

Sunday, 27 September 2009 09:08am

©My Sinchew (Used by permission)

 SEPT 26 — Last week I received a call from an old friend. She was agitated because her daughter had decided to apply for permanent residency abroad.

I can still remember the call. She had started talking almost as soon as I answered the phone: “Karim, I can’t stop her this time.

She’s old enough to sign all the forms for herself. I’m upset but there’s nothing I can do. She is adamant, she says things are only getting worse and that there’s no future for her here.”

What the mother didn’t say, but I could sense it from her tone, was the fact that she no longer had the confidence or courage to persuade her daughter otherwise.

 She in effect had agreed with her daughter’s choice and given the events of the past few months, can anyone blame them?

Moreover, unlike in the late 90s when I found myself fielding countless calls from non-Malay friends talking about emigration, this was one of the first from a Malay counterpart — someone from the Bumiputera middle class who’d benefited enormously over the past few decades from the government’s largesse. I should add that those with daughters appeared to be the most concerned.

However, a slew of landmark cases have rattled the Malay middle class. The list is long — the part-time model Kartika’s impending caning for drinking a beer, the bizarre decision (which was subsequently reversed) to bar Muslims from an upcoming Black Eyed Peas concert and the cow’s head demonstration in Shah Alam are just a handful.

With each incident, the lines between private and public morality, race and religion have become increasingly blurred and indeed, hotly contested. As we settle into the Hari Raya festivities — spending time with friends and families, it’s clear that many are beginning to feel a sense of deep discomfort with the mounting tensions within the Malay community.

To my mind, the biggest losers in all this are the Malays themselves or rather ourselves.

As politicians seek to stake a claim to the Malay vote they define the community in ever narrower and more exclusive terms — a series of dead-ends where your Malay-ness bars you from doing or being different things.

Furthermore, the politicisation of Malay identity — the basis of political power in Malaysia — means that all Malays, whether or not they’re directly involved in politics are feeling the “heat.”

At the same time, Umno’s insistence on attacking the Pakatan on this terrain (hence relinquishing the multiracial ground to the Opposition, it would seem) has left many middle class, professional Malays feeling increasingly exposed and uncomfortable.

For them (and that includes myself) the broader, more cosmopolitan multiracial appeals — such as the Prime Minister Najib Razak’s 1 Malaysia — allow for a greater degree of flexibility in terms of lifestyle and personal choice. To be frank, the Malay middle class have been complicit in this situation.

Over the past decades most have drifted away from active engagement in politics. In short, we’ve always thought that politics is too dirty and corrupt for us — that public service is something that those who can’t get good jobs spend their time doing. Instead, we live our lives totally separate and apart from party politics — rarely meeting with Umno, PAS or PKR activists. We’ve been more focused on our families and our careers.

This has allowed others have set the agenda politically. Nonetheless, we’ve started to view Umno with alarm, seeing party members as rowdy, corrupt, ill-disciplined and greedy.

We also worry at the current unrepentant tone and the way “winning at all costs” has supplanted any other higher aspirations.

At the same time PAS’ antics in Selangor in particular remind us of what the Ulama-led party is capable of when the opportunity arises. The constant pressure to take the moral high-ground, neglecting more serious governance and social issues reveals the conservative faction of PAS’ narrow-minded bigotry at its very worst.

So where does that leave the Malay middle class? Well we’re nowhere. We are lost and we are without a voice.

There is no doubt that we want PAS’ uncompromising attitude to corruption. Indeed, there are moments when we can’t help thinking that maybe — just maybe — Syariah penalties would be a good deterrent for high-level white-collar crime? Moreover, we admire PAS’ commitment to openness and transparency. At the same time the party seems to be manned by so many clever and well-educated professionals.

However, when it comes to social and moral issues (as in Selangor) the party’s stance is worryingly extreme and at times downright frightening. The Malay middle class is caught in a no-win situation. We desperately want Umno to clean up their act, to reform and repent but this seems increasingly unlikely.

 At the same time Anwar Ibrahim has all but disappeared from view and PAS is seeking to dominate the Pakatan’s social policies. Is it any wonder that some Malays — some of best and brightest — are starting to vote with their feet?

Canadian clearing restrictions

Unlike abounding added countries, the Canadian Government’s behavior advance clearing and as such, rather than accepting an clearing limit, Canada has clearing targets. For example, in 2009 Canada hopes to accept up to 265,000 abiding residents. Immigrants can move to Canada from any country in the world.

Applying for abiding abode in Canada

It is accessible for accomplished families to move to Canada and you can administer for yourself, your apron and any accouchement at the aforementioned time.

You can additionally be sponsored to move there by anyone who is Canadian or has abiding residence.

The aboriginal date for applying for abiding abode in Canada is to assignment out the class that’s best for you.

The accessible categories are:

* Ancestors Sponsorship – This agency you would be sponsored by a Canadian about or abutting acquaintance who is a Canadian aborigine or abiding citizen age-old 18 or over. The sponsor would charge to affiance to abutment you and your ancestors for a aeon of three to ten years whilst you achieve in Canada.

* Skilled Worker Programme – This is a points-based arrangement for professionals who can appearance that they will be able to abutment themselves financially. You charge at atomic 67 credibility to be eligible.

* Investors – To move to Canada as an broker you charge to accept at atomic $800,000 adored up, accept authoritative acquaintance and be able to accord a defined agglomeration sum, or sums over a aeon of time, to the Canadian Government. You don’t accept to intend to alpha a business in Canada.

* Entrepreneurs – To authorize for this class you must, amidst added things, be planning to, and prove that you can, alpha a business in Canada and be account at atomic £300,000.

* Self-employed – This class of acceptance is for applicants with accordant acquaintance in culture, contest or acreage management. You’ll charge to prove that you can accomplish a cogent addition to the cultural or able-bodied activity of Canada or acquirement and administer a acreage in Canada.

* Humanitarian and compassionate area – This is for those who can authenticate acceptable affidavit why they would ache accident if they had to leave Canada.

Oh my god!

I know this may come as a complete and utter shock to you but for some weeks I’ve been working on one of the largest projects ever .. my emigration.

That’s it, this time next week I will be back in Sweden where I’m originally from.

You may wonder what is so different this time when emigrating to when I moved to England 6 ½ years ago. Well, this time I’m not alone as I’m bringing both my partner and our two dogs. Also, this time there is about 100 times more things to move compared to last time.

Needless to say it has been some stressful times with selling the house, car and some other belongings over here to accomodate the move; Budgeting and working hard to save up to be able to live without income for some time; Selling and folding the part time business I’d setup and completing my studies in canine behaviour and psychology.

Oh well, one week, just one week – then the real adventure starts!

I thought I would be very prepared this time emotionally and perhaps I have been. Emmigrating means leaving people and parts of a ‘life’ behind. Despite putting major energy into “it is not goodbye, rather I see you soon”, life will not be the same.

Despite my preparations it has been an emotional rollercoaster. Excitement, sadness, fear, frustration, happiness all at the same time.

One week .. only one week left!

I can’t wait though to see the dogs running around on the farm we’ve bought in Sweden.  Cassie will be constantly dirty and Milly will be in her true environment.  Perhaps we will even be able to have a couple more dogs.  Perhaps an Australian Kelpie and a Chocolate Labrador.  Then I would be in my element!  I will hopefully be able to have my own agility equipment at the farm which will be great fun for everyone!  can’t wait!

One week .. only one more week left.

When I arrived in London in November last year, I walked into the coldest winter and the hardest recession to hit the world in 20 years. Not quite the welcome I was expecting. It took me some time, months in fact to adapt to not only the weather and the media hype about the recession, but to the changes that had occurred to me physiologically and psychologically.

I come from a country that doesn’t take things too seriously, except getting an early morning surf in before work, over-indulging our children and eating too much. Most Australians are pretty laid back and although they will always give you a piece of their mind, they won’t act on much at all, not even a worldwide recession!

In spite of this environment, I still thought I was prepared for whatever this country could throw at me, the winter being the biggest issue or so I thought. Having lived in London 20 years earlier, I thought I would cope perfectly well. I refused to believe the media “beat-up” about the recession. I certainly enjoyed the change in climate it, it was a novelty all this cold weather business. Where I’m from, the coldest it gets is either inside the 5-below-zero Vodka bar, or occasionally at The Valley pool when you’re swimming in the middle of winter. No need to worry there though, a warm shower, trip to Merlo for coffee and walk to work will get you well sorted.

Change is one of those things that you sometimes don’t notice until it has happened – and sometimes even then, not until someone has pointed it out to you! An interesting thought for me, given I have spent the past 10 years managing and instigating change as my job, career and life.

Funny then, how change can just sneak up on you, tap you on the shoulder and shout obscenities in your face.

When I decided to emigrate to the UK, I thought myself very fortunate and blessed and still do. Not once did I imagine it would be a tough gig! They speak English there…, I’m employable – it can’t be that different!  Well, yes as true as all of those things are, there are some variations. Yes, they do speak English here. It may take a while to determine, but once you get your ear in, you can almost make out, that it is in fact English. Certainly a few words like “wot-eva” and “innit”, repeated at 30 second intervals helped clear up my doubts. Teenage speak is similar the world over.

We all know language is interesting wherever you go. Having heard the type of English here and trying to get my ear in, I found even when I thought I was speaking English, I was asked to repeat myself. Not only the impact of my Australian twang (which of course I thought I didn’t have!) but my constant mistaken use of words and phrases. For example when walking in the summer I tended to take my “thongs” in my bag with me as my feet always tended to get too hot and too sore in heels. I gathered quite a few strange looks and offended more than one person when I felt the need to share my strange underwear fetish with them (thong here is used in the same way the Americans do, not what I wear on my feet to the beach).

I still can’t bring myself to call them flip flops……

I learned whole new names for vegetables – courgettes, peppers and aubergines instead of zucchini, capsicum and eggplant. That an Oyster was not necessarily found in rivers and Nectar not necessarily something derived from flowers! I became very intimate with a whole bunch of people I would not normally meet, usually on the tube or bus but sometimes the Tesco delivery guys and the people who came to read the electric and gas meter, inside your house, at 7am on a Saturday, (meters are only ever outside in Oz).

I missed not being able to order a long black or a flat white, with soy (not soya) and no, thank you I don’t want milk with my Americano (Does that not defeat the purpose of a black coffee??).

I have learned to avoid the post office at any time; Tesco on a Friday night, the tube in rush hour, riding anywhere on the route to Heathrow, wearing stiletto heels, and ever leaving home without my portable “Do Not Disturb” sign (iPod).

Even after my years of experience instigating and implementing change, it took me a while to understand that this incremental change was having an impact on me.

Incremental change can affect people as much as if the change happened all at once. I went from driving everywhere to catching public transport whilst reading a map. From a place where 35 degrees on Christmas day can be a little bit too uncomfortable, to a place where 4 degrees is the best it will ever get for Christmas lunch.

I have coped by realising that I have been undergoing incremental change (not without help I will admit!) and by learning to respect and appreciate that these changes abound and are sometimes sent to challenge us. We grow from them, learn from them and understand that one is not better than the other – just different.

I know I am not unique in this experience nor even in sharing it.  I have done my share of major change as well, changing careers, homes and family situations. What I learned is that change of any nature, can be challenging to say the least, even when you instigate it. I sincerely feel for those who never seek out change and then when it happens to them, are grossly affected by it, to the point where they no longer feel able to cope with life.

The two links I want to make about incremental change are around two of my passions, HR and Social Media. Change in HR is inevitable and is usually driven by us, the HR team! We enforce it as part of our strategic business plans in line with what is best for the business. We then try and steer the people in the right direction with as many tools for learning how to cope as possible. Sometimes we fail miserably, sometimes we succeed astonishingly.

Change in the form of new technology, including Social Media can be even more threatening. Something else we don’t understand, another thing we don’t have time for, something we don’t know how to use, something that we aren’t even sure is going to be of any benefit at all to staff and the business as a whole.

If you approach the use of Social Media in your life, be it for business or pleasure, then think about how it will change you and your routine, incrementally. It has the potential to change the way you do things, change the way you receive information, change the way you react to information, change your business processes and procedures and change the way your staff listen and react to you. It can be welcoming or it can be destructive, and like all change, it is how you react to it that determines how powerful it will be in either being part of another tool that you use to help you, or a distracting nuisance.

Whatever the impact, I hope you learn as I have, that it isn’t all bad, just different.

Job hunting in London, for those you want to know the result right now read below..

It started over a year ago (was working abroad for an International Company), well the job application that is, after a degree and 5 years of experience in IT, i returned to London. Then decided I worked for a while and everyone deserves a little break, took 2 whole weeks of break travelled to a sunny beach I wound mention the name there is no need.. I enjoyed it but then again I was worried with the economic crisis that was looming over everyone .. Return to London after that… and guess what I did  started applying for jobs 1-10 application a day, got some responses and interviews from Slough, Kent to Leeds I was willing to relocate and travel( anywhere in the world), some interview I will do well and some interview technical I wouldn’t do so well because either I couldn’t remember it or I didn’t know( I didn’t want to cheat over the phone).

Even had a telephone interview with Microsoft they said I did well but never called, guess what I hate you folks now and I will gladly use illegal version of your software if offered for free, if you dont respect people why bother. I’m a fan of open source anyway.

If the person interviewing me wasn’t stupid enough to NOT to ask why did badly, we would both be happy. Yes I have sometimes missed the interview because I didn’t have money in my pocket so I couldn’t attend( I would like to apologies to Bauer Media).. Any way going back to interviews some people thought I didn’t have the skills and yet they didn’t bother asking for references or probation would of been a step to take.

What I think is really happening as I mentioned in my welcome blog, I think companies have become racist/prejudice with people who were not born in this country, so If I was white british and had blond hair blue eyes, I would of gotten the jobs offers after the initial interviews. By the way I am white but European.

Most of the jobs I applied for keep coming up on jobs sites after a couple months, I wonder if its a tactic to waste peoples money or to waste peoples time, or if companies are after certain individuals.

Just last week I was in a interview and was told I was a perfect match but wasn’t offered the position again, as I was suitable for a larger organisation. I am down and almost out, but I keep on trying to figure out why companies are not hiring, but then again you have companies like data connection only hiring from Oxford or Cambridge. (Thank you government for making such great employment laws why cant it be like America (yes I know) a certain number of percentage have to be from different culture/race/age etc.. )

its been really difficult I never imagined it would take so long searching for a job any job (not specific), finances are worse now borrowed from from friends, maybe im looking at the wrong places, but im sure im registered with most of the job sites on the the internet. I quit smoking over 4 weeks ago(no money no luxuries), Im sure it was one of the ways to relief stress, I miss it not because i was addicted to it, but because for that moment in time it took away/or was the remedy to solve my problems.

Any way countries ive so far have applied to most of EU, North America, Asia, even Middle East and people say there are still a lot of jobs, but how do you explain me not finding a job yet!

Recruitment agencies

they are like IMF suck the blood your, tell you what you should change in your cv, give you instructions.. all full of shit they are especially the s3 group (computer futures, huxley, progressive so many of them) Only use if there is absolutely no other option. maybe don’t even use them if they are the only ones left… Rubbish information sent about interviews, job applications not taken seriously. Most agencies take you for a mug if you werent qualified for the job, you wouldnt apply in the first place im sure everyone is not perfect and even I may miss some of the technologies.

I assure you you are most welcomed to use the services or some of them I am not impressed by far, every one single one of them are trying to make money fast but this is morally incorrect the whole purpose is to help people get into jobs that they are qualified.

I question why god created such evil monsters on this world whats the point of trying when you have such racism/prejudice/bias even at HR levels. No I stopped wondering if there was god anymore I dont pray anymore(no jesus, god, allah whatever you call it) maybe its time to change religion and become a atheist. I dont believe it exists anymore.

Now that I am tired I can officially emigrate to elsewhere if I dont find a job soon, I don’t even enjoy reading because of stress, I shouldn’t say that I commuting a crime..

Further Education

I wanted to study MBA program I was even offered a scholarship to complete my mba in another country, I would of taken the offered but my savings were really low probably just paid for the flight, I dont think I would doe well if i cant take care of myself and partner.

Government

I would like to write a open letter to the government, you talk about equal opportunities yet you turn a blind eye to the racism/inequality/bias decisions against people who are not British, you talk about every one having the a chance, yet most job adverts want 1st and certification for positions, well what is the point of having a degree if its not worth the paper it is written on. Make application the local government you can see that groups have taken over councils, you only certain individuals can get the jobs. I am British but dont have blue eyes and blond hair, I feel I have subject to the new racism of hiring culture (if you know someone within the company, if your from a established comany, if your rich) this is totally unacceptable. Why is the government not applying the same though rules on Australians/Americans coming to the UK yet we have to jump in so many hoops if we want to get a job elsewhere?

I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world. By Socrates

The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance. By Socrates

So I want to work I want to pay tax but jobs exist but I’m not hired because ? I wonder if its worth staying in this country with all the things that are happening around me.

Create jobs, improve the infrastructure, lower the retirement age, move to create more public sector jobs. stop offering gap year jobs thats just wasting money, money that’s never going to come back to the country(fun for some).

So does this fit in with your democracy terms, I think it doesnt help.

Life

Difficult quit smoking, no money, cant buy the things I want, got a degree but its no use because most companies want a Microsoft certificate on top. As if that wasn’t enough the pensions are out, taxes are rising, I still owe student loan, not to mention the debt to others. But still im alive and healthy grateful to what I have.

Future

Its definitely not bright, why because if I’m having so much difficulty getting a job with the degree and 5 years of experience. I am not liking where this country is going and hating it every minute. I intend to give it a couple more weeks then decide to leave or stay and fight.  This in turn have resulted in me being a pessimist from an optimist.

I don’t know why I returned to this country I should have stayed abroad at least I was offered a couple of jobs. Big mistake or maybe not lets see.

so its a little early 5:53am birds have started singing, I’m sure its on these lines without hope we have no dreams, without dreams we have no hope. I think I need help

En este episodio mezclo como viví el 11 de Septiembre 2001 con algún que otro tema. Algunos ya habéis oído lo sucedió, pero otros lo conoceréis por primera vez. Espero que está bastante claro mis motivos por hacer este episodio.
Los temas vienen de los siguientes grupos:

Iced Earth
Ritchie Scarlet
D Generation
Bad Religion
Emigrate
Overkill
The Cult
AC/DC
Twisted Sister
Ace Frehley
Sacred Reich

Hablo por encima sobre lo siguiente:

NY Steel, Eddie Vedder, Pearl Jam, Rammstein, Anthrax, Sebastian Bach, Iron Maiden, Tested, HMV, Victoria’s Secret, Lost, Perdidos, Dharma Iniciative, Dharma Iniciativa

Por favor acordaros de todos los que fallecieron tanto el 11S, como el 11M, 11J, o durante cualquier otro acto de terrorismo

El podcast se puede descargar en formato que prefiere desde aquí:

O escucha online aquí:

emigrate- to leave a country

immigrate- to enter a country

migrant- someone who moves about

Earlier this year News Week, in an article entitled Fleeing From South Africa, posed the question:

Fourteen years after apartheid, why are the best and the brightest leaving Africa’s most successful state?

Why indeed?

Of those leaving:

“The most dramatic figures can be found among South African whites, who are leaving at a pace consistent with the advent of “widespread disease, mass natural disasters or large-scale civil conflict,” according to a report by the South African Institute on Race Relations. Some 800,000 out of a total white population of 4 million have left since 1995, by one count…

Why is that?

In a nutshell, I’d say, fear of black on white racism. Plain and simple. Of course crack open the nut shell and that phrase big-bangs into a universe of complexities, but for now let’s stick to plain and simple.

Africa’s dismal post-colonial story evokes in many whites a deep distrust of black majority rule.

Zimbabwe’s early progress along the path of democracy could have dispelled all that once and for all, going from strength to strength, the Zim dollar at one time an internationally strong currency, stronger, even, than the South African rand.

But then came the crash. We saw the treatment meted out to white farmers, and it was back to square one.

In the wake of the furore around Huntley’s successful bid for refugee status in Canada, I republished an article by Simon Barber. In it he shrugs off Huntley’s claim of racial oppression in South Africa.

If only it were that simple.

Truth is, crime in this country wears a black face. It’s only natural therefore that many white people feel that oppression by crime is oppression by black people. I know it is so for I have heard white South Africans say things more or less along the lines of: “… those murdering, thieving blacks won’t stop until we’re all either dead or penniless.”

I don’t share such sentiments, but they are an expression of the way many white South Africans feel.

During everyday interaction black and white South Africans get along fine, a picture of interracial harmony, but at other times the picture changes radically.

Let’s revisit a recent event:

We’re at OR Tambo International Airport. There’s a sizable crowd gathered to greet Caster Semenya, the athlete currently under a cloud of gender confusion. Julius Malema’s voice over the public address system booms, “Where are the white South Africans to welcome Caster? Where are they? If it was rugby they were going to be here.”

The crowd’s roars its approval, and there it is, the racist overtones.

Everybody knows that Robert Mugabe gets a standing ovation every time he comes to South Africa. He is popular with black South Africans because in Zimbabwe he stole the farms from whites. It doesn’t matter that Mugabe destroyed Zimbabwe in the process; he stuck it to the white man and that is all that counts.

I can’t find a link to the original report, but many will recall that black guy who addressed a gathering of young blacks and exhorted them to “steal from whites because it’s the right thing to do.” It was widely reported in the media.

Did he have to account for his call to fellow blacks to commit crime against whites? Not that I’m aware of.

Huntley may be sent back to South Africa, but the steady stream of whites out of the country will continue unabated.

And there’s another development. The black, coloured and Indian brain drain:

… Blacks, coloreds (as people of mixed race are known in South Africa) and Indians are also expressing the desire to leave. In the last 12 years, the number of blacks graduating in South Africa with advanced degrees has grown from 361,000 to 1.4 million a year. But in that time the number of those expressing high hopes to emigrate has doubled.