The revelation of a former emigrant

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Recently, Russian Facebook laughed arrogantly at an article by Yevgeny Arsyukhin, a patriotic journalist for Komsomolskaya Pravda, that emigration turns a person into a monkey. They say, having gone abroad, our person loses his divine appearance, almost does not sleep and lags behind world trends. Laughter laughter, but this patriot is not so wrong.

Returnee's revelations

Only those who have not been there laugh at the truth about emigration. And those who, with laughter, try to brighten up their bitter life abroad. I am speaking to you as a former emigrant.

Emigration is always a fall in social status. Few people manage to emigrate while maintaining their careers.

A businessman who had a good income in Russia and even got into secular chronicles becomes a small shopkeeper in Europe. A person who has left under the program for highly qualified specialists loses several years on the nostrification of the diploma, learning the language. Were in Russia a successful doctor or lawyer - in English-speaking countries spend yearsto confirm the profession. Even if by Russian standards your foreign language was brilliant, for a career abroad it will not be enough … Therefore, only one tongue will throw you down a few steps.

Various journalists, culturologists, economists are falling even because of the elementary ignorance of the local texture. Only those who are hired by the foreign bureaus of our media move to good places - the rest are forced to start from scratch … Our well-known presenter, expert, author with a name in exile, at best, will find a job as an ordinary correspondent. Even if he emigrated to Ukraine. The only exceptions are super-qualified specialists leaving by special invitations. They are negligible, and they do not do statistics.

Ordinary people with university degrees who find themselves abroad after marriage with a foreigner, having left for language courses, under the resettlement program, almost always start the same way - at least with some job. For men, this often becomes construction site or gas station, for women - work in restaurant or store. A sales manager, a clerk in a money transfer agency, a secretary in a Russian-speaking company is already a dream job. Because she is warm, does not require standing on her feet, suggests an advanced level of foreign language and the presence of connections.

Few people from a bad job are able to return to a good job: in the UK, for example, for a doctor, programmer or engineer a break in work means much more than in our country. And the Russian experience means nothing.

If you worked as a development engineer in Russia for 10 years, then left for the UK, where you sold sandwiches in a stall for a year - that's it! For your potential employers, you are - sandwich seller.

A career abyss awaits almost all, without exception, "passportists" - women who have married for the sake of obtaining citizenship. Because such marriages are often unequal in the sense that an educated successful woman finds herself a husband - a forklift driver. "Passport girls" find themselves 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 a university (software company), takes a wife on a spouse visa, and she gets the right to work. And I have to work, because one salary of a young scientist, especially if he continues to study, or an ordinary IT engineer, even in Great Britain. The wife, unlike her husband, is not strong in science, she knows the language poorly, so she goes to work in a pub. If she wants to study, then she still goes to work in a pub - there is no way out.

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

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

All kinds of repatriates, immigrants and other people who went abroad on relatively free conditions find themselves in an unenviable career position (here's legalization, do whatever you want with it). Repatriates in Israel, Germany, Finland find themselves in conditions where there is not only work on the status, but in general any work. Living on welfare, the need to get busy low-skilled labor - alas, these are not patriotic horror stories, but the realities of emigre life. And often people are forced to cheat, deceive, so as not to lose your allowance. They hide new equipment, and have worn-out suits for going to social services. Large transactions (buying and selling a car, renting a house, money from home) are made only in cash so that the social security authorities do not see the money and deprive them of benefits. There are frequent cases when a fictitious divorce is made so that the wife and children receive social housing and payments.

Almost everyone thinks that in prosperous countries it is enough to quickly retrain for the device. But only not very skilled labor can be learned quickly.

After six months of programming courses, 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 abroad to their pre-emigration status. There are many reasons for this. In addition to losing several years, a person in a new country ends up in an unfortunate starting position. We are social creatures, our career, our success, our relevance largely depend on our environment, acquaintances, connections. A biologist who communicates with research institutes will find a place in the department easier 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 the emigrant much more than he would like.

The money from the sale or rent of an apartment in Sokolniki is barely enough for a small apartment on a working-class suburb of London or in immigrant ghetto. As a result, you will either take over the English of London gopniks, or you will not advance at all in learning the language. Because for its normal assimilation, there are not enough courses - you need to use the language in everyday life, but where to speak it, if everyone in your area is immigrants or laborers? When you get the chance to meet peers, your tongue will let you down.

A separate sad discovery becomes in emigration children topic. People leave, find work there and only then find out that you cannot go to sick leave in Europe or America due to illness of a child. Although there is feminism and equality, parental leave is paid only in Scandinavia. You cannot leave the children alone, and the nanny is very expensive, and often a woman is forced to work, even if her earnings are not enough to pay for the full payment of nanny or kindergarten services, because otherwise they will occupy the workplace.

And our people still do not understand what a school is in Western Europe or America. That a bad school in the elementary class can guarantee a bad profession in the future. They do not know that in the UK the prestigious grammar school raises the prices of real estate in the entire district. So much uplifting that it is sometimes more profitable to take your child to school 30 miles from home. By settling in a cheap area, migrants doom their children to poor education. Because in a number of countries, if a child, after moving, went to a poor school with a low rating, he simply will not be able to pass the exams to prepare for university, even if he is very smart and knows English brilliantly. And you can't make money to correct mistakes - you don't have enough strength and health.

Any newcomer should a priori work more. Because he is obliged to catch up with the locals. And make money on trips to Russia. Nostalgia eats up the immigrant's surplus income.

If emigrants go anywhere, then only to their homeland - for the rest of the trips they have neither money nor time. Vacation is issued once a year - it is spent in Russia. Two vacations a year? Save up for two trips home! They have no time to watch the world.

In the end, people really lagging behind life … Immigrants in rich countries often develop a complex of inferiority, inferiority, poverty. After all, they constantly compare themselves with the locals, who probably have a place to live, they have a newer car, who have access to credit money. In most countries attractive for emigration without a resident status, that is, without a residence permit or long-term visa, you will not be given a credit limit or a mortgage. This complex, coupled with the fact that immigrants live in cheap areas, in poor housing, can be irreversibly traumatizing.

Add to the trauma a shyness about not a very good language and you have a person who sometimes loses the will and motivation to change. And gets into vicious circle of poverty.

Finding themselves in an alien, socially lower environment for him, few people find new friends and acquaintances: if you were a teacher, journalist or engineer, it is very difficult to change into friendship with laborers or poor people living on welfare. In addition, it is difficult to make friends with people whom circumstances have chosen as friends, and the circle of emigrants is limited by the offered choice: neighbors, fellow students in language courses, colleagues at a new, not very attractive workplace, a few Russian-speaking people found in the district. It happens that in some Scottish wilderness in the whole district there are only two Russians: an architect and an illegal immigrant living on a fake passport without education. And there is no one else to be friends with. As a result: people go either into loneliness or into communication with their homeland.

Those who are looking for salvation in ties with their homeland pay big money for Russian television. They live by our events, our news. In the evenings, they call relatives and friends and discuss what they have read. They develop a strong sense of solidarity with their homeland. That is why there are so many aggressive conservatives among emigrants - they read our news much more and much more intoxicated than Russians.

I have not met a Russian-speaking person who, even in 20 years abroad, would better understand the events in his new country than in the old one.

These people also spend a lot of time looking for a company of compatriots. Such a strange thing: as long as you live in Russia with the daily throbbing thought “it's time to blame”, it would never even occur to you that you might miss the elementary Russian language. If possible, say "good morning" in the morning, not morning! Few people manage to live in complete isolation from the Russian language - the majority are looking for the language by any means. Moreover, the language of news, cinema and Russian friends from Skype is not enough for them - they begin to sit on the forums of Russian emigrants, attend meetings of Russian-speakers. And, consequently, they integrate more slowly into the new environment - they do not have time to make acquaintances with the locals and learn a new language.

A big problem for our public, primarily its conventionally progressive wing, is that it is still intoxicated abroad. And he believes in the endless possibilities of the free world.

Yes, there is more freedom there than we have. Yes, for articles in newspapers they hit on the head with rebar much less often. For an empty poster stretched out on the square, they are unlikely to be put in jail. They may even be allowed to smoke marijuana and marry colleagues in the army, but this, perhaps, is where all the differences in freedom end. And there are not so many opportunities for emigrants in the countries of the first world. Moreover, in Europe and America, in my opinion, there are much more conditions for hopeless poverty … When, once on the wrong track, the family gets out of the way for generations. And it is very easy to make a mistake in emigration.

And if you can still insure yourself from mistakes with housing, work, social circle, then no one can protect yourself from the most important mistake to emigration.

You see what a thing. Even if you have traveled a lot, lived abroad for a long time, studied there, this does not mean at all that you will be able to live abroad. As soon as a person gets a permanent job, receives a long-term visa or residence permit, he realizes that the connection with Russia is lost. And here the most difficult tests begin. It turns out that many people, even with a lot of money, a friendly family and a favorite job, cannot live abroad. I simply cannot bear it if they do not hear the Russian language on the street, do not see our old faded grandmothers and do not stumble over broken sidewalks.

I met Russians abroad who returned to Russia at the peak of their overseas success, from their own department at a British university or from a business with an annual turnover of 10 million euros …

Because you can find out if you are adapted to emigration only there. Those departing never take this into account. Most of those who left will always be sad in their new homeland and live in seclusion. Are you ready for this? Go ahead. There is nothing shameful about emigration. Ashamed lie to others that you are happy in a foreign country.

I returned in 2010 from a fairly prosperous life in London. And at this time the people from Russia fled so that the oncoming flow almost washed me away. And what about today? Those who fled then now spend days talking to Russians, traces of grief and drunkenness have appeared on their faces, they hardly have a dozen foreign friends on Facebook. Over the years, I have visited seven new countries, and they have not been anywhere. One of them, at 35, rents a room in London, not an apartment. Another in Germany is drinking deeply. The third in the States lives henpecked, having married for convenience to an American. The fourth, also in Germany, out of melancholy and constant nostalgia, embarked on a romantic spree, lost her husband, and threw the child on a Russian grandmother. A microbiologist with a diploma from St. Petersburg State University in the Netherlands serving pizza. Two of them live on welfare in Israel. A journalist in Kiev repairs equipment and collects money for the treatment of a not very serious illness.

And all of them, I'm sure, are now laughing together at my story about the bitter side of emigration.