Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
is this care in the application process that has accentuated her current unease.
In Taiwan the Wangs were successful entrepreneurs, owners of a company
manufacturing telephone components. Qualifying in the entrepreneur
stream, they brought $2 million with them, and clearly have access to much
more. The family owns two homes in British Columbia and their son is in
boarding school there. They set up a business as required by the terms and
conditions of their visa, but it did not bring in sufficient income. Importing
products from their Taiwanese company for the North American market,
they could not make their prices competitive and the business has become
inactive. Mrs. Wang's husband was unable to find an alternative and returned
to Taiwan. Her disappointment has been aggravated by the failure of a
second initiative, an investment in a local printing company, which subse-
quently declared bankruptcy. These reverses are hard to take for a family
that has amply proven its entrepreneurial skills in Taiwan. Like virtually
every respondent, Mrs. Wang appreciates the quality of life in Vancouver. But
the economic liabilities are substantial. To survive, a new immigrant needs
'enough huge money, because the expenses are high, the tax is very high.
And everything you have to spend money on, you cannot make money here.'
Within two or three years even that 'huge money' would be seriously depre-
ciated. The prospects for finding work are limited. In Taiwan Mrs. Wang, a
university graduate, was a successful business woman:
I think I'm still young, and have enough energy and have very good work
experience to find a job here, but they don't agree with your previous work
experience. So we're just wasting our experience. We have more than twenty
years' experience. I think I'm a really good businesswoman but I cannot do
anything here.
Understandably, once the probationary terms and conditions for entrepre-
neur status were lifted, the Vancouver business, already struggling, was
allowed to languish and out of necessity her husband became an astronaut,
working in Taiwan and returning every three months to see his family. A
similar transition has occurred in the Lin family who entered Canada in
1991 as investors. Initially unemployed, Mr. Lin subsequently rekindled
business interests in Taiwan. But the astronaut option is a difficult one.
Women can get lonely and depressed at the burden of managing a family in
an unfamiliar culture. Men can become disconnected from their families.
Affairs occur; marriages break up; children become unruly.
4
With family anguish the unwelcome outcome, just as readily as families
fall into the astronaut option, they also climb out of it. This was true of two
reunited married couples. But both families were demoralized with no clear
strategy for economic improvement. One was surviving through rentals on
two Vancouver houses they owned and some stock market investment; the
