Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
husband was fearful of starting a business that he knew to be a high-risk
option. The second family was spending its way through its dwindling sav-
ings fund and Taiwanese investments. They estimated their savings would
last a total of three to four years. In these distressing conditions, immigrants
describe their status in the telling metaphor of imprisonment or immigrant
jail (cf. Findlay and Li 1997; Teo 2007). One respondent described the
length of his term in Canada as 'three years, eight months', vernacular
shorthand for the length of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong.
5
After securing citizenship, such families are candidates for return migra-
tion (Mak 1997). Inevitably business immigrants who have left Canada have
fallen outside the sampling net of CIC statistics and are absent from consult-
ants' and academic surveys. But their numbers are substantial though impre-
cisely known. Estimates in the early 1990s located some 25,000 Canadian
passport holders in Hong Kong, but in the wake of 1997 these figures were
revised upwards to 150,000 and more recently to over 200,000. Undoubtedly,
immigrants in the business programme who have experienced unsatisfactory
economic returns in Canada would be strongly represented in this group.
Everyone I interviewed had friends who had made the return move:
I have quite a number of friends that have already returned to Hong Kong in
1997 and this year. It's about six or seven families that are already gone for
different reasons. The most common reason is that they cannot find a job.
A few years later, once her children had graduated from university, this
woman also returned to Hong Kong, to reunite with her husband whose
professional status had not permitted him to find an equivalent position in
Canada.
Of the 24 families interviewed only three had made a successful eco-
nomic transition to life in Vancouver. The Yip family decided to leave Hong
Kong because of its intense business culture that crowded out family life.
After visiting a number of nations in the late 1980s, Mr. and Mrs. Yip
selected Vancouver. He left behind a senior position as a civil engineer in
project management, while his wife was a health care administrator. The
family spent their first year in Canada on an extended vacation. Employment,
however, proved a problem and Mr.Yip ran through several positions before
he accepted the challenge of owning a fast food franchise. The business
seems to be doing quite well, and the family employed five to six staff. While
the position represents a considerable social demotion from their former
careers, they are well satisfied with the additional time it offers for family
and community opportunities.
Mr. Chen represents the success story among the sample. An investor, he
has established a flourishing ginseng store at a high rent location within two
years of landing. At the time of interview the store was generating an income
