detail from: KRK Art dizajn

HOW I WAS RECEIVED IN CANADA

I did my doctoral dissertation experimentally in Canada, and when I applied to emigrate to Canada, the embassy in Belgrade held the procedure for almost two years, and when they issued me an immigrant visa, they wrote that I was forbidden from working in the profession. Although it was written in my documents that I was a doctor of technical sciences, the officer who wrote the visa probably identified it as a doctorate in medicine, which must be nostrified in Canada beforehand, with other conditions.

When I addressed the embassy, pointing out the given mistake, they also corrected it with a ballpoint pen on my visa, but the original document had already been sent to Canada. I believed that I would not have any obstacles to employment, but it turns out that this was probably one of the main obstacles.

Looking for a job, I applied for all engineering positions, which, according to the descriptions, suited me, on the entire continent, from Yellowknife to Texas and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In the beginning, I wrote down all my qualifications and gained experience (doctorate, expert of the United Nations, 67 projects of industrial facilities, 50 published scientific papers, etc.), and I mostly received answers that I was overqualified. Then I left out my doctorate, projects and scientific papers, retaining only the title of graduate engineer. And with that, I was again mostly overqualified too. I got my first job as a technician, although that was not in my profession either. I was asked for Canadian experience, and the fact that I worked in Canada for two years on a doctorate and that I worked for the United Nations (UNIDO) for four years, no one respected. It would have been more important if I had done any physical work, but if it had been in Canada.

When I spoke to the vice president of an engineering firm near Toronto Airport, he told me that they had designed and built one grain silo in Trinidad and Tobago, and I had designed and supervised 25 of those, but I was retrained for them as well, they probably turned me down for fear of their own positions.

Before moving in, I had a certified letter from International Milling and Research Development (IMRD) that they would hire me and plus buy me a house and give me a company car to use, but they didn't even meet me at the airport when I arrived, nor did they promise anything fulfilled. The owner of the company, Douglas Scott, did not find it necessary even to apologize to me. Some time later, I learned, although I have no evidence, that the Douglas Scott in question received half a million dollars from the state, in the name of designing and building small mills for Mexico, which was supposed to be my task. We had a written contract, signed at the lawyer’s office, but it was ignored by Mr. Scott.

Even our compatriot Ilija Rakanović gave me a written promise for employment, but when I visited him, he took me through his two factories and took me to lunch, but there was nothing from employment. A couple of years later, I had the opportunity to get a position at the University of Vancouver, when the same Ilija let me down without giving me his recommendation.

The engineering company ECE in Toronto suited me according to the profile of my profession, so I made to them a conceptual design for a baby food factory and showed and demonstrated to them one of my patents for home winemaking, all without a dollar payment. I have recommended to them a project of silos with big diameters and active ventilation, which existed only in Yugoslavia, as my project, and when they found out about all my qualifications, they didn't offer me a position, saying they were unable to pay me as much as I deserved. I only asked for a job, without any conditionality of salary, emphasizing that I am an immigrant and that I need a job to survive, but they did not accept that either.

And when I applied for the advertised position in the company Commercial Alcohols in Chatham, I got the position through the agency, and when the director Martin Kazmir asked me for a salary, I asked for 55,000 dollars / year, to which he responded that it was too little. He has offered me $ 90,000. I worked on projects for reconstructions and improvements and completed nine projects to improve the process (I made designs, specification of necessary equipment, got prices for costs, and did all the descriptions), but when exactly three months of my employment ended, the same director fired me, without explanation. The reason, in fact, was that I revealed to them the mistakes in the process that they were covering up. One case is: Of the two parallel fans on the drying line of the rest of the extracted corn mass, one fan went out of operation every few days. I have determined, through work orders, that various experts from Canada and the United States have been coming to them for three years, and the faults have not been rectified, because all seven belts on a given fan were not tightened equally, with a torque wrench. When I did that to them, the fan didn't stop for a full month, while I was still working. Those fans were supervised by Will Findler. The same worker did not know too how to solve the problem of congestion of screw conveyors, at the place where the products came from two screw conveyors and merged into the third screw conveyor of the same diameter as the previous two, and only needed to install a third screw conveyor of appropriate diameter, or increase the number of revolutions. But that same guy, Willie Findler, was visibly spying on me the whole time I was doing this, and he probably felt like he was going to lose his position, so he timely accused me to the director, who trusted him and fired me, because under Canadian law, an employee can be fired within three months, without explanation. The company "Commercial Alcohols" employed a group of service technicians who maintained all the factory devices and they were the ones who deliberately allowed one mouth fan to constantly break down, which pointed out to the director that it was a bad fan, and the director, as not experienced, took it for granted. And when the director got my report and I put the fan in the right condition, there was a fear that the whole team of service technicians might get fired, so it was easier to fire me, one, instead of seven of them.

During my nine years of living in Canada, I applied for about 1,100 positions, which I was completely satisfied with, although some were far below my qualifications, and I got one, from which I was fired, as overqualified. I have asked myself many times, is it really possible for Canadians to declare an engineer overqualified? It is more possible to believe in the opinion that employers are actually afraid for their own positions. After retirement I shredded all my copies of applications for jobs.

In Canadian companies, all employers claim that there should be no discrimination in Canada on the grounds of nationality, race, color, religion, age, etc., although I got the impression that this is the case in many cases, as perceived by those to whom it applies. When I immigrated to Canada, I was in my fifty-third year of life, a Serb, and the whole West declared Serbs criminals, so some employers, even without knowing Serbs, could simply reason "Why should I take a risk". It bothered me why no one would tell me the truth, why they didn't hire me, it would help me with the next attempt. I cannot categorically claim that it came true for me, but such an impression can be gained. In any case, it is not easy or pleasant to go through an immigrant's life.

The previous experience, in terms of employment, is supported by the case of an electrical engineer from Belgrade, for which my friend Milutin Grujicic told me:

The given engineer got a job to test the made electric motors, of which there were so many that the boss gave him a deadline to test and certify it all within six months. The case is that the given engineer did the same job in Belgrade, for which he made himself a device that speeded up the testing process, so he applied it in this case and did all the work within a month, instead of the six months, given to him. When he went to the owner of the company and told him that he had finished everything, the boss found it hard to believe him, so they went together to check, and when the boss was convinced that everything was done without error, he invited the engineer to the office, and instead of the expected improvement, he paid the engineer in a month and fired him. The engineer was left without a text, he could not believe what he had experienced.

Finally, I received $ 15,000 in grants from the Unemployment Help Center, in Windsor, completed a three-month "Small Business" course, registered my own design firm, and completed my business career as a designer. During these two last years of work I have made a dozen projects for protective fences around robots and presses in companies in Windsor, one station for washing train wagons for transporting edible oil, in ADM Agri-Industries, several projects for machine protection and process improvement in Dainty Foods, also all in Windsor, and one swing conveyor project to cool machine castings at the Hayes Lemmerz plant in Cadillac, Michigan, USA.

Herewith, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Windsor Unemployment Center for their help, and keep it written, as such.

And finally, I emphasize that I kept the family together, both daughters graduated from universities and got a job, we lived every good thing that Canada provided us, we traveled a lot and we feel safe and happy in Canada, our second homeland. Canada, Thank you.

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