I owe $50,000 after graduating from university last year. I can’t seem to score a job other than minimum wage slave labour. This begs the question: how does this fucking country think it’s going to populate itself if its citizens can’t afford to assume a mortgage or have a family? People of my generation are major-league screwed on this count. The PM’s solution? Bring in more immigrants. I have nothing against people coming to this country but must it be at the expense of natural-born Canadians? —I Owe, I Owe
This article appears in Oct 14-20, 2010.
Yo OP, I’m really happy for you and imma let you finish, but ‘Harper is a f*cking jerk’ was one of the best immigrant bitches of all time!
And you didn’t realize hat you had to pay it back? Going to university doesn’t guarantee you a job. Did you even give a thought about after university before enrolling? Also some of the degrees people go for are ridiculous and have no bearing in the real world.
Want to pay you’re loan off quickly? Go to NSCC and take a trade that pays well (plumbing, pipefitting, etc).
true dat. spend your days enjoying fixing fridges and dishwashers….
honestly, you’ve been living off student loan money for YEARS and you think you’re in a good enough financial position to buy a house????
Give it a decade or two there bub.
You’ll be lucky to afford a car in the next 5 years if you didn’t happen to score one off the ‘rents.
life just out of school blows goats.
You’ll come to know this all too well.
I agree with you Bro Tim…I am twenty and have not been to school yet for a few reasons; I wanted to work for a few years so I could move out of my dad’s house then save up to go to a trade school then save up to further my education how ever I want to at the time (I’m always changing my mind). Along the way I’ve encountered several people that are like “Why don’t you just get a student loan” and my answer is “Because I’ll have to pay it back”. I can’t sleep knowing I owe someone twenty bucks, let alone thousands of dollars! I don’t think a lot of students understand what exactly they’re getting into or what a loan even is because it’s the norm to go to university and get a loan. Does anyone really think of what you’re going to do when you graduate? The chances of you getting a good job with a bachelor of anything is very slim. Work and save some money instead of taking out a $50 000 loan on something you know nothing about!
Did someone force the OP to go to univ? Did someone force their hand in signing for those loans? The OP needs to take responsibility for their choices.
There ARE jobs out there, but the OP may have to move to establish his/her career and get up the ladder a bit. Graduating from a univ in Halifax and expecting to find a good, salary-paying career with full package benefits don’t just fall into your lap. You have to work for it.
I have A LOT more in loans than you, OP (A LOT, trust me), and I’ve learned a few things: repayment assistance. Look into it. You might not have to make any payments or very little in payments. You can get assistance for up to 15 years. After that the balance of your loan if paid off as the gov’t says no one should be paying beyond 15 years. Further, your student loan doesn’t show up on your credit report in your debt ratio sooo you may still be able to get credit despite the large debt to income ratio from the loans.
Lastly: what did you TAKE in university? Even a professional degree doesn’t guarantee a job — your best bet is to go through a temp agency, get your foot in the door, prove yourself and then you may get hired on permanently,w hich will allow you to move around.
If you took arts/sciences and are trying to get a job with just a BA/BSc…well good luck with that…and yes, I would like fries with my burger.
My dear Das Reich, Totenkopf, or whatever-the fuck-you-like-to-call-yourself-these-days,
You’re dumb. Your attempt to disguise your racist/political statement in a student’s plea for “justice to be restored to canadian-born citizens” is quite weak.
This is a fake bitch. Even if it was true, it doesn’t change anything to the fact that you’re dumb.
You obviously picked the wrong degree. I graduated ten years ago with a 40k$ debt in student loans. I paid it off in less than 5 years, and I know lots of others who have done the same. Your poor choice of a career path is not the immigrant’s fault.
International students are more of a massive cash inflow rather than a cost to canadians. Ask any of them how much they pay in tuition and other extra fees. Twice as much as you did.
Unless they are refugees, immigrants have to demonstrate that they can bring something to Canada before they are granted permanent resident status. That’s why a lot of them are dentists, surgeons, engineers, university professors, etc…They have the big fancy jobs and drive luxury cars because unlike you, they had a plan and chose the right career path. Chances are they pay more taxes than you ever will.
Please go indulge in your xenophobic circle-jerks with others of your kind. I’m sure I’m not the only one who is getting tired of this.
*high-fives Frenchie*
I agree, this is another fake bitch in the string of anti-immigrant bitches that have popped up in recent days. Even if it wasn’t, immigration has nothing to do with anyone’s university debt load, no matter how you try to twist it.
Huh. I wish I could have gone to school knowing that I could just jack off for 4 years and then kaboom, someone’s going to give me a job paying $70,000/yr starting out. Yep.
Maybe you should shut the fuck up. Maybe you should have been working summers and part time so that you actually gained real world experience and would have a better chance of finding real employment instead of whining “oh woe is me”. Nothing pisses me off more than whiny self entitled recent grads.
Ya, it’s hard to get a job, ya, you’re a douche and didn’t bother trying to diminish your loan as you went through – and why should a potential employer give a fuck?
And then you add the racist bullshit into the bitch and I’m sitting here seething…
I worked my ass off so that I came through with minimum loans, and good job experience. And I’m much happier having the hard working, well educated person from away working next to me than I would be with your pathetic ass. Go fuck yourself.
Woah. I feel better.
I agree with frenchie on all points he made: you ARE an idiot, Op. Immigrants CREATE jobs; one would think that with your $50,000 university education you would have learned this. Unless of course you blew the money on getting shitfced and sleeping late for every class. Dumbass!! I graduated with $65,000 debt and I found a job that enabled me to meet my payments AND have a life! I left Halifax, and went to a country that had a great economy…and TONS of immigrants! In fact part of the reason the economy was doing so well was BECAUSE of that massive influx of immigrants. Alot of good your education did you; know wonder you don’t have a job!
Racist moron.
I just read the part about immigrants…and, obviously you haven’t taken a basic macro econ course. More immigrants in Canada = larger tax base, you idiot!
FFS.
Jesus Christ, guys, I have a good friend who just graduated from Harvard with a MA in finance/international business can’t find a job! What the freak makes OP so special? Kids today don’t wanna work for what they get. Every bozo with a commerce degree thinks they should be handed a CEO position a day after graduation.
And most will hold onto this belief to the point where they won’t take entry level positions to get their foot in the door. The key to getting a job in Hfx in your field is getting your foot in the door somewhere doing whatever and moving around. Once you’re in somewhere, as long as you keep proving yourself, you can move up pretty quickly. A degree won’t guarantee a top position right off the bat, but it will ensure (unless you’re a complete idiot/slug) that you move up faster than those without the education.
I think the point that was missed by most comments to this bitch is the fact that Stephen Harper’s government is actively considering a new category of ‘guest worker’ who could come to Canada, without the intention or requirement of becoming either a landed immigrant or citizen, solely for the purpose of working.
Like it or not, this policy hasn’t worked out so well in places where it’s been in effect for decades. It removes the requirement for immigrants to integrate fully into society because they aren’t considered true immigrants but only ‘guest workers’. Once a ‘guest worker’ policy is in place, the business community will lobby for unlimited extensions to the length of time a foreign worker can stay and they will claim that it is necessary to the economic well-being of the country.
The Germans, under pressure from their business community, introduced such a policy decades ago with regard to Turkish guest workers, and they now face the reality of multi-generational families of Turks who have been living in Germany for decades, who can’t speak the language and who aren’t citizens and who have been isolated in their own Turkish enclaves as a result.
I support a rational immigration policy and a fairly robust refugee program (I don’t think we do enough in the case of refugees), but I have some trouble with a ‘guest worker’ program while a lot of Canadians are unemployed or underemployed. Such a program may serve the narrow interests of the business community, but I don’t think it serves the interests of Canadians in general, and Canadian workers in particular.
A few decades ago when the business community and Mulroney’s government were touting the benefits of free trade, we were told that our destiny was to become ‘knowledge workers’. Forget about an economy based on resources and manufacturing, our universities would churn out engineers and software designers and business school MBAs and these folks would be the vanguard a our new economy. As we all know, it didn’t quite work out that way. Parallel efforts to make the world safe for globalization meant that companies could also ‘outsource’ the knowledge work overseas. Engineers in India, Malaysia and China are every bit as smart as Canadian engineers but they have the advantage of working for much less. I don’t think the much-vaunted benefits of the ‘knowledge worker’ economy ever really materialized for Canadians.
The costs of post-secondary education have skyrocketed in the last few decades, as governments operated under budgetary restrictions brought on, in part, by reducing corporate taxes in order to stay competitive in the global economy. So much for becoming a country of ‘knowledge workers’.
When the business community in the country wants something really badly, my asshole begins to twitch.
Being anti ‘guest worker’ shouldn’t be confused with being racist. I have serious issues with some of the things this OP has posted in the past, but I think there is a valid point made in this bitch.
you owe, you owe, then get off to work you should go. lameass douchebag.
umm yes that’s is the plan plain and simple
OP, fuck off you dumb shit. Not our fault if you went into school without a plan, blew your money on booze, and can’t write a fucking resume properly.
Don’t blame it on immigrants. The schools profit from immigrants who pay differential fees, so if anything they made your tuition lower. The immigrants (in Toronto, anyway) are the ones starting new business and creating new jobs.
Commandante, while I agree with a lot of what you’re saying, I don’t think the intent behind the OP reflects what you’re discussing. The OP seems to be a) blaming his university debt load on immigration and b) blaming the fact that he can’t get an above-entry-level position on immigration, both of which are ridiculous. In any case, I fail to see the correlation between university grads obtaining well-paying jobs and ‘guest worker’ immigration.
You can learn a lot from minimum wage “slave labour” type jobs, and there ARE tons of other type of jobs being advertised every day. If you can’t land one of those that you want, it isn’t anyone’s fault. Like others have said, volunteer experience, past work experience, projects and research you engaged in while at uni etc make a huge difference, because they show that you take the initiative to work hard and improve yourself. If you haven’t done that and sat on your butt getting fed by the student loans, then of course the employers would look for better candidates.
There are students who work almost full time (part-time jobs combined) while studying full time, manage to get excellent grades, and get job offers before they graduate because they networked and advertised themselves while in uni. Not everyone can do that, but those ones are the ones the employers are looking for when hiring.
go fuck yourself frenchie i have nothing to do with this post.fuck you.if i did i would state my name i have nothing to hide and am not ashame of my views.
I’m still paying off loans from when I went to various art schools from the period of ’93-’98 *(hint: not the most sound financial investment)….
So yeah, while I commisterate, I don’t have much sympathy. Go volunteer and make yourself fucking useful or something.
Have a lovely day! 😀
Here in Edmonton it’s mainly Filipinos working at Timmies, Mick-Dicks, and other low-level service establishments – they’re great! Hard and efficient workers, still quite friendly, and willing to do the work most native-born Canadians no longer want to for much less. While it’s not much to Canadians, $9 / hour is like $100 / hour back in the Philippines. An 80 hour work week is nothing to them. Basically, we need certain kinds of immigrants in Canada, ones who are willing to work hard like Filipinos. We can’t just let everyone who wants to come in willy nilly, but obviously we can’t just stop people from coming because a few native-born Canadians can’t get jobs, either.
I have to admit, many of us white Canadians are starting to get a bit lazy and entitled. We can’t even come close to competing with the Asian work ethic, but hey, at least we’re not lazy, “can’t someone else do it” Greeks or “let’s whine and protest everything” French.
Call me a racist, but you can’t argue that there are always going to be cultural differences that will translate into many other differences. That’s diversity.
Sucks about your debt, OP. Come join me in Alberta, lots of work out here (you still have to work for it, though).
Frenchie, we all know virginkompf didn’t go to university and probably couldn’t get into one if he/she tried.
I know, NGF. He’s right pathetic…He identifies with a political party of 1930s Germany and gives himself a german avatar, yet I’m willing to bet he never set foot there, nor does he speak the language. Heck, the only words he can spell right in his own language are four-letter ones.
He rants about Canadians about to lose Canada and its identity to the hands of the evil immigrants, yet he fantasizes about being something he can never be – a German from a past era. To top it all off nicely, he thinks that a majority of Canadians share his views.
Delusional, uneducated, grammatically challenged, unpatriotic…and there’s a fair chance that he gets turned on by dudes in nazi uniforms.
Anyways, debating with these guys is like trying to learn latin during a firedrill: impossible. The more you prove them wrong, the more they are convinced they are right, that’s the way this pathology usually operates.
listen, blanket statements about ALL immigrants being beneficial to the country is as assinine as ALL immigrants NOT being beneficial to the country. go to Niagara falls where the police witness illegals crossing train bridges every single night into canada….or also same area where jamaicans come to canada for “seasonal” work but dont leave when the season is done, instead they stay around and peddle drugs and in once case assassinate a father of two one christmas morning. Now, that being said, the plus side of immigrants is that they do work that us “highborne” canadians wont do for minimum wage….and when they spend money and dont funnel it back home to their families, it helps fund the local economies. There are arguments to both sides, neither one solid enough to blame all your problems on them OP. I paid my education, 2 years college and one university, a full time job, a part time AND going to school…many others have done the same. you chose poorly.
Listen OP, I have friends who don’t like their jobs and have experience, and even they can’t move around to another company. Things are tight. A university degree isn’t everything. If you can’t get in a temp agency, I would say that volunteering in your field as much as possible would be helpful. Meet people, find a mentor and work your way in. And even when you make it and finally get a job in your field, don’t be surprised if you still need your crap job for awhile. I’ve been out of school and in my field for 3 years and I still bartend on the side for extra cash. I always tell students if you think you were broke as a student, wait until you’re working on your own. Wait until you have to spend more than a third of your income on your debt every month. It’s nothing new, it’s the same for many people, so suck it up and do your best.
he frenchie(dr.fever) get away from computer and go out some night and talk to people.you will soon realize that a hell of alot of people agree with my views.blacks,whites,natives,natural citizens.you would pick that up if you actually went out and talk to people.but i am guessing (through your military training that you are passive lol) that you do not not.and even if you did dr.fever you do not have the courage to state your opion,due to fear of retaliation.what boggles my mind you claim you are military trained.i do doubt that.even though hugo my disagree with me i do know he would hold his ground by the way he states his opinion.you however would stay silent.
isn’t that right dr.fever.
and a side note.you do know that it makes that sloth(fats) happy everytime one of our soldiers die in the line of duty(afghanistain).
so again you do have military time in,right.traitor.
and another thing i continue to look for statistics from the immigration group on percentiles of what countries people are from.money they bring in and the money it costs to bring them in.which includes housing,lawyer fees ,english training,their hiring ratios.
just so everyone knows i cannot find these states.why is that, and why is it that people just take what they say through their marketing.this is a democracy right,accoubtability is what makes a demcrocacy work.
just so everyone knows i have dealt with arabs extensibly.so by saying that how many of you people that judge me have had any actual contact with them.ignorant pricks.their values are the opposite of ours.you would know that if you actually met them, instead of following your government issued text book from immigration.
Omg you have a space bar FUCKING use it. That was painful. I have no idea what you just said. The whole time trying to read it, the voice in my head spoke with a heavy Eastern European accent.
support a rational immigration policy and a fairly robust refugee program (I don’t think we do enough in the case of refugees), but I have some trouble with a ‘guest worker’ program while a lot of Canadians are unemployed or underemployed. Such a program may serve the narrow interests of the business community, but I don’t think it serves the interests of Canadians in general, and Canadian workers in particular
i agree
SCREW IT ALL JOIN THE military LOL
Das Reich sounds bitter for not being in the line of duty. Reminds me of a Donald Duck cartoon from long ago where DD is on KP peeling potatoes and crying about how he wants to fly. He then paints a cannon with bright colours and polka-dots.
I miss NGF. Too bad he left the board to do a tour of duty in Vietnam.