Apparently I don’t speak English. I’m trying to get across the border to the United States where a job is already waiting for me, but the people screening me for the “visa but it’s not really a visa” have just decided to make me take an English exam. One of those English-as-a-foreign-language exams. The worst part is that I’ve been registered with these folks for two months now, sending and re-sending all sorts of documents and transcripts for their extremely slow review, and from the very beginning they’ve been telling me I’m exempt since everything I’m sending is very obviously in English and from English schools.
But then, they tell me there was a mistake. I’m from Quebec! The FRENCH province! How could they have missed it? So now I need to register for an exam. More money, more waiting, more pain in the ass.
It gets better – nurses who graduated from my school are exempt from the English exam requirement, because it’s an English-language school. But I, having graduated from the medical technology program instead, am not exempt. The school is apparently only English in the nursing classrooms. It’s absolutely asinine!
I’m an Anglophone. I’ve been speaking French since I was a toddler, but I’ve always been more comfortable in English. Every school I’ve attended was an English school, and except for the French classes and maybe a history class in fourth grade, my classes were all in English. I don’t even know the French words for half the things I use daily in the lab. And they’re telling me that I need to prove myself, while the nurses who graduated with me can just waltz on down without any extra trouble? To her credit, the woman I was arguing with over the phone understood my frustration and agreed that the policy makes no sense. She even said herself, “when we’re discussing this in English, as I’m looking over your English transcripts from your English schools, I really feel terrible telling you that you need the exam!” But rules are rules, and while I’ve made an official complaint with these screening people, I have no real choice but to take the exam if I want to keep the process moving.
I’m not sure if I’m angry or upset. Half of me wants to slump down to the floor and cry for hours, and the other half wants to scream and break things.
Votre histoire était incompréhensible. Êtes-vous SÛR que vous êtes prêt à entrer ce pays et êtes vous sûr vous êtes prêt à parler une langue qui est complètement étrangère à vous ?
Welcome to America. We have rules and rules and rules. Most made by and for idiots. And no small percentage of them invented especially to vex foreigners & especially French (or quasi-French) foreigners.
I agree this is 100% assinine.
Look at the bright side; it’ll be the easiest exam you never had to study for. (as long as you can spell things the American way; no theatres showing colour movies in the centres of our towns.)
Oh, sweetie. I’m so sorry. I have been there (immigration woes, pas parler Francais seulement), and I will commisserate with you when you’re on this side of the border.
Helen’s Eidolon had a similar problem when she started grad school, IIRC. Maybe she can tell us how she resolved it. (I called her up pretending to be an official from her university, which she actually believed for a few moments! That was fun.)
Why’s it so asinine? Let’s grant that it needs to be documented that you can communicate competently in English. But note that some clerk signing a form that says “Seems okay to me” doesn’t cut it. So you take a test. What’s controversial about that?
I will need much commisserating. Of the chocolate variety.
It’s just one problem after another, and it’s getting ridiculous. I registered for the TOEFL exam next weekend, so there’s not much else I can do but wait for that.
Wait, that’s not true - I have to go back to my school, for the third time, because the department chair keeps filling out the very simple form wrong. She “adjusted” the hours I painstakingly researched and gave to her, reflecting practical work spent in each subject. Se decided to send them only my internship hours, even though the form clearly says to include class/lab time. Now the visa people say I don’t have enough hours to qualify, and I need to start over with this stupid woman.
If anyone wants to tell me about how they finally made it through all the hoops, it might cheer me up.
That a) a personal letter from the director of her college med tech program presumably wouldn’t “cut it” any better than a rubber stamp from some paper pusher, and b) taking and administering the test makes extra work for all concerned, delays processing and probably costs money, all because of some damnable NO EXCEPTIONS mentality.
I don’t see the dilemma. You are from Quebec which is a French speaking province. In your OP, you talk about how you have been around a lot of English speakers and your French isn’t so good but how are we (or they) supposed to know if you speak English or not? Warning: English is very difficult for foreign people from other countries so you might want to take those language CD’s seriously.
I agree that they need proof that I speak English. No problem. A clerk signing a form obviously isn’t enough, but you can understand why, when I’m English and have always attended completely English schools and have proof of this through original English transcripts and school documentation, I’m a little pissed about having to pay for the privilege of proving myself with an exam. As I’ve said, though, I realize that these are the rules, and so I will write the exam - what choice do I have?
But the part that is asinine is that they’re saying that nurses graduating from my school are English enough, while techs who graduate from my school are not. That doesn’t make any sense. Either it’s an English school or it’s not.
On preview: Shagnasty, English sure is tricky for them furriners, but I am a native english speaker. It’s not a question of having been around a lot of English speakers and absorbing it through my thick French skull. It’s my first language. I’m English. Believe it or not, an awful lot of us here in Montreal are. But again, that’s not the part that’s getting to me. Obviously, the visa people can’t just take my word on that and so they want test results. I have sadly accepted that fact and I’m moving on. My issue is that they were going to exempt me because of the school I attended, but then changed their minds when they discovered I’m a tech and not a nurse.
I know. My mother-in-law is another one. Born in England and raised just outside of Montreal. It amazing me that I can communicate with her just like I would an American even if she is a foreign person from another country. I have to remind myself of that fact sometimes. People like the two of you must have some kind of gift for blending in even though you are a foreign person from another country. Someday I hop to go back to school and become monolingual as well.
Unfortunately, I have no advice for you. The people wanting me to take the test were the International Student Services people at the university, desiring me to prove that I was competent to teach in English, not the government. I managed to convince them that since I had attended an English-language university, I should be exempt. I still needed to show up to the test they were running and verbally ask to be exempted (hmm… wonder if they were subtly testing my English there?) but it all worked out. I suppose you’ll just have to suck it up and take the test. Hey - at least you know it’ll be easy!
I have to admit, as an Anglo Montrealer, I don’t even know what to say to those who think that we should be subject to English tests. The US does not have a monopoly on the English language.
Oh and, Antigen, I’m sorry we probably won’t get a chance to meet while you’re still in Montreal! I think, from some things you posted, you work at the same hospital that my boyfriend works at and that I work summers at. And really, being Anglo Montrealers of roughly the same age group - it’s possible that I already DO know you!
My e-mail’s in my profile if you want to chat - and I’ll definitely be in Montreal through January, given how things are going. When will you be around?
Man, you sure do complain a hell of a lot about being an immigrant, I just have to say. Before you go off on me as an “American”, I’m also from Quebec (I grew up in Chicoutimi). Dude, this IS life as an immigrant, you sort of have to suck it up. Entering another country is not a god-given right. I couldn’t leave the US for 1 year after they naturalised me because they fucked up the spelling of my name on my citizenship certificate so I could either have legally changed my name to the misspelling or wait for them to reprocess my certificate. Because of that delay I lost the opportunity to clerk for the federal government during my 2L year of law school-what with my citizenship status being in “question”.
We just moved the other way. My wife is a nurse which allowed as to move the the US to BC.
It’s just as bad going into Canada. You finish one thing, pay a fee, wait, finish something else, pay another fee wait, get told you have one more form, pay another fee, wait, get told you only have one more process left, pay again, wait,. etc, etc.
Oh, and for the record, my wife has worked for a bunch of hospitals in the states and she prefers the one in BC out of all of them. The pay is the same, the working conditions are better, and she has better medical coverage up here.
