Once an immigrant, Always an immigrant

The book that explained the reality I was struggling to understand.

The sentence was near the bottom of page 111 in my paperback version of John Irving’s book, “A Son of the Circus”. When I read it, a light went on in my head.

“Immigrants are immigrants all their lives!”

My hospitality career began in 1987 as a security guard in a hotel that didn’t want to hire me. I had been an immigrant in Norway for nine years and felt at home there.

A few years later, I was assistant security manager when we hired a person that neither my boss nor I were sure about. We hired him, mostly as a favour to his father; a diplomat. The young man had lived in different countries and been educated in international schools. He was a brilliant, born to serve kind of kid that could communicate easily with almost anyone, and he rapidly became one of our best employees.

After a year or so, he was bored of wandering the halls at night, collecting used room service trays off the floor and breakfast orders that had been hung on door handles. Seeking adventure, he signed on with a holiday operator and became one of their representatives on a Spanish island off the coast of Africa. He was responsible for their guests at 30 hotels. No transport was provided for him, so he bought a moped and raced around trying to keep up with the demand. There was no budget for buying a coffee for a stressed-out guest and there was no time to patiently listen to lists of complaints. He paid for coffee out of his own pocket and extended his days long into night trying to listen, learn, serve, and solve problems for his guests. The exotic island life eluded him. His father told me he was losing money, losing sleep and almost at risk of losing his sanity. We hired him back, but within a few months the holiday company realised what they had thrown away. They gave him a choice of location, promised a proper salary and a limited number of hotels and guests to oversee. He chose Goa, in India, and he loved it. He invited me to come down and experience life in his new found paradise. 

I was an assistant manager in a five-star hotel. That meant I had business cards, but it didn’t mean I had much of a salary. Fortunately, I had a friend in London who could procure cheap flights to anywhere. I met my friend in a dark corner of the Kemble’s Head pub near Covent Garden, handed him a plain brown envelope with an agreed amount of cash and he handed me a sealed white envelope that contained my tickets. I promise, it was all completely legit and washed down with a pint of bitter.

Before boarding the plane to paradise, I bought John Irving’s “A Son of the Circus” to read during the flight. By a fun and fascinating coincidence, much of it took place in India. 

Reading it on the plane was a great primer for my first trip to the South Asian country, even though Goa was kind of “India Light” and almost Western compared to some of the more rural parts of the country. To me, however, the book answered other questions, unrelated to the place I was going, but seemingly directed at the place I was in my life.

With youthful naïveté blurring the fact that I’d been an immigrant since the age of 18, “A Son of the Circus” opened my eyes and enlightened my mind. I was, indeed, an immigrant, and I would be for life.

In the book, the protagonist, a medical student from Mumbai studying in Vienna, has a discussion with his father about moving to a foreign country. The father tries to dissuade him from emigrating by saying something like “once you’re an immigrant, you’ll always be an immigrant”. Wherever you go, you’re an immigrant and wherever you were from, you’re an emigrant.

I’ve moved many times since, but “A Son of the Circus” remains on the shelf, having survived the many purges of downsizing.

While living in Norway, I had never publicly expressed my wonder why, even after mastering the language and enough of the culture to avoid detection from people that didn’t know me, my friends, colleagues and neighbours never introduced me to their friends, colleagues and neighbours as just another friend, colleague or neighbour. 

Inevitably, they would introduce me by saying “This is Paul, he’s from Canada.” Although I understood the words, to me they always sounded like “This is Paul, he’s not one of us.”

Immigrants are different. In some countries they tell you straight out: you’re an alien!

There can be friction and fear on both sides even if the “immigrant” just comes from a different demographic, different social class, different race, different gender or different neighbourhood.

Diversity challenges the sometimes stagnant state of “normal”.

Challenging and changing the way we do things or adding something new to the mix is often resisted, but where would we be without it?

When fear-driven friction is overcome by caring, compassion, and compromise, diversity can help build the most talented teams and the strongest societies.

Unfortunately, compromise seems to be a four-letter word today. Instead of looking for common ground, we stubbornly stand our own. If we’re stubborn enough, the other side will cave. We mistake our stubbornness for strength and classify compromise as weakness. Many missed opportunities are caused by failure to see beyond shadows cast by fear-driven ego and pride.

Since reading the book, I’ve been an immigrant looking to communicate, collaborate and contribute to the country and in the community I call home, no matter where that is.

My first trip to India was awesome. I spent close to a week in Goa. It was supposed to be a full week, but, as so often happened in those days, some kind of emergency cut my break short and I had to leave due to an accident, incident or crisis

Sometime later, I was approached by the father of the kid we had hired. He was still worried about his son.

“I always wanted him to go into the foreign service,” he said. “I thought he would have been good at it. He was a hotel security guard. Now he’s a guide for a holiday company and he tells me he wants to go to hotel school. What am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know”, I said. “I think one day he could be a great General Manager.”

He hasn’t yet become a hotel General Manager, but he did go to hotel school and he has had a very successful career in the hospitality industry including positions that many General Managers only dream of.

He’s also still an immigrant. As for me…

I’m still an immigrant. Today I live in the country where I was born and once emigrated from.

John Irving was right: Once an immigrant, always an immigrant….thank goodness.

I still have my old, well-read copy of the book that opened my eyes to the fact that no matter where in the world I moved, I would be an immigrant.

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Today’s post is from 87 Stories - Lessons from the University of Life!

I like to say that my post-high school gap year in Europe, turned into a 4-decade-long education at the “University of Life” and included a 30-year, basement-to-boardroom career at a company that didn’t want to hire me.

Written with the clarity of hindsight, the accuracy of a faded memory and countless creative liberties, 87 Stories is a journal of how that journey made me an emigrant, an immigrant and a gave me a life I never dreamed of.

Stay safe, Always Care.