From Kelli Korducki's "Immigrant with an Asterisk: an American on the Trials of Becoming Canadian"

'Being an immigrant with an asterisk is kind of like having a life-threatening allergy to a food you can’t normally afford—you can usually avoid it just fine, but you know that one day someone will slip some truffle oil into your salad. My first student visa was issued with a typo that switched the last two digits of my birth year, making me 36 instead of 18—great for waltzing into bars underage (“I know, I know, I look like I’m 12!”) but a near deal-breaker for my re-entry into Canada following that first Christmas break. Third year of university, I lost a market research job thanks to HR confusion over my off-campus work permit. These logistical hiccups were rare, but when they happened, they hit like hard taunts. “You are a guest here,” they seemed to say in a bitchy, bullying lilt, “and your time here is borrowed.” I had wrongly believed that my Toronto life was fully mine'

'The word “immigrant,” implies outsider-ness. And the images it often conjures here in Canada don’t apply to me, a speaker of fluent Upper Canadian born and bred within the same Great Lakes region as my adopted Toronto home. But like everyone else looking to make a forever home in Canada, I too have put in my time at the smelly Citizenship and Immigration Canada-approved hubs that exist primarily to determine the physical eligibility of Canadian hopefuls. In my vintage eyeglasses and battered Mountain Equipment Co-op backpack, I am acutely aware of how different I appear from the neatly-attired families who chat amongst themselves in languages I can’t understand. But I, too, could be turned away on the basis of my physical examinations.'

'Between 2006 and 2011, immigration outstripped new births in Canada by over 65 per cent. Still, most of the Canadians I know have no clue about what their journeys entailed'

'The barrage of government questioning known as the “Generic Application Form for Canada” necessitates a closer reading than perhaps every literary theory assignment I received during my university career.'

http://hazlitt.net/feature/immigrant-asterisk