In the last episode of 2025, I’m chatting with Deanna Okun-Nachoff, an immigration lawyer and host of the Borderlines Podcast, about where Canada’s immigration system stands six months into the Carney government.

Any sense of accountability by the government for where we are today with immigration has been largely absent from the raging public debate. The now-infamous “come to study or work, come to stay” messaging was pushed hard at some point.

And it worked. Hundreds of thousands of temporary residents moved to Canada with the intention of earning permanent residency. Now, the government can’t fulfil those promises for some very obvious reasons. Yet, the blame for everything wrong with the process through which these folks came into the country has landed squarely on their shoulders.

The big question I hope this episode helps kickstart is: What kind of nation do we want to build? And are the decisions we make going forward grounded in those values?

Deanna believes that whatever path Canada chooses, it must be fundamentally grounded in being upfront, truthful, direct, fair, and accountable.

Deanna and I also talk about:

• The TikTokification of immigration narratives

• The exhausting policy whiplash of the past 20 months

• Why she thinks public trust has collapsed

• Why she thinks good, fair, humane decision making is expensive

In this episode, I’m speaking with Aashrit Parvangada, a historical nerd based in Berlin, and one of the best folks to chat with about geopolitics, nationalism, and immigration.

I must say this was a sobering conversation, but also an enlightening one for me. Aashrit is not one to hold back on what he thinks about the world and how geopolitics and history shape most of what we’ve seen in recent times.

And for someone who’s lived in Dubai, India, Canada, the United States, Germany, and speaks English, Hindi, Japanese, and German, he has the lived experience to back up his takes.

Aashrit and I talk about:

• Why he thinks the West has always struggled with multiculturalism and diversity

• Why he believes the current anti-Indian hate is actually a lesson for Indians

• The “great divergence” that made the West wealthy, and the “great convergence” happening now

• Why the question of a multicultural future belongs to the West, not immigrants

• What he finds exciting about the world’s trajectory

In this episode, I’m chatting with Rania Younes, who grew up as a third-culture kid in Kuwait, attended the American University in Cairo, and built a career in Dubai before ultimately settling in Canada.

When Rania’s family moved to Canada, she had to stay behind to complete her university studies. However, watching her parents struggle to settle into the country and find their footing meant that when it was time to return, she hesitated.

She came over anyway, years later, because watching her siblings integrate gave her hope that Canada could give her kids something she had never had…a place to call home.

Then she lost her baby brother in 2010.

And processing that loss made Rania realise that she had been mourning an imagined version of herself for the last ten years. A trajectory of a self she should have been. The social circles and friends she had to leave behind to move to Canada.

Rania and I chat about:

• Why children of immigrants grieve belonging while parents grieve status

• How moving from a collectivist to an individualist culture creates friction

• Why understanding matters more than acceptance

• The difference between systemic acceptance and social acceptance

• How civic engagement builds belonging faster than job hunting

In this episode, I’m chatting with Dapo Bankole, a project manager and founder of Mentorfy. His viral TEDx talk, “The Hidden Struggles and Triumphs of Immigrant Professionals in Canada,” is painfully relevant to loads of immigrants looking to settle in Canada.

My primary reason for interviewing Dapo on the podcast was to learn the story behind his TEDx talk.

The version that includes the number of times he choked up in tears during rehearsals. The version where he describes a 19-year dream that started before he’d even applied for immigration. The version where he describes the day his family had to decide between gas and food.

The one where he gets moody, irate, and flares up at the small things.

Dapo and I dig into:

• The moment he realized the struggle of the Canadian immigrant professional is systemic

• The day his Nigerian credit card saved him at a Canadian ATM

• Starting his podcast (The Immigrant Life) to sort out the mess in his own head

• Building Mentorfy to connect immigrant professionals with mentors who get it

• The one thing he’d do differently if he were to start over

In this episode, I’m chatting with Precious Kolawole, who moved from Nigeria to Canada through the Shopify Dev Degree program, and has also seen her TEDx talk “How coding can change your life-and the world” go viral.

There’s a trap that awaits most immigrants. It’s subtle, and it sounds like self-awareness: Maybe they won’t pick me because of my accent. Maybe I don’t belong here. Maybe I should expect less.

Precious knows this too well. She describes sitting before a performance review at Shopify, telling herself to calm down, preparing for disappointment despite knowing she’d worked harder than anyone. When her supervisors told her she’d earned the highest rating, she screamed on the call. They paused, confused. Why this reaction? Because she’d already decided she wouldn’t get it. “It’s very funny how we think,” she says. “We think too much. We’re immigrants.”

But what makes Precious different is how she reorients herself. She traces it back to coding, specifically, to debugging. When you debug code, errors are problems that always have a solution, that’s if you’re willing to keep looking.

And that mindset has carried into how she approaches her immigration journey in Canada.

Precious and I dig into:

• Leaving behind a medical degree, a Microsoft Nigeria offer, and communities she founded

• How her family stays connected across four countries through mandatory Sunday calls

• Why Canada’s talent visa puts power in employers’ hands, and what that costs the country

• The Nobel Prize effect and the danger of letting success make you comfortable

In this episode, I’m speaking with Bryan McInnis, who moved from the United States to Kampala, Uganda with his wife and two daughters.

Every immigrant has felt the tension of the pull towards your people as you settle into the new country. The comfort of shared references, familiar jokes, conversations that don’t require any literal or cultural translation.

Bryan McInnis was no different. But he and his wife left the United States specifically to give their kids a more robust picture of the world. You can’t do that if you only hang out in the expat bubble.

And so 6+ months into life in Kampala, Bryan’s learning about cultural differences that only show up if you dig in.

Bryan and I chat about:

• What it’s like to move the United States to Uganda

• The trip that kicked off everything

• The Ugandan entrepreneurial impulse that defies the “Africa is slow” stereotype

• What it means to raise third-culture children

• Why he thinks his family is more intentional now than ever

In this episode, I’m speaking with Simon Trevarthen, who leads the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council (TRIEC). A big part of their work is helping helping immigrants see their skills through a different lens while helping employers access talent they desperately need.

And so the big question I hoped to answer with this episode is one I have been noodling on for a bit, which is:

"How do we help more immigrants see that their skills are exponential, not linear? And that the work you did in your home country can apply across multiple industries here.”

Simon and I also chat about:

• The hidden job market and how TRIEC helps immigrants access that pool of opportunities

• How informational interviews can help you land a job in Canada

• Why networking is non-negotiable for immigrants

• Why work connects to identity and how that complicates the immigrant experience when you have to take a role beneath your qualifications

In this episode, I’m speaking with Aman Chawla, who moved from India to Fredericton, New Brunswick in 2023.

Canada wasn’t Aman’s first choice when he and his wife started considering immigrating. He wanted Ireland. The time-zone difference wasn’t much. Flights back home lasted about 13 hours.

But the pandemic meant that didn’t happen. They also considered Australia. That didn’t work out too. So Canada it was. His wife moved over first for an MBA.

Aman and their toddler followed along six months after. But this was only possible because a member of parliament stepped in to help with the family reunification.

Aman and I chat about:

• Making Fredericton, New Brunswick home

• Landing a job within weeks through preparation

• What four months of unemployment taught him

• Why he believes immigrants need to stop complaining and start contributing

In this episode, I’m speaking with Yauhan Mehta, a career coach who’s helped 750+ immigrants land jobs they love at global companies.

A major part of his success is an interesting approach he takes to career coaching. He won’t start coaching with resume work. Instead, he begins with a soul-searching session to identify what people want.

Then, if they have the financial means, they can focus on getting their target role. If they don’t have savings, they get something quickly that’s still somewhat related to their profession or has transferable skills.

1 like that. Because more often than not, immigrants take jobs that are not in sync with who they are or their skillset, and then continue doing that for many years.

Yauhan and I also chat about:

• His journey from India to Dubai to Canada

• How he dropped out of engineering and ended up as a career coach

• Why he’s passionate about helping fellow immigrants get their best jobs

• How long it took him to settle somewhat into Canada

In this episode, I’m speaking with Selene Ricart, who moved from Argentina to Canada five years ago.

There’s this unspoken rule about being the good and perfect immigrant. Don’t say too much. Stay in your box. Be grateful. And if you ever step out of line, if you ever start speaking up about stuff you think could be better, someone will curtly remind you to go back and fix your country.

And sadly, it happens to immigrant women more often than not. It happened to Selene on LinkedIn.

But after five years in Canada, here’s Selene’s biggest lesson: belonging does take time, but you can’t wait until you belong to use your voice to advocate for good. And I agree. Your voice matters. And if you’re going to make Canada your home, you need to shape what that home becomes.

There’s this quote Selene loves that captures this sentiment beautifully: first understanding, then adjustment. As immigrants, we’ve already done the first part.

We’ve listened. We’ve observed. We’ve learned how things work here. We’re more empathetic, more adaptable, because we’ve had to be. Now comes the adjustment part. And that requires you speak up and offer perspectives that come from a place of understanding.

That’s the advantage you have as someone who’s lived in multiple cultures.

Selene and I also chat about:

• Language as identity

• Why she always makes pasta from scratch

• Words as emotion, not just communication

• How immigrating forces us to start thinking of things we took for granted, and more

In this episode, I’m speaking to Rim Aoude, marketer, poet, and all-round amazing human.

Rim moved from UAE to Canada as a teenager. And we explore what it means when you’re born without a place to call home. Her granddad left Palestine. Her parents were born in Lebanon as refugees. She was then born in UAE with refugee documents.

And her kids, they were born Canadian. The first in three generations to be born with citizenship. “It was a huge deal in our family,” she says.

She talks about arriving in Canada at 17. Her dad had gotten sick in UAE, and couldn’t pay her school fees. Which meant she couldn’t certify her high school diploma. She went to Concordia, told them her situation. And they said, “You’re Canadian. You have the right to education.” They enrolled her immediately. That’s when she knew, she could do well here.

But being in Canada did something else. It allowed her to become who she actually was. She became more Palestinian in Canada than she ever was in the Gulf, where saying you’re Palestinian wasn’t something you advertised.

Rim and I also chat about:

• The lessons she’s gathered from living across three countries

• Why her kids speak French but she doesn’t

• Moving back to Canada from Qatar and starting over

• How struggle makes you attached to your identity

In this episode, I’m speaking with Kundan Joshi, Founder and CEO of TheAppLabb & AI Labb, a leading app innovation firm that boasts of clients like Unilever, Samsung, Dell, Suncor, Petro Canada, RBC, TIFF, among others.

However, Kundan fell into entrepreneurship by accident. He needed a summer job after first year as his Dad was struggling to find work. He looked for software engineering jobs but couldn’t find any.

But not having a job wasn’t an option as he had to support the family. So Kundan took the best option at the time; sales.

And so, door-to-door energy sales. Selling credit cards at the intersection of Yonge and Dundas. Then a mall kiosk selling high-speed internet. He did so well that the owner told him, “You won’t make this much money in a year after you graduate. Why go back to school?”

But Kundan went back to school. But he also became a franchisee for Rogers, selling high-speed internet at Weston St, London, Ontario.

Kundan and I chat about:

• How failures expose your blind spots

• Why approaching every person you meet without judgement is freeing

• His entrepreneurial journey

• Why every crisis is also an opportunity

In this episode, I’m speaking with Jennifer Aikoroje, host of the Inside Your Finance podcast.

Jennifer and I explore what happens when you’re too young to grasp the full weight of immigration, when you don’t have the words to explain the churning feelings inside you. But then you grow up. You become an immigrant yourself. And suddenly, your parents’ impossible choices start to make sense.

She talks about that moment when her dad left her in Canada and returned to Nigeria for two more years. As a teenager, she felt like he had abandoned her. Now she gets it. Especially after making sure she secured a job before she moved to the United Kingdom.

But we don’t only talk about heavy stuff.

Jennifer and I also chat about:

• Taking professional risks when you don’t feel ready

• Why showing up beats being perfect

• Immigrating to the UK as an adult and the lessons she learned

In this episode, I’m speaking with Imole Ashogbon, a fractional HR consultant who helps small and mid-sized businesses, executives, and HR teams when they need senior-level HR leadership, without the cost of a full-time executive.

Imole and I explore a nagging question I have about Canada’s much-talked about productivity decline: Are we declining in productivity because we lack talent OR because our broken systems aren’t able to take advantage of all the talent we have seating around in Canada?

Imole thinks we’ve created a strange contradiction. We bring in immigrants through Express Entry (a competitive immigration pathway meant to attract young, educated, upwardly mobile individuals.) Then we act like we’re doing them a favor. Like immigration is charity work. It’s not.

45% of recent immigrants have university degrees but work in jobs that don’t require post-secondary education. Which is an absurd waste of talent in my opinion.

Imole and I chat about:

• Why businesses need to culturally integrate just as much as immigrants

• Why immigration is investment, not aid

• How to build systems that actually deploy immigrant talent

• The misalignment between immigration policy, employment strategy, and economic growth targets

In this episode, I’m speaking with Jerry Onyegide, who built a tax business by accident, just from answering questions about Canadian taxes on Twitter for years.

Jerry never intended to formalize his knowledge. He’d see misinformation about Canadian taxes, correct it with detailed explanations, and move on with his day. People stopped arguing and started asking more questions. Eventually someone told him, “You need to formalize this. We don’t have anyone in the community who explains taxes this way.”

And that’s how he launched Tax Whiz. Still, he was surprised by the number of people who booked consultations.

Jerry and I discuss common tax mistakes immigrants make. We also explore:

• How his service differs from traditional tax consultants

• The confusing Canadian tax system

• Why your tax planning needs to start in January instead of May

In this episode, I’m speaking with Roy Ratnavel, a retired financial services executive and the author of the #1 Canadian national bestselling book Prisoner #1056.

Roy’s philosophy for life seems simple but I think it’s a hard one for most of us to adopt: fix yourself before you fix the world. If you’re a good husband, you raise good kids. Good households create good communities. Strong communities build strong societies. Strong societies make stronger countries.

And I think Canada needs a lot of this at the moment. Everything is ground up, not top down. The government can’t control what goes on in your head or within the four walls of your home. No regulation can stop that. So it comes down to individuals—not as a selfish notion, but as a recognition that you need to fix your flaws before pointing out others’ shortcomings.

Roy spent a decade after arriving in Canada blaming everyone else for his struggles. At 31, he realized he was the problem. He went to war with the man in the mirror, sought therapy for PTSD, and completely changed his approach to life.

Roy and I chat about my biggest lessons from reading his book. We also explore:

• Why the 2010 Winter Olympics was the most Canadian he’d ever felt

• How Canada can unite people across differences

• Why we need to lower the barrier but not the bar

• Moral exhibitionism vs. real solutions

• Lying to yourself versus being honest about mistakes

In this episode, I’m speaking with Nisrine Maktabi, a trauma-informed coach and registered psychotherapist with over a decade of experience supporting newcomers, international students, and multicultural professionals in Canada and globally.

Nisrine usually works with newcomers and second-generation immigrants, helping them work through something most immigrants don’t recognize as trauma: people-pleasing.

Surprised? I was too. She says people-pleasing isn’t about being nice or accommodating. It’s a survival response called “fawning”—your nervous system’s way of keeping you safe by making others happy. For children of immigrants especially, people-pleasing becomes how they survive in families where belonging feels conditional.

Conditional on you operating within the rigid rules about behavior, identity, and cultural adherence.

Nisrine and I chat about why your nervous system adapts to keep you safe. We also explore:

• The coconut effect and why strict parenting backfires

• Canada’s systemic barriers for highly educated newcomers

• Why discrimination triggers old wounds, and how to process them

• How to connect your children to their roots without imprisoning them

In this episode, I’m speaking with Kristina McPherson, who moved from Jamaica to Canada in 2014, and now runs As Told By Canadian Immigrants, where she’s the guide she wishes she had before she moved to Canada.

There’s a lot to unpack in this episode, but the part I can’t stop thinking about is when Kristina talks about “post-immigration stress disorder,” a term she coined to describe what many immigrants go through as they try to settle into their new home. I believe it’s also called Ulysses Syndrome.

There’s the constant anxiety. There’s the uncertainty that has you feeling unsettled. There’s the mental load of running two parallel tracks—getting through today while worrying if you’ll even be here tomorrow.

For Kristina, it was LMIA complications. Provincial nominee programs that wouldn’t work in time. Express Entry launching with 800-point cutoffs. Submitting her PR application two months before her work permit expired, then living on implied status for months.

During that time, Christina lived with two pots, two plates, two glasses. Everything she owned fit in a suitcase. Because if immigration forced her to leave, she wanted it to be easy.

Kristina and I chat about the emotional toll of living in limbo for years. We also explore:

• Living two and a half years out of a suitcase

• Why she started “As Told by Canadian Immigrants”

• Why we need to put boundaries around how one consumes immigration information on social media

• Being ‘in-betweeners’ caught between cultures

In this episode, I'm speaking with Paul Bakhmut, who moved from Ukraine to Edmonton, Canada 15 years ago as an international student and is now running for mayor.

Paul is big on first impressions. And he still remembers his first impression of Edmonton: no bus from the airport to the city. You had to drive or find a cab. Even now, the bus only goes to the train station, not downtown.

His vision for Edmonton in two years if he wins? A city that looks and feels alive, not one littered with "for lease" signs. A place that feels safe, not just in police statistics but in actual lived experience.

But Paul is practical in how he expects to achieve all these goals. He accepts that Edmonton needs to get more competitive with business taxes and become an open, smart, and fun city that attracts businesses and sets a cultural tone that values what newcomers bring.

In this conversation, Paul and I chat about how his view of Canada has changed over the past 15 years. We also explore:

• Why Alberta’s immigration boom creates challenges and opportunities

• Why the city’s own hiring practices matter for the broader market

• Why he still believes in the promise of Canada after 15 years

• The importance of judging newcomers on merit, not credentials

• The city’s role in setting the cultural tone on hiring newcomers

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In this episode, I’m speaking with Keely Cronin, Co-Founder of WorkSpark, where they support professionals who have migrated to Canada as well as anyone looking to make a mid-career transition.

One conversation she has over and over again with the folks she coaches is the gap, or more like valley between your qualifications, experience, skillset, and the infamous first survival job most newcomers have to start with in Canada.

Keely’s point of view is even if you’re a deep-sea engineer working at Tim Hortons, you should see that time as valuable Canadian experience. And as roles that immerse you in everyday Canadian culture.

Which means you should put them on your resume and frame them as work experience that shows you have soft skills to fit into your potential new job like a glove.

In this conversation, Keely and I chat about the soft skills you develop in such jobs. We also explore:

* Why she thinks Canada’s immigration narrative doesn’t match reality

* Culture and self-promotion

* Why moving countries makes you a baby again (but with baggage)

* Why it’s a good idea to experience Canada before job hunting ( but them bills don’t wait though)

Dozie’s Notes

A few things that stuck with me as I listened through this week’s conversation:

* During the immigration process, the focus is usually on what the immigrant brings to Canada. However, once we land, the narrative seems to shift to all Canada is giving you. This weird shift seems to be creating an environment where the public doesn’t recognize the talent or contributions of immigrants to the economy and the country.

* Structural barriers need policy solutions, not resilient individuals. We should celebrate resilience. But…individual resilience and networking can only go so far. Issues like inconsistent credential recognition across provinces and unclear processes need government fixes.

* Moving to a new country literally resets you to ground zero. You are like a baby experiencing the world again. Except this time around you carry the burden of your previous life’s experiences and expectations. Accept this reality. That’s the first step towards turning this mental burden into a strength.

Official Links

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