Hi, it’s Dozie!

Welcome to today’s From the Editor.

In 2014, after one year working as a lawyer in Luxembourg, Catherine Diallo applied for the Québec Selection Certificate from outside Canada. She told most of her colleagues she was taking a gap year.

A year later she landed in Montreal. Today, Catherine runs a jurilinguist translation business specializing in regulatory, compliance-sensitive, and cross-border documentation (English, French, German) stitched together from what training and work experience still let her do.

To get there, she had walked away from a German bar admission, two master's degrees, and a career in Luxembourg’s cross-border finance industry.

Most stories about Europeans who leave for Canada are about a better salary, a stalled career, or a relationship already here. Catherine left because the career was working but she didn't want where it was taking her.

Catherine grew up in Germany and studied to become a lawyer there. After passing the German bar, she moved to Luxembourg. Structure, she says, was something she needed to feel safe, and the Grand Duchy gave her oodles of it. She worked in cross-border corporate finance at one of the firms at the center of Luxembourg's finance industry and spent her days juggling languages, jurisdictions, and doing the sort of work that rewarded accuracy over everything else.

Read Catherine Diallo’s full profile ⬇️

Ottawa doubles Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) fines. Employment and Social Development Canada issued more than $10.2 million in penalties for the 2025–2026 fiscal year, up from $4.8 million the year before, while banning 30 employers from the program. — Read full article

IRCC invites 5,000 French-speaking candidates in Express Entry draw. The July 9 French-language proficiency draw set a 420 CRS minimum as Ottawa leans on Express Entry to hit rising francophone immigration targets outside Quebec. — Read full article

Canada’s TFWP arrivals fall by 41%. New arrivals rebounded this spring but remained well below their 2024 peak after Ottawa tightened hiring rules. The federal figures exclude permit extensions and certain short-term workers. — Read full article

In this episode, the last of our four-part series with Immigrant Services Society of BC (ISSofBC), I'm speaking with Hamoudi Saleh Baratta, who filmed the first footage of the Syrian revolution, was imprisoned and tortured for it, and now tells that story on his own terms.

And by doing so, Hamoudi has been able to turn the horrible things done to him into something he owns.

Hamoudi and I chat about healing himself through the telling of his story and:

Listen to the full episode here ⬇️

I have strong opinions about debt, especially considering how it’s almost a mandatory part of life in the West. But this episode by Paul Adeyeye with Reza Rahman had me rethinking some of my positions. Give it a listen when you can.

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Want more immigrant interviews? Listen to The Newcomers Podcast.

Looking to find out what Canadian immigration program you’re eligible for? Check out our Who’s Eligible For series.

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