I read with considerable amusement the letters streaming into malaysiakini either promoting or bashing emigration. To me, moving to a new country is never in itself a profitable or unprofitable venture - it really depends who you are and what values you hold.

Emigration is a complex decision and arguments made from generalisations are not helpful, because each individual's situation is different.

I am an ex-Malaysian living in Toronto (currently back in Malaysia for a vacation). In my free time, I do volunteer work helping new immigrants transit into their new life. In the course of my activities, I've heard my share of immigrant culture-shock stories.

Instead of enumerating the various pros and cons of moving to a new country, let me describe two real-life scenarios that I believe succinctly capture the salient points of the viability of emigration from the vantage point of the individual.

Scenario 1

Mr A lives in Brampton, Ontario (Canada), a predominantly white suburb near Toronto. Originally from Kuala Lumpur, he received a thoroughly English education at Victoria Institution, KL, before moving to Canada to read engineering. He spent six years in university, finally finishing with a Masters degree. His university experience was a very positive one.

English is his first language and he speaks it correctly and effortlessly. He cannot read Chinese, but he speaks Cantonese with the fluency of a TVB actor because his mother was (when she was alive) a proud Cantonese and had always insisted on speaking to him in cultured Cantonese.

This turns out to be useful for him because an amazing number of people he meets every day are originally from Hong Kong.

At age 27, he decided to apply for permanent residency in Canada. He became a citizen three years later. He is a devout Christian and goes to a lively multicultural congregation near his home, where he has many close friends (not mere acquaintances), many of whom had supported him through thick and thin.

Later he married a Canadian girl and they had two children. Both children attended a world- renowned university in Montreal, for which they did not have to fork out extraordinary amounts of money. He is pleased that one of his children is going to Harvard University for graduate work this fall.

His children, though Western in upbringing and outlook, have conservative values by virtue of their Christian faith, and he is very close to them. He has always held that children need not be overly liberal just because they have adopted Western culture, and that Asian culture isn't always conservative either.

He now works as the director of marketing for a steel company in the bustling metropolis of Toronto. He gets along very well with his co-workers and staff (well, at least with those who are not into office politics).

He considers some of them among his best friends/intellectual peers and he knows the feeling is reciprocated. He has no problem getting Malaysian food and supplies (like Baba's curry powder or his favorite Maggi Mee Tom-yam) from a local Chinese mall in Scarborough.

He can get his char kway teow fix for a reasonable price at any of the Malaysian restaurants in Toronto. He enjoys a close relationship with his neighbours, and in the summer they get together and fire up their BBQ grills. He has no problem with Canadian winters; in fact he prefers freezing weather part of the year to hot weather all year round.

He comes home to Malaysia once a year to meet his relatives and every year he asks himself if he made a mistake in leaving the country. For the past 20 years, the answer has been no.

Scenario 2

Mr B lives in Ottawa, Ontario (Canada), that somewhat lifeless capital of the nation. Originally from Muar, Johor, he graduated at the top of his class at the local Chinese independent school. He went on to read engineering at a university in Canada.

His native tongue is Mandarin Chinese. His English is passable in that he is able to make himself understood, but he knows he can only communicate his most intimate thoughts in Mandarin. Therefore he frequently gravitates toward Chinese-speaking cliques.

The problem is, many of these Chinese-speaking cliques comprise mainland/Taiwanese Chinese whose cultures are somewhat different from his despite the shared language. But he doesn't seem to fit in with the Caucasians or his English-educated compatriots either, so he is forced to be content with his mainland/Taiwanese Chinese clique.

He completed his two degrees in six years, graduating close to the top of his class. He came home to Malaysia to look for a job. He worked as an engineer in Kuala Lumpur for many years and met his wife here.

Ten years later, disillusioned by poor job prospects and the marginalisation of his ilk in Malaysia, he decides to move to Canada for good. So at the relatively advanced age of 38, after applying for and receiving a job offer from a firm in Ottawa, he packs up his bags.

The first two years of his life in Canada wasn't too bad. Granted, he didn't like the cold weather very much, but he figured it was a small price to pay for the benefits he was getting, e.g. free healthcare, cheap education for his children (should he have any), one of the highest qualities of life in the world etc.

However, in the third year, he began to feel a great sense of loneliness. He started hating the weather and the high tax rates. He had few friends, only a handful of immigrants like himself.

He is an atheist and doesn't believe in going to any houses of worship to meet people, and he doesn't feel comfortable participating in any kind of community event because he doesn't feel comfortable interacting with unfamiliar people and in English to boot.

Therefore he has no network of friends there. He begins to get more and more disillusioned, and frequently thinks about going back to Malaysia. Fortunately, he had not given up his Malaysian citizenship, so in the fourth year, he resigned from his job and moved back to Malaysia, this time to Kuala Lumpur.

He now spends much of his time running his own business, and since he has no children, he doesn't have to worry about setting up any kind of education fund. He is perhaps not as materially comfortable as he was in Canada, but he is a lot happier now in KL.

Moral? Not everyone should emigrate. Not everyone should stay either. Not all countries are the same. Not even all parts of the same country are the same.

Emigration is in itself neither good or bad. It depends on the individual.