There are a number of reasons why people decide to emigrate from their home countries. Economic and political instability, security, limited educational and/or career opportunities, family reasons, and a desire for new experiences, were all listed by our respondents as motivation to move to another country. In many cases, the decision to emigrate was inspired by multiple reasons, such as poor political and economic conditions along with a lack of professional opportunities in the country of origin:

Deux raisons : la raison personnelle, financier, ça veut dire que le salaire d'un médecin en Roumanie était de 300,00 $ environ par mois. La deuxième chose c'était que la profession, ma profession, la radiologie, n'était pas du tout bien, bien organisée, bien dotée comme plateau technique en Roumanie. Donc j'avais fait ma spécialité en France et si je choisissais de retourner en Roumanie, j'utilisais seulement 20 % de mes connaissances.

[Two reasons: The first was personal-- financial-- I mean, a doctor's salary in Romania was about $300 a month. The second was professional: my profession, radiology, was not good at all, not well organized or well equipped as technical support in Romania, and so I did my specialization in France. If I had chosen to go back to Romania, I would have used only 20% of my knowledge.] [Québec IMG #8, practicing]

For many respondents it was hard to separate motivation for migration into specific "push" factors. Usually, it is the combination of different factors that contributed to the decision of our respondents to leave their country:

In my opinion it doesn't matter what sort of dictatorship you have to deal with, bureaucratic or militarism, it doesn't matter. What it brings to the society is hopelessness, instability, unfair access to social opportunities and all of this means a hazy and clouded future for you and your children. So I can say the main reason [for my immigration] is the future of the children. But I'm not going to say this is the only reason. Living under an oppressive system [leads to] a corrupt society... After a while you even don't trust your neighbour. Because a corrupt system wants everybody to corrupt. Even you yourself, even [if] you try your best to stay clean you are not able to do so and you don't know how to protect your child. You have to teach him or her to do some mischiefs, to pretend something that you are not. And it's so sad. [Ontario IMG #1, in progress]

Although in most cases, the decision to migrate was rooted in the combination of factors, in some situations, our respondents identified the political regime of their country as being the major push factor for their decision migrate. This was particularly true for those coming to Canada as refugees or from politically unstable regions:

My family was ambushed. And I was the target. My wife died and one of my daughters was wounded. And we went into hiding and I recovered and then after I recovered from the wounds, uh, and then I went into hiding. For some time stayed that way but by January it seemed that it wasn't working too well. They kept coming. [There were] the signs that they were coming after us so we decided to immigrate out. We left as tourists and we arrived here March 1 and on March 8 I went to immigration and declared for refugee status. My present status is as a refugee claimant together with my three children. But a final hearing will be probably this January and that will determine whether I'm in or not and whether... if they approve my case, uh, I would, if we passed I could apply for permanent residency [British Columbia IMG #15, no longer pursuing integration].

Once the decision to move to another country was reached, or in the case of refugees, once they had sought asylum, our respondents started to check possible avenues for their migration.