Xiomara Rubio retires as PRAIDA’s longest-serving current employee
Xiomara Rubio arrived in Canada with a single suitcase and $200 in her pocket. Like many asylum seekers, she was afraid and uncertain about her future—still unaware of the remarkable voyage that awaited her in her new land.
To make ends meet, Ms. Rubio took whatever jobs she could. She delivered newspapers at 3:00 a.m., did housekeeping in hotels and worked in a furniture factory, often arriving home exhausted.
Despite the hardships, she never gave up hope. She went back to school to become a Social Work Technician—a path that led her to her professional home at the Regional Program for the Settlement and Integration of Asylum Seekers (PRAIDA), part of CIUSSS West-Central Montreal.
In December, Ms. Rubio, the onetime refugee from El Salvador who arrived in Canada with next to nothing, retired from PRAIDA as its longest serving current employee. Through nearly 30 years as a Social Work Technician, Ms. Rubio helped thousands of asylum seekers who followed in her footsteps as they worked to rebuild their lives.
She not only offered practical guidance about how to find their footing in their adoptive country. She also embodied their dreams by demonstrating that newcomers can build a future in Canada.
“I understood the shock they felt, and I gave them hope that one day, they could do what they wanted. Because I also started at zero.”
Xiomara Rubio
Ms. Rubio was fêted at her retirement in December by colleagues and managers at PRAIDA, who praised her dedication, self-effacing manner and readiness to help co-workers. Marie-Eve Boulanger, Coordinator of PRAIDA, says Ms. Rubio represents the determination of newcomers whose stories of perseverance are too often overlooked in the news headlines.
“It’s important to recognize how asylum seekers contribute to Quebec society,” Ms. Boulanger says. “Xiomara shows that immigration is an investment in our society. She’s a success story.”
Others are doing the same, every day, in the ranks of our CIUSSS. Some return to PRAIDA as employees or volunteers. But they’re also orderlies (PABs), auxiliary nurses and many other healthcare workers who are creating better lives for themselves and their families while contributing to the care of our CIUSSS’s users.
“We don’t always know the story of our colleagues who work by our side,” Ms. Boulanger says. “They don’t wear a sticker announcing that they’re asylum seekers, but they are among us and they’re contributing.”
Ms. Rubio says she is sad to be retiring from a job she loved and to which she devoted herself “with all my heart.” She describes PRAIDA as a ship: it faced massive waves of asylum seekers over the years but always stayed the course, dedicating itself to helping integrate and settle newcomers by channelling the team’s solidarity and enthusiasm.
It’s the baggage of those newcomers —their journeys filled with stories of courage and resilience—that motivated her through the years, she says. “I was always inspired by their rich personal histories and the strengths that mobilized them,” she says. She can count herself as one of them.
*PRAIDA (formerly known as SARIMM) has welcomed and integrated asylum seekers to Quebec since 1956. Overseen by the Frontline Integrated Services Directorate of CIUSSS West-Central Montreal, its mandate is to meet the needs and improve the well-being of asylum seekers.