Being an immigrant myself, I know that isn't easy.
I also have friends and family living all over the world (Including Switzerland) and I think that the biggest factors that determines if you are accepted or not are:
- How well do you speak the language.
- What's your contribution as an immigrant.
Sadly, if you are not a high skilled worker and your accent/vocabulary is weird/lame, no one will take you seriously and your ability to network goes straight to zero. It doesn't matter much if you are wearing
Hermessa or not.
In my experience, the first questions I am asked are:
what's my job? what's my husband's job? what did we study? how long are we staying here (aka, can we AFFORD to pay for the Visa? are our contributions that high that the government will allow us to stay?)
Once people know that you are a smart proffesional and not a suspicious immigrant that is living there only because there's some loophole that allowed you to stay (as Anna
), the conversation goes well and you can just fit in.
Anna will never have that experience herself. Kind of the opposite, imagine when people finds that her "business" is selling her scammy course and that her husband is just Avarage Joe himself. On the top of that, she doesn't speak French, she doesn't speak German, Jesus, even her English is terrible.
She doesn't know the BASICS of Switzerland's culture and does cringy stuff as taking
influenzzar pictures at historical buildings.
She just probably found out that taking pictures in the front porch of someone else's house in Geneve ends up with people calling security
and I pray Londoners start taking the same measures soon, as it's just incredibly disrespectful. So she went full cringy mode to take pictures at historical buildings and hotels because that's what she has left, as she is never invited to anywhere.
Anna, just quit. Admit you made a mistake and go back to a country where you feel safe.