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It took exactly three years and $27,000 but Varun Muriyanat and his lovely family say “the struggles” they endured to make Canada their new home were worth it.

Muriyanat, 36, his wife Neeunu Mary, 31 and their three children — Maria, 8, Saya, 6 and Mathew, 4 — landed in Canada from southern India in the fall of 2018.

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In a little over a year, Muriyanat has found a job as an IT consultant with CIBC, his wife is almost finished her studies to become a paralegal (she attends night school), they have purchased a new Honda and are set to move into their Oshawa home at the end of February.

When I visited their Scarborough apartment before Christmas, Muriyanat said the present-giving would be low-key this year so that they can save for their new home.

“It (emigrating to Canada) was not easy … we had to jump through a lot of hoops,” he said. “There was a lot of waiting and a lot of uncertainty.”

They’ve had to navigate their way here with no help from an army of resettlement experts, no government assistance except an OSAP loan to finance Mary’s studies and no one waiting for them at Pearson Airport with designer winter coats as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, former premier Kathleen Wynne and Mayor John Tory did when the first Syrian refugees landed on Canadian soil in December 2015.