HELLO JI!
A WORD (OR TWO HUNDRED) FROM THE EDITOR
Suraj Sharma in a screenshot from the film The Illegal. Courtesy: Amazon Prime.
The Illegal (on Amazon Prime) is the story of a young film student from India who drops out of a prestigious university in the US to support his family as an undocumented worker. In interviews director Danish Renzu has said he’s been an immigrant in the US, and took up multiple jobs to survive as an international student. He was also inspired by the stories of others on the same journey.
The film is set in the US, but it could easily be transposed to an international student in any Canadian city. We’ve all seen multitudes of young international students waiting tables. Some of them pick up “Canadian” ways quickly, rolling their Rs, inserting an eh in sentences. Others struggle. But they are all determined to make it. They have to, in order to gain the coveted PR status to sponsor family members.
Many of them come from families that have sold property or gone into debt to finance their first year in Canada. Their goal is to save enough for tuition and living expenses for the second year on from the part-time jobs they pick up.
After watching The Illegal, I wondered how many have a similar trajectory in Canada. How many have gone underground because they failed to keep up with school work while working long hours to pay for rent and food? Because returning home is not an option – it would label them unsuccessful and shatter the dreams of parents and siblings, too.
I think of the familiar faces at a few restaurants we frequent and wonder how many of them are like Babaji, another character in the movie. I recall the young man we used to see at a restaurant on Gerrard Street. He went from greeting me enthusiastically in Bangla to, over a couple of years, avoiding eye contact.
I asked how he was doing and he would respond with, “Ei je, cholchhe”. Which is a not-so-enthusiastic “Getting along”. His downcast appearance told another story. Soon after that, he was not to be seen at the restaurant.
These thoughts came flooding back when I read a shocking report in the Toronto Star recently.
Ontario is home to seven of the 10 schools flagged by the Canadian government as having the highest rates of noncompliance when it comes to international students.
These are mainly at private colleges, but also include publicly-funded universities where no-shows ranged from 33 per cent to 95 per cent.
There may be a few, but not everyone who disappears is scamming the system. These are desperate people in dire straits. The no-shows show us in a very poor light.
Where do these students go? What happens to them? And who is responsible for bringing them in by the plane loads when many of them lack the basic resources for survival and we fail to provide a safety net when they inevitably fall through the cracks?
Things to reflect on as we mark another South Asian Heritage Month.
Shagorika Easwar