WHERE’S ALL THIS HATE COMING FROM?

By DR VICKI BISMILLA

I recently saw a report from CBC Windsor titled South Asian newcomers to Canada say online hate is taking a toll. The journalist Josiah Sinanan highlights how South Asian university and college students were feeling targeted by online hate aimed at South Asians from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

Those interviewed for the article are bright, intelligent, well-spoken, Indian post-secondary students who are dismayed by the vulgar language and malicious vitriol being hurled at them online.

They find local support from organizations in Windsor such as a program run by the South Asian Centre of Windsor called the Windsor-Essex Anti-Hate Youth Collective that provides space for them and other racialized communities to share experiences and support one another.

Older folk perhaps know to stay away from social media spaces filled with hate, but for young people, social media sites are their everyday mental bread and butter.

And for them to see these ugly tropes by hate-filled people hurling monstrous insults can be soul-destroying. They have left parents and loved ones back home who spent a lot of money to send them here and they arrived with great hope to put their intelligence to good use at respected post-secondary institutions only to be shocked by a wall of online hate.

At the University of Toronto there are ethno-specific registered student organizations that help South Asian students tackle hate directed at them. Examples of these organizations are the Bangladeshi Student Association, Indian Student Society, Pakistani Student Association, Afghan Student Association, Sri Lankan Student Association and some are even created based on specific South Asian languages spoken.

But why is this hate happening? Many of us who have been here 50 years and more remember being welcomed by this beautiful, friendly country Canada and praised for our intelligence, our incredible work ethic, our drive to do well and our much-respected professional contributions to this country.

We came as highly respected businesspeople, engineers, doctors, economists, educators, from a spectrum of highly coveted, highly needed professions and we gave our all to this welcoming country.

I remember my South African Indian accent being praised by superintendents who were offering me teaching jobs at recruitment interviews in 1972! Imagine that! Accent, really!

So, what happened? What turned this beautiful, welcoming country into this thorny place with dark shadowed areas where hate-filled people lurk and hurl vitriol at innocent students and struggling immigrants?

There have been many articles trying to explain why ‘embrace’ turned into ‘repel.’ For example, from an article in Desi News in August 2024 titled O Canada:

“Canada’s economic immigration strategy needs to shift away from plugging ‘holes’ in lower-skilled labour markets to prioritizing highly skilled newcomers based on their expected earnings to boost our country’s economic growth, according to a new C.D. Howe Institute report.”

The researchers are recommending that Canada should stop using the disreputable tactic of luring low-skilled people to fill their labour shortages in low-paying, low-skilled jobs with no future and no meaningful contribution to Canada’s long-term GDP.

It’s an exploitation, like indenture, that steals hope from hungry new immigrants and gives them no future here. Their presence here in ethnicities and skin colours not matching longer-term residents (ironically all immigrant-descendants themselves), threatens working class established people. These longer-term residents might see large numbers of workers at bus stops, for instance, rushing to work, dedicated to trying to put food on their tables and may mistake them for “those immigrants that are here stealing jobs”.

They are not. They are doing jobs not many want – like picking fruits and vegetables, producing products in badly-lit, crowded factories at minimum wage or less; cleaning homes; sanitizing hospitals; cleaning restaurants; picking up garbage from streets and parks; babysitting children; cutting hair; pedicuring and cleaning feet and nails; struggling to breathe in sweat shops to sew clothes.

Those are the people who are brought here by the government to serve us. They are the people that the un-mannered among us hurl hate, threats and insults at on social media.  So, we want the service jobs done for us, we don’t want to do those jobs, but some of us also don’t want to look at or tolerate the people we bring in to do those jobs!

The Council on Foreign Relations (cfr.org) in their backgrounder titled What is Canada’s Immigration Policy? (March 28, 2024) highlighted a breakdown they did in 2022 of where immigrants are coming from and lists India as the highest generator of immigrants at 118 K, followed by China at 31K with Afghanistan, Philippines and Nigeria in the 20Ks.

And so the students at universities and colleges are seeing the vicious vitriol by the more hate-filled, possibly disenfranchised social media users. Meanwhile, the targets of these social media insults continue to work hard and struggle on meagre wages.

A very recent June 2024 Simon Fraser University Study states:

“Our findings suggest that economic concerns often cited in the immigration debate are just the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface, Canadians’ opinions on immigration are deeply influenced by aspects like religion, ethnicity, personal and familial immigration history and political leanings.”

While Immigration minister Marc Miller says on X that he is tired of everyone blaming immigrants for absolutely everything, other Canadian parties, party leaders and politicians deliberately fan the flames of ignorant hate against immigrants.

CIC News states that Canada’s immigration levels will remain unchanged from its current targets. In 2024, the country will target the admission of 485,000 new immigrants. In 2025 and 2026, Canada will look to welcome 500,000 new immigrants each year. But the government also plans to take action over the next year to recalibrate the number of temporary resident admissions to ensure this aspect of our immigration system also remains sustainable.” But does this political strategy acknowledge that racism and discrimination exist?

Some studies like that in the journal Political Psychology (Volume 38, No.2 April 2017) have found that “Those who feel in control (personally or as a society) are less hostile towards immigrants, while those who attribute negative outcomes to immigrants’ predispositions are also more hostile,” positing that negative feelings toward immigrants are expressed by Canadians who are disenfranchised and feel that immigrants are taking away their jobs.

The government of Canada website, in a July 2021 essay, touts Canada as a “settlement country,” where settlement is an integral part of nation building and immigration is an intrinsic component of the national heritage and lauds Canada as a successful immigrant nation and a “benchmark for other countries”.

However, the authors raise concerns that there are “two Canadas,” one characterized by substandard labour, lacking social protections, leading to racism and discrimination toward migrant workers, low-skilled immigrant workers and temporary workers. Non-profit organizations and parliamentary committees are raising alarms about issues of “abuse and exploitation” in temporary migration programs, including in specific segments of the International Mobility Program. The essay concludes that racism and discrimination are realities experienced in Canada by racialized communities. The fact that this essay sits on the government website means that the government knows that their policies are rooted in practices that result in racism toward racialized people.

Abuse and corruption are rife in Canada’s temporary worker system exacerbated by insufficient government oversight. Workers are granted temporary work permits and desperately hope that their abuse-filled pathways would someday lead to the magical resident visa.

Canada’s new strategy, titled An Immigration System for Canada’s Future, has three major goals:

• Create a more welcoming experience for newcomers

• Align immigration with labour market needs

• Develop a comprehensive and coordinated growth plan

How the government intends to meet these goals remains unknown. Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) continues to maintain high immigration targets because of a shortage of skilled labour in the face of a low birth rate and the impending retirement of millions of Canadian workers as they reach 65. As it stands, Statistics Canada’s most recent population estimate shows that newcomers are responsible for 98 per cent of Canada’s population growth.

It remains to be seen what Canada plans to do to foster newcomers’ growth.