Her name is not “Another International Indian Student.”

Let's change the way we look at international students in Canada.

If you believe in the importance of free speech, subscribe to support uncensored, fearless writing—the more people who pay, the more time I can devote to this. Free speech matters. I am a university professor suspended because of a free speech issue, so I am not speaking from the bleachers. The button below takes you to that story if you like.

Please subscribe and get at least three pieces /essays per week with open comments. It’s $5 per month and less than $USD 4. I know everyone says hey, it’s just a cup of coffee (with me, not per day but just one per month), but if you’re like me, you go, “Hey, I only want so many cups of coffee!” I get it. I don’t subscribe to many here because I can’t afford it.

But I only ask that when you choose your coffee, please choose mine. Cheers.

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On the first day of class, I introduce myself to my university students, giving them my five-minute life story, chatting about the course and hoping to leave them feeling more relaxed as I gently push them into their self-introductions, the ones I make them do as soon as I shut up. 

Probably 95% of my students are Indian, the odd Sri Lankan, a few from Pakistan, and a handful from Nepal.  When they introduce themselves, they rise awkwardly.  They move methodically through their answers to my questions in the same staccato rhythm:  

“My name is Gurpreet Kaur. I graduated with a degree in economics, and I come from Chandigarh.” 

They rise respectfully, saying “Indian” is too broad a category; they are Punjabi, from Delhi, from Goa, Kerala, Gujarat; they share a respect for their teacher; they cannot bring themselves to call me by my first name.  

My students are just some of the many international students who come to Canada in droves; some say they will return after their education, while most intend to stay.  

They are referred to generically as international students—as if they were some homogenous tribe that roamed the streets in packs—but I know them as Jaspreet, Varun, Priyanka and other names. I see them up close. I sometimes see them panic when I ask a question. Their eyes grow wide, and they blink in fear. 

I know language is an issue. Being ready for questions in a foreign language is like constantly keeping your muscles tight and taut. Sometimes, they drift, and they are left embarrassed and perplexed. I move on quickly. 

I do not like how they are often spoken of or portrayed in the media; ‘those students,’ ‘there are too many,’ and ‘not enough housing;’  it is as if they are accused of sneaking up and taking food off our plates.  They are young; in September, you can find many who, three weeks previously, lived in a Punjabi village. But they crossed half the world to enter Canada and arrived at terminal three, Pearson Airport. Thankfully, family is there to meet some of them, but many arrive alone, and they travel to an overpriced basement apartment in Brampton and begin their new lives. 

We treat many as unwanted interlopers and make cheap, uninformed assumptions about them.  Rich kids? Hardly; many take the bus one to two hours to my classes and show me their resumes. “Do I know of a job?” they ask. 

Their families back home often take out loans, sell land, and are manipulated by unscrupulous recruiters.  Parents and grandparents come together to pay their children’s tuition, and these international fees are two, three, or four times domestic tuition rates. But students still get calls from their cousins back home asking them to send iPhones - as if they could be picked off a tree on the way to school. Many students come from conservative families; they never worked a part-time job, they may have just squeaked through their language proficiency tests, IELTS, and now they sit in the middle row, a notebook open, the pages blank or with just a few words. 

Some people in Canada suggest we should bring in international students but not offer them the right to work. When I asked my students—perhaps my university doesn’t bring in the well-off—how many would come to Canada if they could not work a PT job, two hands went up, and the other thirty stayed down. 

But the job market in Brampton is saturated, and the strain increases as the weeks go by. Sir, do you know of a job? I wish I did, but I live far away.  

One night, the ambulance pulled up as I taught. A girl in the next room had worked through the night in a cash job at a factory and had collapsed from exhaustion. Students struggle; of course, they are not all the same. There are always strong students, but most are used to an education that focuses on rote memorization. Many have never given a presentation before; they copy things off the internet and read them so fast I can scarcely make out their words.  

They talk too much to each other in class, but they manage never to be rude. If I catch them, they smile, “Sorry, sir.” They straighten their backs and open their notebooks. 

In Punjabi, I learned to say ‘be quiet’: “Chup Kar Jao.” It might be closer to ‘shut up’; we laugh together; they are my students. They swing their heads side to side even when they say yes. 

They are not my customers, though we often look at them with all the sympathy we give an ATM. If they were rich, they would not all pack lunches, and everyone would not wear winter coats from Giant Tiger. But at the class break, when I get to satiate my caffeine addiction, I always invite a few along. When they joined me, they insisted on paying for my coffee. I say no, but they argue with me over the coffee bill.

They live in permanent financial stress, much more than my domestic students; I am sometimes embarrassed when we have a mandatory textbook. I know the recruiters back home paint a rosier picture; they don’t mention $150 books, and student budgets are so tight that sometimes textbook purchases come out of their food budget.  

To my sorrow, I sometimes make assumptions about them and am wrong, but I am learning. We assume they are digital natives and that everything online is second nature, but they are used to pen-and-paper education, many at least, and they struggle. Many come, and I wonder how they got past their language tests. They are put in an asynchronous class, and some instructors post nothing more than PowerPoint; it is not teaching but self-directed learning.  

We tend to take their parent's money, often earned through sweat in a muggy field,  and then insult them for coming; it is not fair or right.  

Sadly, students walk into a predacious Canadian society where consultants often cheat them. How many times have I heard tearful stories of one of their own scamming them? One girl told me she was working at an upscale Indian restaurant, but she thought it was odd that the owner had not asked for her address or banking information. He never had any intention of paying her. He ran his business this way. 

My student said that young Indian girls were crying in the back room; they had not been paid. I called the labour board, but the students were too afraid. The owner continued cheating his labour or offering fake $25,000 LMIA immigration contracts that exaggerated work roles, made it so the applicant could only work there, and left students vulnerable and worried, always chasing the dream of permanent residency.  

One of my students worked as an immigration consultant, was paid a pittance and had to pay both the employer's and employee’s CPP contributions; she was poor and vulnerable; she could not change the world, and she knew they could do more harm to her than her to them. 

Another today works, sadly, for a person of her background (but a Canadian citizen) who “pays” her but asks for the money back after under the table.  Student immigrants are so desperate for PR status that they are easy marks for predatory Canadians who take advantage of their vulnerability.  

My Indian teaching assistant marks papers for me on the side; she does a good job, and every penny I give her is sent to her mother back in Delhi.  She conveys her mother’s greetings to me. 

I ask questions in class, and hands tend to stay down; only a soft comment or a gentle jibe will get them to answer. They are afraid, they think about finding a job. If you run a quiz in class, you can’t stop the muttering and the exchange, even though the grades are never high. 

Education must involve both parties, the teacher and the student. While the student may have little intrinsic drive to learn, their teachers sometimes just want to run through the bare mechanics of academic delivery, while the student just wants a grade. 

The great cavern between the two should hold learning but is often barren.  

I care about my students. They have flaws: They use the passive voice too much, they don’t always listen in class, their stories regarding medical or family excuses are sometimes a little stretched, and they don’t always read the announcements. 

But I look at my ancestors. My grandma arrived in 1904. They were a strange Irish family with curious habits; they believed in fairies and dressed oddly.  

That student who today stands before me, her eyes well up with tears as she misses her home, as she says she is so desperate to find a job. Do I know of one? She is not a rich kid; her father is a farmer. I have seen pictures of a proud, substantial Sikh farmer beside his wife and daughter.  

One student, Gurpreet, has two children at home in Kerala, and her husband is still there. The kids are two and five. Gurpreet is working with an immigration consultant to bring them here. Her children, Prab and little Sam, are tiny things with eyes like their mother's. They don’t understand why their mother is so far away; their mum says they cry at night.  

I remember when my kids, Vanya, 12, and Sophia, 7, went to Russia for the summer to be with their Russian relatives; I missed them. When they flew away, it hurt, and people wondered why that man was weeping as he stood by the Starbucks in terminal three.

My Indian students are not faceless immigrants. Some rattle on about too many internationals, but that is not their fault; they are dreamers like our ancestors. As Gurpreet showed me her pictures, I could see her homesickness seep through; she turned away, her eyes now covered by thin, viscous tears. 

I remember when my kids were on that visit to Russia, and after six weeks, I could bear it no more.  I got a Russian visa. I put it on my credit card, and damn the expense; I flew through the night, Finnair lost all my luggage, but I finally arrived at my mother-in-law’s small Velikiy Novgorod apartment in the middle of the night.

Sophia woke me early in the morning; my little redhead was thrilled—her father had come for her! - even if I could only stay five days before returning to work. 

This image is one I can pull up whenever I am sad. 

Vanya followed quickly into my bedroom; I remembered ten years before when I first visited him and his mother before we were married. Vanya was two; I didn’t speak Russian, and Vanya no English, but we made due. We walked silently through a nearby park, and an old babushka approached and tightened Vanya’s scarf.  In the evenings, when I was about to return to my hotel, Vanya would pull the laces out of my shoes to delay my departure, frantic that his new father or father figure was leaving him. 

Soon, the four of us walked through the park next to my mother-in-law’s rough stone-built apartment in this beautiful 1100-year-old city dotted with ancient Orthodox churches. 

My Indian students are not numbers, not ATMs; they are us. They love their children, parents, and grandparents, mourn their losses, and want to live in Canada. And when you see another turbaned Indian student, perhaps he does look like many others. 

Still, he is a man. He has a story and a name—maybe it is Simran. Be kind, listen, speak to him, ask him if he misses his home, and if you can help him find a job. He is here, full of hope and struggle; he is not so different from us. 

And when you see another, the one barely five foot tall, talk to her. Did you know that as she flew over to Canada, she arrived to learn that her aunt and uncle and their children had died in a suicide bombing in Columbo?  She is not another student; she is Elizabeth. She has no family here, and she is alone. She wants to graduate, get a good job, bring over her fiance, and build a life.  

She, Gurpreet, Dhyanu, Simran, and many more are like us; they want to make it through the day and build a life in Canada. Listen to them, speak to them, and be kind. So many have so much good in them. They are not just students; they are my students, and I will always stand with them.  

If you believe in the importance of free speech, subscribe to support uncensored, fearless writing—the more people who pay, the more time I can devote to this. Free speech matters. I am a university professor suspended because of a free speech issue, so I am not speaking from the bleachers. The button below takes you to that story if you like.

Please subscribe and get at least three pieces /essays per week with open comments. It’s $5 per month and less than $USD 4. I know everyone says hey, it’s just a cup of coffee (with me, not per day but just one per month), but if you’re like me, you go, “Hey, I only want so many cups of coffee!” I get it. I don’t subscribe to many here because I can’t afford it.

But I only ask that when you choose your coffee, please choose mine. Cheers.

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