Perpetually temporary

Spike in international students, temporary workers has placed the burden on newcomers, schools and employers to find needed support

- NICHOLAS KEUNG

Radhika Raina volunteers at Toronto's Sai Dham Food Bank. The 22-year-old from India came in August for a two-year postgraduate program and says while most Canadians are nice, she can also feel the tension.

Moving half a world away from her family in India, 22-year-old Radhika Raina found comfort in Brampton, where she had a cousin.

The city is a 90-minute commute to her classes in Toronto but has the cultural amenities she needed in a foreign land.

“Brampton felt like a home to me,” said Raina, who came in August for a two-year postgraduate program in addictions and mental health. The program is offered jointly by London, Ont.-based Fanshawe College and a private school.

The young woman from Mohali is among the growing ranks of temporary residents — made up of international students, foreign workers and asylum seekers — calling Canada home. It’s a part of the population that has been in the spotlight of late and scapegoated for the country’s housing crisis, healthcare shortages and social tensions.

While most Canadians are nice and welcoming, Raina said, she can feel the growing tension.

“For example, a bus was full of students and a man came on and started shouting, ‘You’re in my country and you’re destroying this country,’” recalled a still-upset Raina of the incident in Brampton. “That was a first incident for me, and not just once.”

Canada’s immigration is at a crossroads, caught up in its own success as a magnet for migrants and in stuffing a pipeline of temporary residents to feed the pathways to permanent residence.

While there are few tools it can wield to turn away asylum seekers, the federal government has had a tight grip on permanent resident intake.

But it has left post-secondary education institutions and employers to keep tabs on international students and temporary foreign workers, and plans have gone awry.