International Students: Old Fears and New Scapegoats

by Catherine Mwitta for The 44 North, Contributing Writer - Politics

An artistic rendering of immigration via figurines walking across stamped passports while pushing suitcase trolleys.

Editor's Note:

The following article reflects the views & analysis of the author. As with all opinion and essay submissions, the piece has been edited for clarity and reviewed carefully for factual accuracy, but the interpretations & arguments are the author’s own. The 44 North publishes an array of perspectives & voices to encourage and ensure thoughtful engagement with complex social, political, historical, and cultural issues.

As Canada faces a cost-of-living crisis, politicians are reviving a long history of blaming newcomers—this time, targeting international students. 

In 1869, the Canadian Immigration Act discriminated against immigrants on the grounds of class and disability. The federal government enacted further measures to restrict Chinese immigration, including a head tax and the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923. Additional racial and national restrictions were introduced after the First World War: Under a revised Immigration Act in 1919, the government excluded specific groups from entering the country, including Communists, Mennonites, Doukhobors, and other groups with particular religious practices, such as Judaism, as well as nationalities whose countries had fought against Canada during the First World War, such as Austrians, Hungarians, and Turks. 

Via The Canadian Encyclopedia: Southeast Asian refugees at CFB Griesbach Military Base in Edmonton, August 1979. Photo: © Murray Mosher. Courtesy of The Canadian Immigration Historical Society.

Until 1976, it seemed immigration in Canada was largely an “open door” policy privileging whiteness and interest in Western Canada settlement. Changes to prior immigration policies occurred to address severe labour market shortages and adjust to shifting global demographics. As Canada’s economic goals expanded, immigration policy evolved to include multicultural policy embedded in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 and again in 1988 via the Canadian Multicultural Act. Both have promoted economic growth by increasing the labour supply while promising strong human rights and safety guarantees for newcomers from diverse backgrounds. Over time, the demographics of immigrants arriving in Canada shifted from largely British and Western European to Asian (Indian, Filipino, Chinese).

Over thirty-five years later, 2024 saw the highest levels of immigration in over a decade. 483,390 new permanent residents arrived in Canada, and approximately 292,970 new international students received permits. At the same time, housing and healthcare issues within the country came to a head. 

Long wait times in hospital emergency rooms and the shortage of family doctors are among the many issues the Canadian healthcare system faces, which have led to worsening patient outcomes. Similarly, rent prices in Canada rose 5.9 percent in 2024 compared to 2023. The Toronto metropolitan area, in particular, saw an overall 5.1 percent increase in rent for two-bedroom units, from $2,560 in the first quarter of 2019 to $2,690 in the first quarter of 2025. 

Via International Business University

Canadians have raised concerns about the cost of living and quality of life with their members of parliament. During Canada’s last federal election and in its wake, both Conservative and Liberal politicians have used these pain points as campaign guideposts. This isn’t unusual, but something is different this time: Several mostly Conservative leaders and MPs have positioned international students as the main reason for their concerns. 

Immigration Minister Marc Miller and Ontario Premier Doug Ford have both placed blame for the rapid growth in international student enrollment on private colleges, with the federal Liberal Party going so far as to announce a cap on international student enrollment from 2025 to 2027. Further, according to the Centre of Excellence of the Canadian Federation, there has been a sharp rise in anti-immigration sentiment across all age groups in Canada. Online rhetoric, such as from notable TikTokers, is stoking anti-immigrant views. 

The Eye Opener, a Toronto Metropolitan University Newspaper, interviewed South Asian international students about the rise of xenophobia in Canada. Aasim Ul Haq Khwaja, a second-year business technology management student, said the first thing his family asks him when they call is whether he feels safe. Priyanka Prakash, a third-year food and nutrition student, and Harshi Shah, another third-year nutrition and food student, both said phone calls back home predominantly consist of family members asking about their safety in Toronto. 

Between 2020 and 2023, police in the Waterloo region logged 387 race-based hate crimes, with a significant increase in incidents targeting South Asians as international student numbers simultaneously surged. In 2023 alone, South Asians accounted for one in six reported race-based hate crimes, up from one in ten the previous year. Most of these crimes involved threats or graffiti, but 12 percent escalated to physical assault.

Via Waterloo Regional Police Service

Meanwhile, in Ontario—the province with the second-highest cost of living—the Conservative Party plans to remove rent control, has expanded funding for private clinics to 300 times that of public hospitals, and has changed OSAP policies in favour of loans rather than grants, reducing post-secondary affordability. Politicians and government officials have yet to take accountability here. Hypothetically, if the influx of international students and immigrants is too great for our healthcare, living, and education systems, then there’s still a vital distinction to make: This is most likely a government policy failure, not necessarily the fault of international students and immigrants.

Whenever a country faces systemic failures, it’s easy to use immigrants as a tool to either bolster the economy or excuse governmental failures. Canada is no different, despite the “goodwill” pedestal it tends to stand on, courtesy of its proximity to the more overt anti-immigration practices in the US. International students have long been used as “cash cows” for underfunded public and private universities and colleges, especially in Ontario. They’ve worked jobs no one else wanted, particularly under-the-table jobs, which frequently resulted in unfair treatment and abuse in the workplace. Yet, amid rising housing prices and the cost of living rising exponentially each year, politicians seem more desperate, and therefore, more apt to use international students as scapegoats instead of repealing harmful policies. 

Currently, the federal government is looking to launch a new cap on international students by 2027. These sentiments were reinforced by King Charles and Prime Minister Mark Carney. As Canada continues to dismiss or ignore systemic issues within its society, the blame is bound to shift to another. 

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Catherine Mwitta has a bachelor’s in creative writing from Kwantlen Polytechnic University and a certification in Journalism from Langara College. She is an editor at Augur Magazine and INKspire. Likewise, bylines at Stir Vancouver, SAD Mag, This Magazine, C Magazine and Bluffs Monitor.

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Documentary Review: International Students’ First 48 hours & Life After Graduation

by Alaina Zhang ​for The 44 North, Newsletter & Reviews Editor

Students from the “International Students: First 48 Hours” documentary, filmed & produced by Cal Campos

“I don’t know how airlines expect us to put 25 or 24 years of our [lives] into two suitcases and just move across the globe.” —Pahul Sond, From“International Students: First 48 Hours”

As a Canadian student studying in the U.S., seeing a documentary following the experiences of international students in Canada—a place I’ve called home for many years—brings forth an array of feelings. It makes me wonder what it would have been like to stay in Vancouver and study at the University of British Columbia, which is so close to my home. What could I have gained, and what might I have lost? 

The documentaries International Students: First 48 Hours and International Students: Life After Graduation address some of these questions. Filmed and produced by Cal Campos, a Media Producer and Inclusivity Public Speaker from Toronto, together with the University of Toronto’s Centre for International Experience as well as the Innovation Hub, the documentaries follow the journey of 12 students, 6 of whom have just arrived in Canada and 6 of whom are living different lives post-graduation, respectively. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWDmTAievkk

The international student experience is shaped by an immersion in the unknown. One scene which particularly struck me was Josefa Antonia Sepulveda Guzman, after she had spent some time in Canada, saying, “I kind of want to cry. This all means that I’m doing the right thing.” For her, studying at a foreign university is a dream come true—one that comes with the cost of not spending as much time with her mom (with whom she’s lived her entire life). Yet Guzman continues, ready to call Canada her new home, ready for its challenges and love, ready, as I believe many international students are, to be vulnerable to change. 

Like Guzman, I spent almost my entire life living with my mom, and leaving both my home and my family felt daunting. At the same time, attending college in the U.S. exposed me to my own inadequacies and insecurities. I quickly realized I didn’t know much about American pop culture and I’d never had friends who were a different race from me; the public school I attended was 90% Asian. I felt I wasn’t extroverted or sociable compared to my American peers. I intentionally practiced my small talk, built up knowledge of specific slang, and worked to find people I connected with. As a Canadian, I was aware of my luck and privilege—that the culture shock was less forceful. I was, perhaps, the “least international” an international student could be. Yet, at the same time, I found myself maturing at a rate that I’d never experienced before. I began to examine my own biases, realizing I could be friends with people who held very different backgrounds and values from me. I found myself thinking, all the time, about relationships, gender, academics, and the future in ways I’d never explored before. I was experiencing a type of ‘growing up’ that would’ve been much slower had I chosen to stay inside the comfortable bubble of my home and family. I wasn’t sad amid these changes, but proud of how much I’d grown each time I saw my family again. 

Students from the “International Students: Life After Graduation” documentary, filmed & produced by Cal Campos

Sudene, another student who has decided to pursue a research analyst role at The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) post-graduation, captures the bittersweet sentiment beautifully: “I’ll be missing out on something. I’m going to miss a lot of family moments, but at the same time, I’m excited about the opportunities that travelling abroad offers to me.” We also get to know students like Mary-Rebekah Reyes, who returns to her home country and starts her own art business while continuing to explore the beauty of Trinidad and Tobago, carrying her study-abroad experience with her.  

As someone in their third year of undergraduate studies, I’m also thinking about what it might mean to stay in the U.S. and what it might mean to return to Canada or even China, where most of my family now lives. Being an international student might not be an experience familiar to many, but we’ve all had the experience of navigating a new place, leaving our family and friends behind, even if just for a few hours. Our current age has made travel easier, enabling many to live in different places. But it also means that part of you will always be tied to each city you’ve been to. My identity has already become a mosaic; part of me will forever remain in Wuxi, where I was born, and parts of me are scattered across Vancouver and Stanford. As life goes on, I know that I’ll leave more pieces of myself behind around the world and carry more of the world, engraved into me. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtUSJ2k9l_A

When we think about the future, how do we choose where to go? As we transition from students to adults, and the future’s possibilities spread out before us, we’re confronted with the question of who we want to be. For international students especially, there’s often a tough decision about whether to return home, stay in a new country, or perhaps even travel to another new place. As the world becomes increasingly uncertain, we find ourselves caught between different loyalties, family ties, and even political tensions. I, for one, always try to remember what my parents told me: Choose a path that places you on higher ground, so that when you look far into the horizon, you can see futures that you couldn’t have even imagined previously. 

All of this is to say that while people around us might try to convince us that one choice is better than another, just remember that any choice is valid. I try to imagine all the different futures I could be living, and pick based on the fact that this is my one chance to live a life of my choosing.

Back in high school, as I thought about where I would attend college, I contemplated staying in Canada, studying in the U.S., or even returning to China. Each held different opportunities and sacrifices. Some would bring me closer to my family, while others led me further away. Some would challenge me socially and academically. Yet, one thing didn’t change amongst those choices. I was determined to study English no matter where I went. Now, as I think about my post-graduation plans, I can once again imagine the various futures before me. I can see myself in the office buildings of New York, watching the sun set from tall glass windows. I can see myself working in a publishing house in Vancouver, writing the next chapter of my novel. I can see myself with my family back in Wuxi, teaching English literature at a local international school. What hasn’t changed is that each option will lead me to higher ground in different ways, and that’s why, whatever my decision is, I believe that each of us can and will choose well. 

Despite our vast differences as international students, these choices are what tether us—what we can only do together. And when we forget that sense of community or feel overwhelmed amid change, rewatching International Students: First 48 Hours and International Students: Life After Graduation is a welcome reminder.

Artist Spotlight: Wing Lam Chan’s Borrowed Absurdity

by Wing Lam Chan for The 44 North, Guest Writer

“Where are you from?”

A typical icebreaker question that everyone comes across.

My only answer would be “Hong Kong,” since I was born and raised there. Period. However, my identity tends to be flattened in a sentence—“So you’re from China”—if the questioner is not familiar with Hong Kong’s historical dynamics or holds a political stance. I always feel a need to justify my identity in this unilateral box; likewise, I’m gagged with papers and evidence that state Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China. The simple question becomes a drowning debate.

Speaking has never been my strength, but drawing is. So, on faith and belief, I propelled myself with a stylus pen in the ocean, exploring the fragmented storytelling of local identity. Eventually, I came up with seven eerie illustrations that reimagine Hong Kong urban legends—Borrowed Absurdity.

Wing at GradEX, next to her collected work, Borrowed Absurdity

The title Borrowed Absurdity comprises two elements: The impermanence throughout Hong Kong’s trajectory and urban legends. The term “borrowed” is inspired by the quote from Richard Hughes that describes Hong Kong’s uncertain socio-political landscape between 1960 and 1970: 

“A borrowed place, on borrowed time.” 

The quote captures the city as a fragmented land amid temporary colonial existence since 1841: The British occupied both Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, and for 99 years, obtained a lease of the New Territories, later interrupted by Japanese occupation for three years and eight months. Although Hong Kong was transferred to Chinese sovereignty and established as a Special Administrative Region in 1997—with the exercise of “One country, two systems” maintaining its own capitalist economy, legal system, education and language—this autonomy will expire in 2047. The land perpetuates “borrowed,” and so do the social anxieties embedded within it.

Interestingly, urban legends also possess such instability, with their doubtful credibility and evolving versions of the story often intended for thrilling entertainment or warning about certain behaviours across time. By recontextualizing them and layering the collective fear with historical backdrops, Borrowed Absurdity aims to initiate discourse on identity, precarity and resistance against assimilation.

The Braid Girl & The Ghost Postman

The Braid Girl by Wing Lam Chan: It is said that the long-braided spirit was once a rural girl fleeing from mainland China to Hong Kong. Driven by the immigration policy, she tied her Hong Kong dream into her braid and boarded a train toward the city. Mistaking a passing station for the final stop, she abandoned everything behind and jumped prematurely. Her reckless leap marked the tragic end of her journey.

The series begins with a dual nightmare shared by Mainland refugees and the local community. During the 60s, struggle sessions emerged within the Chinese Communist movement’s “Great Leap Forward.” Farmers were mandated to undertake industrial work and lost autonomy over their land, leading to severe famine and deaths by persecution. Meanwhile, Hong Kong was not only under British colonial rule, but regarded as one of the most prosperous cities. To attract more cheap labour, the British Hong Kong government pitched the “Touch Base” Policy—an immigration policy that grants residency to Mainlanders who successfully reached the city. Countless Mainlanders were sent running across a risky baseball field towards the life-changing base called Hong Kong, often on moving trains. The Braid Girl demonstrates this plight. Braiding her hope towards the escape, the braid becomes her stumbling block—a force that motivates her while distorting her body. As it tightens against the moving train, her face is split in two, and with it, her imagined future and possibilities collapse. 

The Ghost Postman by Wing Lam Chan: It is said that a ghostly postman unlocked gates and slipped blank letters into the Wan Chai neighbourhood. Those who receive the letters are doomed to die within days. As death accumulates, fear seeps into restless nights.

The tragedies continue to fall upon local communities. Hong Kong has faced prolonged overpopulation since World War II, aggravated by the influx of Mainland refugees under the “Touch Base” Policy. With rising social tension, the seeds of fear and antipathy were sown, marking the expanding division between locals and outsiders in the future. While The Braid Girl reflects the refugee’s tragic experiences, The Ghost Postman shifts to a local perspective, depicting the suppressed, collective anxiety of overpopulation. The postman, as an embodiment of the outsider, slips through the gates and grates the community’s nerves alongside increasing death and disaster. 

The Haunted School & The Convenience House

The Haunted School by Wing Lam Chan: It is said that the abandoned Tat Tak School is haunted by spirits of Indigenous New Territories inhabitants killed by British and Japanese troops. Buried within a nearby mass grave, they wander through the ruined classrooms searching for their seats among nameless gravestones and rubble.

As someone born under Chinese sovereignty, I always feel distant from British colonization and Japanese occupation. The history is either compressed into a list or neglected in education, not to mention the disappearing Indigenous people (Punti, Hakka, Tanka, and Hoklo) in rural New Territories. Land, to Indigenous people, is not only property but also a means of preserving lineage, fengshui, and sustained livelihoods. They maintained village autonomy under the Chinese imperial system, yet foreign rulers took over their land rights against the traditional practice, provoking counterattacks such as the Six-Day war. Confronted by well-trained troops with advanced weapons, hundreds of native people were sacrificed; their deaths remain unrecorded, fading within their own land and memory. In contrast to the legends of Tat Tak School, which relate to malevolent spirits or the deadly consequences of adventurers, The Haunted School examines haunting in a decolonial framework. As the spirits return to school and collect their own desks, their contours consolidate gradually, reclaiming their presence throughout historical erasure in the classroom setting.

The Convenience House by Wing Lam Chan: It is said that an unsettling hospice lies hidden among the stilt houses in Tai O, once serving as a burial site for dying elders whose bodies were never reclaimed by their families. Within this dreadful space, an elderly man rests while imagining himself as a tilapia—an invasive species brought from the Mainland—drifting among the local fisheries of the village.

The unstable land once failed to preserve the home for Indigenous New Territories inhabitants; nevertheless, becomes a lifelong shelter for others. The Convenience House is set in Tai O, a traditional fishing village inhabited by Tanka people and well known for its stilt houses above water. Located in the Pearl River Estuary where it meets the South China Sea, it also became a migration passage for Mainlanders crossing the water during the Cultural Revolution. Unlike the scenic stilt houses, “The Convenience House”—a single-story, tiled-roof hospice— hides in the shadows and is lived in by dying elders, often those whose bodies were refused repatriation by their families due to taboo. Amid flowing water and life, the “Convenience House” becomes a rigid support for the drifting man, as if a tilapia adapting to new water and becoming part of nature after death among local fisheries. This portrays an inexplicable calm settling upon unstable land shaped by a sojourner mentality.

The Mah-jong Demise & The Parallel Station

The Mah-jong Demise by Wing Lam Chan: It is said that four gamblers died while playing mah-jong after forming four tiles with the character “West” (which sounds similar to “death” in Chinese).

The Parallel Station by Wing Lam Chan: It is said that a salaryman became trapped within the same station on his journey home, as if he had entered a parallel world.

The year 1984 marked a significant milestone in Hong Kong—the UK and China signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration, marking the end of 156 years of British colonial rule and the handover to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. Hongkongers had no say in the decision. Witnessing the influences of the Chinese Communist Party, rather than celebration, Hong Kong society was rampant with mistrust and disappointment towards the decision.  Irreversible fate and stillness is depicted in both The Mah-jong Demise and The Parallel Station—either extending time through indulgence in gambling and drugs, or travelling on a Möbius track with contradictory directional signs, everything lost in directions but a gloomy future. Authority over land and life persists across time.

The Submerging Turtle

The Submerging Turtle by Wing Lam Chan: It is said that a giant turtle deity lives within the mountains and descends gradually each year. Once it reaches the sea, the city will collapse into a violent red ocean.

A visitor asked me, “Shouldn’t the turtle be happy as it returns to the ocean where it belongs?” Ideally, yes, only if the ocean has not been contaminated. Since the 1997 handover, conflicts between Hong Kong and China have been intensified through repressions of culture, economy, politics, and the legal system. Back in elementary school, I remember that Putonghua (standard Beijing Mandarin) was taught as the medium in Chinese Language Education, dividing students into two groups: Putonghua applied to the “elite” class, while Cantonese (the primary spoken language in Hong Kong) was for the “academically inferior” one. Following perpetual measures on the Hong Kong-Mainland relationship and demonstrations, including the 2014 Umbrella Revolution and the 2019 Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement, the Chinese government ultimately decided to silence the crowd with national security laws that erode freedom of speech. Throughout the decades, from ripple to rogue wave, from language to internal affairs, Hong Kong was dragged toward assimilation in stages. If they abide by the “One Country, Two Systems” promise and respect the dynamic Hong Kong identity, I believe Hongkongers will feel less reluctant to embrace this “mother ocean.”

Borrowed Absurdity by Wing Lam Chan

Borrowed Absurdity presents assembled fragments of Hong Kong lived experience rather than a map of Hong Kong’s history or a complete portrait of Hongkongers, often featuring Mainlanders, spirits/creatures, and distorted space. Shaped by the fusion of Chinese and Western influences, Hong Kong identity suggests a sense of fluidity. It’s not about ethnicity or holding residency but about adapting the language and shared values. If you called Hong Kong home, you are a Hongkonger.

The series ends, but my story certainly doesn’t. Perhaps it offers an entrance to the far shoreline before people dive into the water. Perhaps the landscape has changed beyond recognition before people get to know it. Never will submersion be the final ending for Hong Kong—hope floats, always through collective storytelling.

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About Wing Lam Chan

Bio Portrait by Wing Lam Chan

Wing Lam Chan (泳 Wing (@lamc_illust)) is a Hong Kong digital illustrator based in Toronto and a recent graduate of the Illustration (BDES) program at OCAD University.

Wing’s practice blends Eastern and Western storytelling through editorial and sequential illustration, using symbolism and emotional narratives to explore themes of culture, identity, and memory. She is drawn to the quiet moments embedded in everyday life, visualizing them through a surrealist art style. Wing believes storytelling can amplify community voices, reconstruct marginalized narratives, and foster empathy and shared humanity.

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