Simran Preetkaur landed in Canada from her hometown Punjab, India, in 2019 as an 18-year-old woman with dreams of an education, a career and independence from her family.
“I didn’t have any past experience with moving to a different country,” Preetkaur said. “I was quite nervous, excited, and had mixed emotions, to be honest. I was looking forward to coming here and studying, to see how life would be here living all by myself.”
But moving away from Punjab on her own may be fraught with problems. Social media has taken a discriminatory turn towards Indians.
Indians are being urged to go back to their country, they're being described as dirty people, that they should be deported, and that they have no place in Canada. The racism and discrimination of Indians weren’t something new for Preetkaur. Even while in India, she would scroll online and see discriminating posts about Indians being made.
“I’ve known it before I moved here,” she said. “I didn’t know that it was going to be that bad.”
It wasn’t until Preetkaur settled into her job as a daycare educator at a Toronto centre that she faced discrimination. It was one of her colleagues who had made remarks about her to a parent.
She quoted her colleague saying, “I don’t trust her.” Luckily for Preetkaur, the supervisor at the daycare took action and faced the situation head-on.
Karthik Iyyapan, who moved to Canada from India for work in February 2022, said Canada is a country with a reputation for its kindness and acceptance, unlike the weather he faced when he arrived.
“In India, we know that Canadians are the ones who apologize the most,” Iyyapan said. “They would be sorry for something they haven’t committed.
“In recent days it is not the case, they are just showing hatred towards Indians,” he said. “Canadians are no longer that same way.”
Preetkaur and Iyyapan are among the hundreds of thousands of Indians who have arrived in Canada since 2013. The number of immigrants rose to 139,715 from 32,828, most of them international students, according to the 2024 report by the National Foundation for American Policy.
The same report also notes that 400,521 international students attended Canadian universities in 2021, compared to 62,223 in 2000.
One of the issues Indians are being targeted for on social media is the lack of job opportunities in Toronto.
“There is a big trend going on, to let all the brown people not take over Tim Hortons, cafes, and even security,” Iyyapan said. “They feel like all the brown people have been occupied with that. They want us to go back [home] so that the Canadians can work those jobs,” he said.
Hateful comments are openly displayed on social media. In a video posted on Oct.16, a group of Uber drivers protested wage-related issues and the abundant amount of drivers.
A comment by username Jimboslicecanada, said, “This is perfect. They’re so close to the plane. Just load them up and send them back.”
Another user, gavin_pauls posted “protesting a part-time gig,” with a laughing emoji at the end of his sentence.
Other users seem to share the same point of view, calling for the protesters to get sent back to their country of India to get real jobs.
Iyyapan said reading comments like these can affect a person’s emotional and mental health. “You feel like you are causing something to a peaceful country. We feel guilty for something we didn’t do,” Iyyapan said.
Atulya Sharman, a legal representative with the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario, said with the way the economy has been declining, people have been taking their frustration out on the South Asian community, particularly Indians.
“At our clinic, we get a lot of phone calls related to hate crimes against the East Indian, South Asian community,” Sharman said. “There is an enormous increase in workplace discrimination against international students and temporary foreign workers from the South Asian community.”
This is a situation which Sharman calls extremely sad, as immigrants and foreigners were once seen as crucial to society. Now, Sharman said they are being looked at as people who are stealing jobs away from Canadian citizens, and are the cause of the housing crisis.
“It's really unfortunate that people are falling for these sorts of gimmicks without even getting into the details of what's going on,” Sharman said. “It's like this concept of otherness that has crept in over the last few years in the GTA.”
Sharman said the solution to this problem isn’t easy. It does require social media companies to step up.
“Social media companies need to do a lot more than just giving everybody a platform,” she said. “I think a lot needs to be done.”
