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I haven't really noticed it online, but I have noticed it in person. I live in a city that has received an enormous number of immigrants in a very short period of time, and they seem to be overwhelmingly from India, although some are from Africa and the Ukraine. This is a Canadian city that has not had much immigration since confederation. It used to be very white, with a small black population, a small indigenous population, and a very small population from elsewhere. The few Indian people we had tended to be very highly educated.
Very little changed here for a long time but it's now undergoing a rapid transformation. The population is booming, high rises are going up everywhere, rents are rapidly outgrowing incomes, and traffic congestion is getting really bad. People are blaming the immigrants, and Indians, with their dark complexions and jet black hair, really stand out. It seems like half the population dowtown is Indian now.
The other really visible change is that seemingly most low-skilled customer-facing jobs are now done by Indians. Almost every grocery store employee, Uber Eats driver, security guard, fast food restaurant worker, and call centre worker is Indian.
They're not really causing any serious problems, but there's beginning to be a bit of a backlash. People blame them for the high rents, and there is a belief that they're taking jobs better suited for teenagers when what we really need are doctors and tradesmen. This a very left-wing city with a strong norm against racism and I personally never witnessed much racism until recently, but a minority of people are starting to feel comfortable saying negative things about them and saying they should go back to India.
Much of this racism comes from Indians themselves though. They often don't like Indians from certain parts of India or from certain castes. Many think we're letting in too many or the wrong kinds. There seems to be a lot of conflict between different groups.
Yes, but it has to do with 'class' more than 'caste' or 'regionalism'. You've correctly observed that there are 2 different clusters of Indian immigrants.
The upper-middle class of India slogs their ass off to get into real Canadian universities and qualify for real jobs. These people come from around the country. This is your standard meritocratic group, a high HDI cluster. Then, a sub-section of no-skilled youths are practically trafficked into Canada by exploiting every loop hole imaginable. These people can't speak English, don't have jobs when they arrive here and live in squalor. This subsection primarily hails from Punjab. This is low HDI cluster.
The high HDI cluster hates the low HDI cluster.
Canadian visa abuse is an open-secret in India. It's not just the high HDI immigrant cluster who shit on these people. The whole country does.
I've heard Punjabis are wealthy because they own a lot of farmland.
Those Punjabis don't leave India.
Punjab used to be India's wealthiest state in the 80s, thanks for a booming agriculture sector. Then, they inflicted suicidally bad policy and a separatist insurgency onto themselves. Since then, Punjab hasn't recovered.
A minority that owns a lot of land, lives like kings back home. But Punjab never industrialized. So, small farms had no value and small farmers continued struggling. In contrast, the neighboring state of Haryana saw rapid urbanization, and small farmers there became mini-millionaires overnight. Haryanvis are culturally Punjabi, and sometimes identify as Punjabi in global circles.
When Indians talk about Punjabis, we mean the residents of the Indian state of Punjab. For comparison, Haryana is 5% Sikh, while Punjab is 60% Sikh. But, a global audience may not make that distinction.
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It's frustrating to me, and I think other Canadians, that our government allowed this to happen. I can't stress enough how much it didn't have to be this way. We had a good thing going. We were a pro-immigrant country. We liked newcomers.
You see bar charts like this and it's just baffling. Even at the vastly increased rate of immigration over the last 4 years, you'd see less backlash if those bars had been kept more even.
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People get their cousins or friends to get to the West through any means necessary so that they can escape India. It will get worse over time, you simply don't have 10s of millions of super smart Indians, if you did, India would not be well India.
It's an open secret, people of the south and Punjab game the immigration game, especially Sikhs in Canada. I am hesitant to write anything on these topics because I dont want to get doxxed and be turned into an Ian Miles Cheong-style figure. There is a reason why people kept this place heterogeneous for thousands of years.
What reason is that?
You create clusters of smart capable people and eek out better outliers than you normally would.
Also because people always want to marry their own.
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