East Indian Immigrants Problems in Canada. History Essay

East Indian Immigrants Problems in Canada
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Abstract
Canada like its neighbor the United States of America can be considered as one of the nations which heavily relied on the immigrant workers for their advanced industrial and social developments. Despite its newly reinforced norms of freedom, economic equalities, and rejection of racism the first generation of the immigrants fought hard to earn their present places in the society. This research focuses on the immigrants belonging to the East Indian origin their immigration history, new generation of immigrants and their problems and formulates some recommendations to resolve their issues. The current research can be used as a reference for academic and administrative institutes as a reference for future developments.
East Indian Immigrant Problems in Canada
1 Introduction
Owing to the rapid developments taking place at global level after the 1990’s and the Liberal Government’s high standards for immigration to keep up with the challenging economic and political developments have attracted a lot of immigrant populations from the world. The scholars noted that the rapid influx of the immigrants in the Canadian territories has introduced diverse social, economic, and religious systems in the country. The local communities are introduced to diversified cultural norms. It is observed that most of the immigrant population take their places in both urban and out-urban communities. There are some migrant communities which directly accommodate themselves into the existing housing structure while some of them create their own little settlements. The immigrants from South Asia are the most diverse and make up the majority of the immigrant population in the country. The South Asian community is highly diversified, however, the term “South Asian” generalizes a lot of the societies which are different to each other in terms of social, religious, family, and economic structures. The following table summarizes the social, religious, and economic diversification with their migration dates to Canada.
Table 1: Diverse Nature of South Asian Immigrants (Islam et.al, 2017, 2017).
The focus of this research is the East Indian communities residing at both sides of the Indian and Bangladeshi borders. The people divided by the border share the same cultural, social, religious, and family values and therefore can be considered as a single community.
1.2 Population Profile
Bangladesh is a sovereign country having a population of 1.5 million people making it one of the 10 most populated countries in the world. Despite several economic and industrial reforms the almost 30% of the country’s population lives under the poverty line (Islam et.al, 2017, 2017). The DPG US$958 per capita is the lowest for any South Asian country (Islam et.al, 2017, 2017). Despite the extreme economic, infrastructural, and negative environmental effects the country is experience a sustainable economic development of almost 6% per year. The 13% of the GDP is sent by the Bangladeshi population living outside in the regions like the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and the Middle East (Islam et.al, 2017, 2017). The East Indian regions also include the Bengalis population and the borders between India and Bangladesh are literary splitting the Bengalis and their villages apart. In this research, both Indian and Bangladeshi immigrants are identified as a single unit owing their common social, religious, and cultural values are identified as a single unit owing their common social, religious, and cultural values.
2 Immigration History
Bangladesh as we know it today got independence from Pakistan in the year 1971 after a bloody civil war empowered by India. The newly established country had a crippled economic, administrative, and educational infrastructure. There were no jobs or any sort of financial development at the national level. Most of the population consisted of skilled laborers but lacked technical and financial skills to re-build the nation from a scratch. One of the most preferred ways for these skilled class of workers was to migrate from the country to other parts of the world in search of a better life. The government also encouraged this trend by allowing the population to leave and send much needed financial resources back to the country. According to Statistics provided by the Federal Government of Bangladesh, there were over nine million people form years 1976-2014 which have migrated out of the country (Islam et.al, 2017, 2017). The labor population made up the majority of these immigrants and were considered as a primary source of foreign currency in a newly established country. According to many, this influx of money during the early decades 1970-1990 served as a lifeline for the country (Islam et.al, 2017, 2017). Most of the population migrated to the countries in the Middle East and some of them eventually find themselves in the rapidly industrializing economy of Canada. Thus the first generation of the East Indian immigrants to Canada are the people settling there during the years 1970-1989 (Islam et.al, 2017, 2017). These immigrants had little formal education, faced enormous difficulty in communicating their problems to the authorities, sidelined by the local communities, and even faced prejudices in many forms. The first and foremost challenge for this early generation of Bangladeshi immigrants was to find a job and then a place to fight off harsh weather conditions in Canada. This generation took every job they were offered from trash men to scrap yard laborers. The housing in the main Canadian cities was out of their financial range, so these people started to create small communities of their own mainly outside the cities. Toronto was one of the cities which provided a safe haven for these immigrants and it is claimed that Canada was the destination and Toronto was the ultimate goal for most of the initial East Indian immigrants. As stated earlier these initial immigrants had no educational background and the people with having some education had been subjected to a rigorous screening process to get accepted in any managerial or technical position depending on their specialties. Nevertheless, the community survived the initial hurdles and now the second generation of people East Indian origins are enjoying the benefits and freedom earned by their predecessors. The increase in the skill levels and freedom of immigrants in the country has also been felt in Bangladesh as depicted in the figure below:
Figure 1: Increase in the money sent to Bangladesh Overseas (1976-2014) (Roberts, 2017, p.245).[Note: MPCR = marginal propensity to consume value of remittances; MPSR = marginal propensity to save of remittances.Source: Constructed. GDP and Remittance Data from World Bank (2011).]
3 Immigrant Movements
Canada, as we see today, was not a culturally diverse nation at one time of history. There were strong Anti-Asian sentiments in society. Moreover, local communities were extremely hostile to the influx of Asians in their society. The strict laws limiting the migration from the Asian countries existed until the mid of the 20th century. The industrial revolution of the 20th century and rapid globalization after the World War 2 compelled the societies like Canada to open their arms for migrants from all over the world and facilitate in the industrial, social, and economic development of the country. Moreover, in the neighboring United States, the labor and civil rights movements were in full swing, compelling their and the governments of the developed countries to ensure the provision of basic human and worker rights to the immigrants. At the same time, the occupational health and safety requirements were re-defined and such movements are considered as the basis of the modern worker-friendly workplaces and health ins...