karma police

we need to reframe how we talk about international students

i've been seeing a lot of discourse on these issues on subreddits like r/uwaterloo, r/OntarioColleges, r/wlu, r/waterloo, etc – and i think we need to talk about this in a slightly more mature way... (this is somewhat prompted by the conversation on posts like these): (https://www.reddit.com/r/uwaterloo/comments/1c9wh2s/this_is_disgusting_our_food_banks_are_being/)

what's necessary to do is think about the issues underlying what you're seeing – that usually revolve around bad government policy. issues like how can we implement better verification steps while granting visas, how we can hold diploma mills like conestoga accountable who create lose-lose-lose situations for local students, international students, and the local community just for profit? how can we prevent false dreams from being sold to international students in economically worse off companies that they buy into due to a combination of parental pressure, lack of exposure, and bad employment prospects in their home countries?

what's not necessary to do – and is at it's best disingenuous/ignorant/unconstructive and in it's worst rendition plain racist is making generalisations about cultures, and extrapolating the behaviors of individual actors to the culture of a country. these things are still malicious and deserve to be called out as such.

they actively deflect blame from the people responsible for theses issues – the federal government, john tibbits, take your pick. if you want change, focus your blame and discourse on those with the largest impact.

to be clear – i think what he's yapping about in the video is very wrong, selfish, and entitled – food banks are for people in financially precarious situations, not for people looking to save a buck on grocery shopping. he's breaking the implicit social contract you sign as an immigrant when you move to a new country.

tldr: all of this is to say that it's possible to have thoughts on immigration policy, want more or less immigrants, hate conestoga college, etc. while also still not being racist towards immigrants. this should NOT be hard to compute.

(as posted on r/uwaterloo)