Studying Abroad, Paving The Future

"[Students] might come from a cultural background where maybe the behaviour feels normal. Maybe you felt that you were at fault, you might think that no one will believe you if you had a negative experience with authorities."
"We want to make sure that educational institutions are prepared to provide the support and to lead the process … and link to the services and supports available in the community."
"New research confirms that international students reported more sexual assaults than domestic students and experience more intense fear, helplessness and horror after victimization."
"Some perpetrators of sexual violence see international students as easy targets -- too ashamed to report sexual assaults, unaware of where they can get help and influenced by different cultural norms."
MOSAIC CEO Olga Stachova

"You're making a paradigm shift in your thoughts and your ideas. You're almost unlearning a lot of cultural ideas, you're re-learning things."
"[I] also just learned things that I wasn't really open to learning [about] or I wasn't really in this space to learn before and one of those was how to talk about sexual violence."
"[Sexual violence against women is] normalized [in Pakistan]. It was almost a culture shock to learn how unacceptable sexual violence was here [in Canada]." 
Maham Kamal Khanum, international student from Pakistan, University of British Columbia

Students at the University of British Columbia campus. MOSAIC CEO Olga Stachova says international students may face extra barriers when it comes to reporting sexual assault. (Tristan Le Rudulier/CBC)

"When these kids, who don't know the law, hear about deportation, they get scared, because they've already spent so much money coming to Canada, and so much money surviving here, that the last thing they need is to be sent back to their country."
"It's a source of shame if they get sent home. They fear they'll never get the chance to come back to Canada."
"For them to be able to stay here means everything in terms of future job prospects, monetary wealth, sanitary conditions, a significant change in lifestyle."
"So the young people think of it [Canada] as a land of rich amenities, where they can have a better life, become permanent residents and eventually sponsor their family to come over. That means that once these students come here the last thing most of them want to do is return to India."
Kal Dosanjyh, Vancouver police officer

Dupinder Kaur Saran, Kal Dosanjh, Kiran Toor (left to right). Toor is a volunteer with Kids Play, which helps youth in Surrey who are getting into trouble. Kal Dosanjh is a police officer and head of the non-profit group. Saran helped form One Voice, to address issues surrounding international students. Francis Georgian / PNG

Canada has about a half-million foreign students studying at Canadian universities and colleges. In 2017, a sudden increase of almost 50,000 added students arrived from India, resulting in student visa numbers from India representing a full quarter of Canada's international students. Metro Vancouver alone has 110,000 foreign students. And according to MOSAIC, a British Columbia settlement service for migrants, these foreign students are generally "more likely to be sexually assaulted and less likely to be helped" than their native-born counterparts.

MOSAIC, which has 350 people on staff has begun an initiative to train teachers and other education officials on how they can support the women representing the city's foreign students. Foreign students are largely under quite a lot of financial, social and academic pressures, on top of which they must become proficient in a language other than their own; English. According to an Indo-Canadian magazine published in the province, it has become a common occurrence for both male and female foreign students to work over 20 hours weekly.

Their Canadian study visas permit them to work a limited number of hours. When longer hours are worked in an effort to make more money to pay mounting bills, this places the students in a vulnerable position exploited by those who act to intimidate the students; employers for example, threatening to reveal hours worked and promising that doing so will invalidate the provisions of their visas. Young women in particular are sexually intimidated in the workplace, threatened by disclosure of overworking their limit.

Police officer Dosanjh also mentions the pressure some foreign students from India face leads them in desperation for cash to become involved in prostitution and the drug trade. Young men serve as "mules", and the women agree to hold drugs for male friends. "The students always think they have to worry: What will happen to my status in Canada?", stressed MOSAIC CEO Stachova, who feels her group's effort to guide schools to provide increased support may make up for a lack of support network for foreign students arriving in Canada.

Young people from India's Punjab region and other parts of South Asia whose modest-income families stretch their resources to assemble enough money to get their children to Canada to make a new, promising life for themselves are aware of the sacrifices their families make, and would do anything to prevent disappointing them. Some resort to offering sex services to landlords or employers to help defray their expenses. While others are threatened by exposure if they don't agree to provide those 'services'. 

The threats of deportation to vulnerable students unaware of their rights under Canadian law, leaves them distracted and distraught. Frightened, particularly the women, when exploitative employers representing the underground economy -- some restaurants included -- warn they're prepared to report them to immigration officials, instilling an undercurrent of fear. That, balanced against the entry to Canada on a student visa representing their "ticket out of India, out of poverty".