The Indian Panorama

Tag: Liberal

  • Looking ahead: Challenges galore for those seeking immigration

    Looking ahead: Challenges galore for those seeking immigration

    By Prabhjot Singh

    TORONTO (TIP): “Poaching the best and ignoring the rest” appears to be the new immigration mantra of the developed and flourishing West that it wants to portray and implement in 2026. Conveying a strong message to the nations overflowing with manpower resources, both raw and skilled, the elite group of nations—most sought after by prospective immigrants—has been gradually barricading the borders to minimize the “infiltration.” To cap it, member nations of this group have set in motion both legal and inhumane deportation processes to get rid of what they call “dead wood,” as most of their ageing sections of society have met their requirements of the workforce.

    When the new Liberal government, led by Mark Carney, assumed office in April this year and presented its maiden budget in November, it clearly indicated that it would “look for the best of brains” to head new groups of scientific research. Bowing to the pressures, the Liberal government not only scaled down immigration levels but also introduced drastic cuts to the intake of international students. This major shift in the immigration rigmarole spells doom for hundreds of thousands of youngsters who want or aspire to make one of the developed Western nations their new home. Those with no skills find the immigration doors closed for them for now.

    Donald Trump, soon after starting his second term in office in January of the outgoing year, started sending through full loads of US Air Force aircraft, bereft of basic passenger facilities, with immigration seekers without proper documents to the countries of their origin, including India. And the process has been continuing unabated since then. Hundreds of thousands have already been sent home unceremoniously. Aircraft loads of “unwanted immigrants” are even now leaving the shores of various North American ports for destinations in South Asia, Africa, and other parts of the world regularly. Incidentally, those being deported exclude the brain doctors, engineers, and scientists.

    It is not only the closure of a channel that was taking a lot of loads off the governments of developing nations, but it has now started rebuilding the pressure on shrinking job opportunities and resources in these immigration feeder nations. While their best talent would be leaving the shores of the country, they would be left with numbers that they would find extremely difficult to adjust to under the tightening global economic norms.

    The brain drain would continue unabated, thus putting additional pressure on these fund- and resource-starved nations. Producing a doctor with six to eight years in a government medical institution in India costs the state a minimum of Rs 20 lakh. The same is the case with an engineer or IT specialist groomed at a government institution; the money spent by the state is no less than that of a doctor. And once these young, bright doctors, engineers, and IT experts step out of their institutions, the developed nations are out poaching for them. Instead of repaying the society that spent on their training and grooming, they leave their homelands, lured by green pastures overseas.

    The result is obvious. Their home turfs suffer from a shortage of doctors, engineers, technocrats, and other professionals. A simple case to illustrate this dilemma is the acute shortage of mental health officers in the country. Despite directions from the Apex Court that each district in the country must have a mental hospital, not even 20 per cent of districts in the country have such a facility. There is an acute shortage of super specialists in a country like India. Many medical colleges fake figures to show specialists and super specialists on their faculties, while in fact their services are requisitioned mostly from the private sector at the time of inspections.

    It is not health care. Other areas, especially information technology, science and research, engineering, and related areas, would continue to be impacted by the changed immigration policies of Western nations.

    Other than these technical or scientific “brains,” countries like India are also facing an acute shortage of middle-rung officers in their defense forces. One foremost reason is that pay packages are perhaps not as attractive as their counterparts’ pass-outs from IITs. Then some of the perks associated with jobs in the defense sector have been spiked so much that their added attractions have vanished in recent years. Even a lifetime career in the defense forces is not guaranteed under the Agnipath Yojana. Intriguingly, some of the able-bodied youth, looking for green pastures overseas and shirking jobs in uniform at home, were forced to join the armed forces overseas, as it happened in the case of Russia.

    There is an urgent need for a fresh look at the immigration policies of the nations abundant with manpower or human resources. A country like India needs to regulate its brain drain as well as the outflow of its raw human resources. It also comes with a need to audit the education and healthcare infrastructure in the country. India, for example, can market both its education and health care potentials as a retort to the Western world.

    Otherwise, developing economies would continue to lose the best to the West and keep the rest for their own use.

    (Prabhjot Singh is a Toronto based senior journalist. He writes on sports, politics and culture. He can be reached at prabhjot416@gmail.com)

  • Indo-Canadians are emerging as a strong political entity

    Indo-Canadians are emerging as a strong political entity

    Indo-Canadian politicians after establishing their credibility at the community level, and now, on the basis of their track record, are  emerging as a strong political entity  with their growing presence on the provincial and federal stage.  When Ontario goes to polls in first week of June, they will be  major  playmakers,  says Prabhjot Singh, holding  their past record since their entry in provincial politics in British Columbia in 1986 has been a success story that every immigrant community across the globe should emulate.

    After making  a dent in the political scenario of the province of British Columbia in Canada in the early 80s when they sent Moe Sihota to the state legislature as an elected MLA on the New Democratic Party ticket, South Asian politicians have come a long way. They have not only scripted a success story but are a vibrant and rapidly growing political entity that has  successfully spread its wings  as  both federal and provincial  lawmakers.

    Born in Duncan, Moe  – Munmohan Singh – Sihota has been the second generation politician of Indian origin who served on the BC Cabinet in different capacities before heading the BC NDP.

    “Immigrants  from South Asia take more interest in politics back home than flex theirpolitical sinews in the new countries of their domicile. They, somehow, do not get assimilated in their new political environments.” This observation, made by one of the scholars-cum-writers on the Indian diaspora about 30 years ago, now needs to be revised. The South Asian politicians are now more into Canadian politics at all levels – from municipal to federal – than remaining involved in politics back home.  Their diminishing interest in politics back home was evident from their token presence in the just concluded Punjab Vidhan Sabha elections that gave a landslide win to the Aam Aadmi party with 92 of 117 seats.

    South Asian immigrants now not only occupy 20 odd seats in the House of Commons but also have one of them as the leader of a major federal party, the NDP. It is this leader, Jagmeet Singh, who earlier sat in the Ontario Provincial Parliament for nearly two terms, signed an agreement with the minority Liberal Government of Justin Trudeau to keep it in office till the completion of its term in 2024, for getting important demands of NDP, including free dental care, accepted.

    What started as a single seat in the British Columbia Provincial Parliament in October 1986 has now spread to five Provincial Parliaments that have South Asian politicians as members. The latest on the list is Saskatchewan that had in 2020 elected its first ever Indo-Canadian Gary Grewal from Regina.

    The South Asian politicians in general and Indo-Canadians in particular will now be sending 50-odd candidates for the ensuing elections to the Ontario Provincial Parliament in the first week of June. Besides representing the ruling Conservatives, they will also be contesting under the banners of Liberal, NDP, Green and other parties.

    Interestingly, most of these candidates are not only second generation Canadians but are also well qualified professionals, including lawyers, teachers, nurses, engineers and social activists with degrees from top universities in Canada. Only a handful of first generation politicians will be in fray for the June polls.

    The growth  of Indo-Canadian politicians has been phenomenal. Fourteen years after Moe Sihota was elected to British Columbia Provincial Parliament, Ujjal Dosanjh earned the distinction of becoming the first Indo-Canadian to take oath as Premier of British Columbia. The Indo-Canadian community, especially Punjabis, have, since then, not looked back. Though initial political successes came in British Columbia under the banner of NDP, the South Asian politicians jumped on the Liberal bandwagon for rapid strides in Canadian politics.

    The 1990 Calgary Convention of the Liberal Party, leading to the election of Jean Chretien as its leader, was a milestone, for it formed a solid, loyal voting block for the future Prime Minister of Canada. It was the first time the community organized itself as a political force.

    Some still believe that the events back home in 1984 was a strong factor that mobilized a small but highly vociferous community into a political group.

    Now 30 years later, the Indo-Canadian community not only boasts of  Indo-Canadian as Defense Ministers of Canada in Harjit Singh Sajjan or Anita Anand  or a Punjabi as the first woman Leader of the House of Commons in Bardish Chagger or first Punjabi Premier of British Columbia in Ujjal Dosanjh but  also  several  ministers  starting with Herb Dhaliwal, Navdeep Bains,  and Amarjit Sohi ; Gurbax Malhi, the first turbaned Sikh as Member of the House of Commons for five successive terms; and Grewals, Gurmant and wife Neena, as the first Punjabi couple in Parliament, but also several  Punjabis sitting in Provincial Parliaments of Ontario, British Columbia, Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan.

    In Ontario , Raminder Gill, who represented the Conservative Party, was  one of pioneers of Punjabi politicians  to be elected as  a Member of the Provincial Parliament. Since then, the number of  Punjabi politicians  as MPPs (Members of Provincial Parliament or MLAs in common parlance) has been growing with every election.

    Dr Gulzar Cheema has the distinction of sitting in both Manitoba and British Columbia Provincial Parliaments.

    Besides the 1990 Calgary convention of the Liberals, the emergence of this new phenomenon of ethno-politics in Canada is  also linked more to the election of three Indo-Canadians to the House of Commons in 1993 — Herb Dhaliwal, Gurbax Singh Malhi and Jag Bhaduria — it has been gradually gaining ground to what the Canadian media used to  describe as the “apna factor”, symbolizing a movement that was gaining strength using the “block voting” technique. Arguments given in favor of the “apna factor” and “block voting” techniques were substantiated by the fact that most of the political success stories, for example in Ontario,  came from the suburbs of major  cities like Brampton, Mississauga and Scarborough of the Greater Toronto Area. It is true that not many politicians of South Asian origin have won from the main cities. But things are changing.

    Late Deepak Obhrai, who won from Calgary East for a record number of times, used to attribute the influence of the Indo-Canadian community to a passion for politics that he believed was rooted in a movement that led to India’s Independence from Britain in 1947.

    It is pertinent to mention here that Kamagata Maru or the Ghadar Movement, too, took off from the shores of British Columbia in Canada, the region from where the battle for political recognition began. The then Indo-Canadians or Indian immigrants worked as lumberjacksand participated in development projects, before getting together and heading homewards to get their motherland freed.

    It was argued  that the freedom movement galvanized the whole nation as every cross-section of society was involved. It infused Indians with an intense interest in politics that is still palpable in the Indo-Canadian community, which has been called the “most politically active ethnic group in Canada now.”

    Interestingly, the Indo-Canadian community mostly  supported the NDP inBritish Columbia in provincial elections.  It  also ensured that  Sukh Dhaliwal now and HerbDhaliwal  earlier retained their  seat in the House of Commons as  Liberals. In Alberta, the Indo-Canadian community, though small in number, elected more Reform or Conservative  MPs. In Ontario,  initially they used to go  with Liberals in Federalelections  but gradually started supporting Conservatives also. It has supported both Liberals and Conservatives in the provincial elections.

    That diversity of view is seen at the elected level, where there are MPPs or MPs with the Reform, Liberals, NDP and Conservative parties. Some former Canadian MPs of Punjabi origin, including Gurbax Malhi, used to attribute the success of Indo-Canadian politicians totiming rather than to the “apna factor”. They argued  that Indo-Canadian politicians had spent many years establishing their credibility at the community level, and now on the basis of their track record, they are getting widespread voter support to jump to the provincial or federal stage.

    (To be concluded)

    (Prabhjot Singh is a veteran journalist with over three decades of experience covering a wide spectrum of subjects and stories. He has covered  Punjab and Sikh affairs for more than three decades besides covering seven Olympics and several major sporting events and hosting TV shows. For more in-depth analysis please visit probingeye.com  or follow him on Twitter.com/probingeye. He can be reached at prabhjot416@gmail.com)