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The 31-year-old software programmer, who moved to Canada from India to study computer science at the University of Waterloo in 2018, has grown accustomed to seeing hateful posts about people of South Asian ancestry online听鈥� pointing to a recent post in a Waterloo Facebook group where a user, using a derogatory term for South Asians, says “they will never be Canadian and they all need to go back.”

Annamalai tries to ignore these online comments, because 鈥渢hat鈥檚 the nature of trolls.鈥� He says Canada has always been welcoming. But in the last year, he’s noticed a distinct shift.

鈥淟ately, things started getting a bit hateful online, but you’re starting to see it more and more coming to the real world.”

In the last six or seven months, he says he’s had at least 10 negative experiences he believes were motivated by hate toward South Asians, such as people rolling down their car windows and yelling at him to go back to where he came from, or giving him the finger unprovoked. In one instance, a man pushed him on the sidewalk in downtown Kitchener without explanation.

It comes against a backdrop of international students and temporary foreign workers increasingly being blamed for an affordability and housing crisis being felt in much of the country.

Recently, when a woman walking on the other side of the street gave him the finger,听Annamalai approached her and asked her what he did wrong.

“I’m being aggressive to you because too many Indians are in Canada and I want you to go back,鈥� the woman responds, before launching a tirade about how she believes 鈥淚ndians are taking over Canada鈥� and swearing at him repeatedly.

Annamalai, a Canadian citizen, on social media and it went viral. He says he shared it because these kinds of incidents are becoming far too common, and he feels people are more emboldened to express hate offline.听

鈥淚t happens once, it happens twice, you’re like, oh, people are just being bad,” he says. “But when it happens every week, and then it starts happening to your friends, that’s clearly a shift.”

York University Prof. Tania Das Gupta has observed a shift in public discourse, especially after some politicians started making statements about how immigrants are contributing to the affordability crisis, framing migrants, especially international students, as interlopers.

鈥淭hey are not Canadians. They are outsiders within. And they are using our services. They are using our housing. They’re using our food banks. They’re taking away jobs,鈥� says Das Gupta, who researches on South Asian diaspora, migration and labour issues. “These are old racist tropes that have been surfacing again.

“In the popular psyche, migrants are being now visualized as being South Asians,鈥� especially people from India, the largest source country of migrants in Canada, Das Gupta says.

She noticed a shift in the rhetoric in the wake of last year鈥檚 mass deportation of Indian students who claimed they were duped by an unscrupulous education recruiter and used fraudulent admission letters to apply for student permits to Canada, which she says feeds into the stereotypes that the group was taking advantage of Canada.

By association, an entire group is flagged and viewed through a different lens. And that kind of division and hate will spread if normalized, she warns. This can be felt听not only by newcomers, but all Canadians of South Asian ancestry.

Reena Kukreja, an associate professor of global development studies at Queen’s University, is researching the linkage between hateful discourse, its normalization and how that manifests in abuse in people鈥檚 day-to-day interactions.

Her research is focused on South Asian men working in the gig economy, such as rideshare drivers and food delivery, or what she calls 鈥渉yper-visible鈥� jobs. She says her findings show a 鈥渟harp rise in hate鈥澨�� some report they鈥檝e experienced a rise in overt racism, such as slurs, while others say they feel it in more passive-aggressive behaviours from customers.

鈥淥ne of the guys told me it’s the way they look at you, and then slam the door shut 鈥� it’s a continual reinforcement of two things: One is that Canada is a white-dominant country. And you do not belong here.鈥�

She says while such microaggressions can be hard to prove as outright discrimination, it creates a 鈥渃ontinual trauma that accumulates over time, where you feel as less worthy.”

鈥淭he moment when hate becomes banal, it is highly dangerous,” she says. “It becomes everyday, which is what I’m seeing right now.”

Mandeep Sehgal, a Canada Post worker and rideshare driver in Calgary, recently on social media of an interaction with a customer that quickly grew hostile. As the passenger enters the vehicle, he immediately asks Sehgal: 鈥淲here are you from? Don鈥檛 lie to me.鈥�

Not long after, the man starts yelling and cursing, claiming that he鈥檚 鈥渢he white blood of the land鈥� and telling Sehgal he鈥檚 not Canadian. Sehgal then pulls over and tells the customer to leave his vehicle.

Sehgal, a permanent resident who moved to Canada from India in 2017, says that was one of the more extreme examples, but adds he hears blatant or subtly racist comments at least once a week. Sehgal, a fan of country music, says people will ask him why he’s playing “white people music.鈥�

He says when he calls people out on their racist remarks, they act surprised, as if听“there’s nothing wrong with behaving like this.”

鈥淭hey try to be ignorant听after passing racist remarks, which is getting very common,鈥� he says. “These things are increasing, no doubt about it.”

, the U.S.-based Global Project Against Hate and Extremism has tracked a 鈥渕onumental spike鈥� in slurs and hate directed toward South Asians on fringe platforms popular with the far right.

On 4chan, a dark corner of the internet where perpetrators of hate-motivated attacks have posted about their plans before carrying them out, slurs directed toward South Asians more than doubled between January 2023 and 2024, from 11,427 to 25,420.听March 2024 saw a 16-month-high, with 32,703 instances of “extreme hate.” The platform is most popular in the United States, Canada and Australia, according to data from Statista.

On Gab, a platform with a similar interface to Twitter that was used to plan the United States Capitol attack, hate speech against South Asians increased by 251 per cent, from 197 posts to 691 over the same year. On Telegram, hateful messages about South Asians increased by 1,720 per cent, from 25 to 455 between January 2023 and 2024.

The report highlights that speech targeting South Asians听is not only common on fringe platforms, but also in the comments on websites like Instagram, where a post about Indians in Canada saw comments such as 鈥淲elcome to CANINDIA,鈥� and 鈥淪top making Canada India.鈥澨�

鈥淭here鈥檚 a considerable amount of research out there that shows that online hate doesn’t stay in the online space,鈥� says Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, who edited the report.

She points to a study from the University of Warwick听in England that showed by then-U.S. President Donald Trump correlated with an increase in hate crimes against those same groups.听

In Canada, police-reported hate crimes against South Asians have increased every year since 2020, with 228 incidents in 2023, compared to 135 in 2020.

But these statistics likely only represent a fraction of what is really happening, as many people don鈥檛 report their experiences, and a comment like 鈥淕o back to your country鈥� doesn鈥檛 typically meet the threshold of a hate crime, unless it precedes an act such as vandalism or assault, which could then be deemed hate-motivated.听

Peter Smith, a reporter and researcher with the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, says the recent acceleration of hate toward South Asians 鈥渟tarted on the far right 鈥� and has elbowed its way into the mainstream,鈥� becoming more prevalent on applications such as X, Instagram and TikTok.

The idea that immigrants are 鈥渢aking over鈥� or stealing jobs from white Canadians is a core tenet of the Great Replacement, a racist conspiracy theory that says there is a co-ordinated global effort to replace white people in North America and Europe.

The far right has seized upon anxieties about different groups over the years听鈥� whether it was Muslims in the mid- to late 2010s, as terrorist attacks by ISIS were constantly in the news, Chinese people during the pandemic, or the 鈥済lobalists,鈥� often seen as a code word for Jews. In recent years, the far right has been focused on gender identity and inclusion of transgender people in schools, Smith says.

鈥淭here is this kind of shifting target to find something that’s going to be popular and spread easily.鈥�

In October, an Environics poll found 58 per cent Canadians said there鈥檚 too much immigration, up from 44 per cent in 2023 and 27 per cent in 2022. It was the first time in 25 years that a majority of Canadians said the country is accepting too many immigrants.

Days later,听the Liberal government announced it would reduce its annual target for permanent residents by 21 per cent.

Under the economic stream, Canada鈥檚 immigration system favoured highly skilled, well-educated workers. The admission of temporary residents is supposed to ebb and flow based on capacity of schools to accommodate international students, the labour demand by employers and world events that drive refugees from their homes.

However, when border restrictions relaxed in late 2021 after the pandemic, Canada opened its door wide to foreign students in response to postsecondary institutions clamoring for international tuition revenues and to foreign workers to help employers fill surging vacancies听鈥� especially in low-wage, low-skilled jobs听鈥� as part of Ottawa鈥檚 post-COVID economic recovery strategy.

Since 2021, Canada’s temporary resident population skyrocketed from 924,850 to over three million, or 7.2 per cent of the overall 42 million population today.听The federal government has acknowledged it did not adapt quickly enough to adjust immigration levels听given the affordable housing crisis and rising cost of living, and the strain on public resources such as health care.听

A recent Statistics Canada report found that work permit holders have increasingly concentrated in sectors that mostly offer low-paying jobs such as accommodation and food services听鈥� jobs traditionally filled by young Canadians and recent newcomers. This has created a sense of competition between the working class and migrant workers, which is felt even more acutely when inflation is high and jobs are scarce.

While it’s valid to criticize Canada’s immigration system, it becomes problematic when people start blaming the individuals who are coming here, rather than a deliberate government policy that welcomed them, and seems designed to keep wages low, says Christopher Cochrane, an听associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto, Scarborough.

“It’s governments that are responsible for this,” he says. “It’s not the fault of the students that are coming here and paying these massive tuitions that are subsidizing all of the students from Ontario who are going to university.”

Novjot Salaria, a former international student from India who now works in IT on a work permit, says the tone toward international students and migrants has shifted from viewing them as 鈥淐OVID heroes鈥� who helped keep the Canadian economy running during the pandemic to being blamed for the country鈥檚 housing and affordability crisis.

She believes the blame game against migrants, many of them from India, is politically motivated and aimed at diverting听public attention from government policy failures.

“Canadians are their vote banks, so they want to make them happy by scapegoating us.鈥�

Annamalai echoes that statement, and says he wants to see the problem addressed by all levels of government. 听

After he posted the video of the woman yelling at him on X, numerous anonymous accounts responded with comments saying he’s not Canadian, telling him to go back to India and calling for “mass deportations.”听But he received far more support than backlash.

It has only strengthened his resolve to speak out on these issues.

鈥淧eople are trying to challenge it, but I know I’m Canadian 鈥� I do push back, but I’m not seeking validation from random people on the street.鈥�

He says despite his recent experiences, he still loves this country. And he believes the majority of Canadians are on his side.

鈥淚f I had a time machine, I would still do this all over again,鈥� he says. 鈥淲e have a problem, but we can come together and fix this.鈥�