Opinion | Donald Trump’s fear-mongering about migrant crime is fuelling hate in Canada and the world (Toronto Star)

When I was 9 years old and my immigrant family moved to Holland Landing, Ont., to operate the hamlet’s sole Chinese food restaurant, I was told often by well-meaning locals that we were “good immigrants,” and the “right type” to let in. As early as the age of 9, it was pressed upon me that bad immigrants exist and they take away jobs, they commit crimes and they cannot be trusted.

I was a child, so I was seen as harmless and my family hardworking. As a grown woman, a professor no less, I am told I am stealing jobs from more deserving white straight Canadian men. I am frequently dismissed as a “diversity hire” or was told by seemingly well-meaning white colleagues that I’m “so lucky to be a woman of colour right now” — a notion that dismisses my qualifications and hard work.

I am not lucky to be a woman of colour right now and Donald Trump’s false xenophobic rhetoric in the U.S. presidential debate accusing migrants of increasing crime, eating pets, and pouring over the border in the millions is actually putting all people of colour in more danger — in the U.S., in Canada and around the world.