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Do not you dare say good riddance to them, my students, my friends—they are mostly good, sincere, and kind. They are not mere numbers, not shadows to be swept away. Canada’s immigration system has spiralled wild, a tempest unleashed when there should have been calm—no cap on international students, madness blooming like weeds in an untended garden and then cursing the weeds when we have not tended our garden?
No nation can swell so swiftly; our infrastructure groans and our health care shatters—emergency rooms turned into walk-in clinics for those lost without physicians. Yet, do not you dare say good riddance to my students if they must leave.
“We know they are lying. / They know they are lying,” wrote Solzhenitsyn, a sigh from the cold steppe, “They know we know they are lying. / We know they know we know they are lying. / But they are still lying.”
We lure them with certificates and diplomas—thin veils they see through, we see through. They often come not for lessons but work visas, which point toward permanent residency and a dream of citizenship.
It is not an easy path.
We shift the rules beneath their feet—cruel and unyielding. They are not foes; they are my grandmother, age twelve, stepping off a boat from Kerrykeel, Ireland, chasing a better dawn.
They arrive, not rich, bearing burdens—supporting themselves where work is scarce. Politicians pushed open the spigots, the Liberals ravenous for votes. Over half of immigrants, once citizens, mark their ballots Liberal—swing ridings tipped by design.
These politicians and college administrators are wolves; they care not for my students but only for power, votes, votes, and votes.
Do not say good riddance to my students if they must leave.
I would not let my children—their age—dwell in a Brampton basement, paying $600 to share a room with two others. I would not send them two hours by bus to school, shivering at stops, clinging to kin or a fragile minimum-wage job and wearing a cheap coat they bought at Walmart.
When an ambulance wails to my university, a student falls from exhaustion—we must not say good riddance if they surrender or are forced to leave. How dare we scorn them? Too many stumble with frail English—how did they pass the tests? We don’t ask; we don’t want the truth.
We offer no work, no homes, and when we build residences, we charge beyond market rent—goddam our naked greed. Yet, do not hate them, and do not say good riddance when they depart, broken and betrayed.
“Do not go gentle into that good night,” Dylan Thomas urged, and they fight—claiming refugee status, crafting tales of sudden identities, hiring lawyers who spin bad fiction. When claims pass, and they wed their opposite-sex loves, calling it bisexuality, do not sneer.
We drove them to this, treating them as vote fodder, not souls.
On the street, two turbaned Sikhs pass in Giant Tiger coats—say hello, meet their eyes. They are your ancestors, reborn. “Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear, and the blind can see,” Mark Twain whispered. Buy them tea—they prefer tea—and show who we could be as Canadians.
Save your wrath for the Liberals who herded them like dairy cows for milk, like private college lords drunk on avarice, or consultants peddling dreams that were lies that curdle into slogs.
Would we overcrowd the pasture and curse the cows for breaking the fence?
Do not say good riddance to them if they must leave. Bring the best, speak plainly—if they cannot stay, say so. Test their language true; ease their housing woes with clean, cheap residences, not greed-soaked shells. Stop dehumanising my students.
Goddam you who mutter, “good riddance.” We opened the door and invited them in—how dare we curse them for sitting on our couch? What cruelty, what madness, to say good riddance to those we invited in.
Do not say good riddance to my students; shut your mouth. Most have done no wrong; they came with the same dreams as your ancestors. The fact is that our monstrous politicians and greedy academic administrators have treated them as fuel for their ambition and money to bloat their bank accounts.
We have traded truth for blackness in the ledger—greed now inked in permanent stain. But do not blame my students.
There is blame here. Direct it properly. We want immigrants, but we need a plan that is best for Canada. Of course, the numbers must be smaller, but I do not say good riddance to my poor, broken students when they give up and go home.
