NOON, FEBRUARY 13, 2010 – "Are there cops in those cars?" asked the cab driver when I told him I needed to get back to Hastings and Carrall as quickly as possible, my hot little pockets bulging with rectangles of footage.
I assured him a U-turn on Alberni and Denman Streets would be the last thing on a law-enforcement officer's mind at the moment, my Indian cab-driver pulled a U-ey and began heading east.
"Are you a journalist? I used to write for a newspaper back home. A Hindu paper," he said. I asked why he didn't continue his career in journalism. He laughed.
"They want you to have a certain level of education. They want you to speak English; they say, they must be able to understand you. They have so many requirements to get into this country," he said with artful precision – typical of educated Indians – that makes me shuffle my shoes in shame, wondering what the hell's wrong in our schools that I sound so sloppy in comparison.
"Then you get here, and what do you find? Your education is not good enough. Your English is not good enough. 'We can't understand you,' they claim. And you know that's not true. But they want you in their shops. Wiping floors in their hospitals. Driving their cabs," he said.
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