Why are Indian students being targeted in Australia?

The desperate Indian students get the worst shifts and in shady locations. Being new in Australia, they don't know which suburbs to avoid. While going for the night shifts they catch the last train, bus or tram. And they become easy targets. Muggers know Indians, being new to the country, are less likely to resist.

Also, a lot of Indian students don't retaliate due to the fear that a police case might hamper their chance to get residency.

Friday and Saturday nights the crowds on the streets are high on alcohol and drugs and not at all friendly crowd. The Indian students have to deal with them in convenience stores, as security guards and taxi drivers.

There are also groups of teenagers of local and different ethnicity roaming the streets with pack mentality. They are always in good numbers and look for easy targets and assault innocent victims for sheer fun and to prove their machismo to their peers.

Even the cops stay away from them. There have been instances of abuse and assault on cops too. Indian students are among their easiest targets. The recent attack in Melbourne on the eve of Australia Day, January 26, was by a group of four to six Asian teenagers.

So we can see the chain reaction: billion dollar education business; mushroom growth in shady vocational training institutes to make quick bucks; poor loan-burdened Indian students desperate for work picking up risky jobs; easy targets.

The world is no different from a class room. The more you cry, the more you are bullied. Now it has become a fashion to assault Indian students. The more we react the more we become the victim. For the locals, bashing an Indian make them overnight sensations and they enjoy all the publicity and hype in the media. Even if they are arrested and charged the damage is already done.

But I am hopeful things will change, once the immigration slows down.