In this episode of My Great Canada, we chat with Nicholas Keung, an immigration reporter for the Toronto Star. He has written extensively about Canadian immigration, refugee, and border policies, as well as the lived experience of the migrants impacted by these policies. As a former international student and immigrant, the Hong Kong native started his journalistic career at Sing Tao Daily, a Chinese language newspaper in Toronto, covering municipal politics and the police beat.
You’ve enjoyed a prolific career as a journalist, heading immigration stories with the Toronto Star for nearly 27 years. Can you share the journey that led to this long standing appointment?
It’s actually a very long journey. I was born and raised in Hong Kong and I went to university in the States. And then I came to Canada in the early 90s.
I had a difficult time. It was during the recession in Canada – and I think globally as well – and I had a tough time finding employment. For a year and a half, I actually worked in a food court. In the kitchen. Counter help. And fortunately, I saw this ad in the Chinese paper. (I, like a lot of newcomers, relied on the ethnic media for information.) They were looking for someone who was bilingual in Chinese and in English to be a general assignment reporter.
I worked for the Chinese paper for 3 years, and during that period, there were a lot of high-profile crime stories in Toronto, involving the Chinese community. So I met a lot of, quote unquote, “mainstream reporters”. A couple of people were actually from the Toronto Star and they connected me with the editors for an internship program and I was on contract for some time. I joined the Star in the late 90s. I spent some time on general assignments. Then I started covering the immigration beat in 2003.
So to be exact, I’ve been covering the immigration beat for 21 years, and spent 6 years or so on general assignments with the Toronto Star.
The industry today is just quite different than it was in the late 90s. Can you share your perspective on the difference between the focus of media when you first started compared to the range of current interest points today?
The perspectives actually have changed a lot. I think when I started, it was more top down. What I mean by that is that the media coverage was mainly through the lens of policy makers. The agenda was directed by Ottawa, and the general approach to these stories was from an economic perspective. It was about how immigration could address Canada’s economic needs. Back then, too, there was a strong narrative of “us and them” — these were foreigners who needed help or who had different cultural traditions and values.
But I think, slowly and gradually, the perspective has changed. We are hearing more perspectives from migrants themselves, and about their lived experience under these policies. And there’s also more . . . organizing. I think it has so much to do with technology. We have all these social media outlets, like Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter . . . so you’ve started hearing more voices. For example, you would have people affected by the backlogs in parent and grandparent sponsorships, and then they would form a group and start self advocacy.
I think what is happening now is that the paradigm has shifted a bit – from the top down to the bottom up. We started to hear the voices and perspectives from more migrants, and that’s reflected in media stories. More stories are told from the immigrant perspective.
I think, also, we are seeing more diverse newsrooms across Canada. When I started, to be honest, most newsrooms across Canada were still quite . . . homogeneous. You know that’s a code word, what I’m trying to say. Over the years, second generations of immigrants have gotten to pursue careers in journalism. And I think all these little things have an impact now in the way we cover immigration stories.
How do you measure success when you put out impactful stories and you don’t see the results immediately?
I think if my stories can at least get one reader to have a better understanding of a trend, a policy, and can relate to the experience of that migrant – that to me is a success.
And of course, there are instances where, for example, I recently did a story about a refugee from Ethiopia who got this offer for a residency position in the U.S. But because he is only a protected person, he had trouble actually getting the necessary documents from Health Canada to apply for the American visa to start his job. Within a week of the story, he actually got the document he needed. There are stories where you can see an immediate impact.
But there are things that [don’t have an immediate impact]. For example, the series investigation back in 2019, when we started writing about the challenges within the International Student program. 5 years later, in 2024, we started to see the federal government actually taking action and taking a serious look at some of the issues within the program. I’m by no means trying to take credit for these changes just because we flagged the issue back then. I just feel that all this knowledge and information accumulates.
Going back to your question about how I measure success: If our stories can make a difference – make Canada better – I think that’s the bottom line. Whether it’s one story that changed the fate of a person or whether it’s helping Canadians put themselves into the shoes of migrants and see their perspective.
I always look at mass media as a way for people in a society – who would never have had the opportunity to cross paths – to actually meet one another. At the end of the day, it is about nation building, right? How you connect people. How to be human and empathetic. I think that’s the way I approach journalism.
This interview has been edited for this article. You can find the full podcast episode here.
