When Vanesa Ortiz came to Calgary from Mexico, she found herself in a city gripped by winter. Outside the airport, it was -15C (5F).

“I would come to understand that this was not an extreme cold,” she said. “But in the moment it was terrifying.

But she also found in those first moments an immense warmth. She was welcomed by elderly volunteers in white cowboy hats, and Ortiz soon felt that Calgary was a place she could one day raise a family. And yet when the teacher reflects on that moment a decade ago, she worries that the opportunities she had to put down roots could be soon closed to others.

This week, Alberta held a referendum, asking residents to weigh in on the province’s relationship with Canada – and the extent to which the province should restrict some newcomers’ access to healthcare, education and social support. It also asked about the need for constitutional reforms.

While unofficial results show both the separation and constitutional questions will fail, the ones on immigration are likely to succeed.

“I love Calgary and I love Alberta,” said Ortiz. “But when I hear people asking whether people should get access to these services – I mean, that was my daughter’s education. That was my family’s healthcare.”

The referendum amplified the grievances of fringe separatists, but it also exposed a central tension in Alberta’s approach to immigration. Even as the oil-rich province seeks newcomers to fill shortages in the job market, the provincial government wants to limit services available to some of those same workers.

The governing United Conservative party blames the rapid population growth for overcrowded and underfunded hospitals and schools. But critics say the proposed solution – restricting access to healthcare, education and social supports – could leave workers and their families more vulnerable without fully addressing the underlying causes of the crisis.

The referendum asked if the government should introduce a law ensuring only Canadian citizens, permanent residents and “individuals with an Alberta-approved immigration status” can access healthcare and education. Another asked if newcomers should have lived in Alberta for 12 months before qualifying for certain social support programmes and allowing the province to charge some temporary residents fees for healthcare and education.

Earlier in the year, the Alberta premier, Danielle Smith, blamed the immigration policy of Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government for the resource strains in classrooms, emergency rooms and social support systems. And in a social media post, Smith said: “For every $1 of taxes a guest worker generates, taxpayers are covering $10 in services. This is not sustainable.”

Canada’s federal government has since trimmed immigration targets and placed restrictions on its temporary foreign worker program amid criticisms it was being abused by large companies. But the western province’s economy relies on workers from abroad to fill jobs in sectors, like agriculture, food services and tourism, where employers struggle to recruit or retain enough staff.

Ortiz, who works with the non-profit Asociación de Mexicanos en Calgary, worries mounting skepticism towards migrant workers will push workers into the shadows and make them more vulnerable to labor exploitation.

“I can’t imagine the scale of the harm that a policy like this might create,” she said, noting that thousands of farm workers in the province don’t receive healthcare.

Ortiz has seen views shift on immigration in recent years and says the results of the referendum reflect a population that is “squeezed” economically.

“Scapegoating non-permanent residents is not going to lower the cost of living. That’s not going to fix our classrooms. They keep essential services open. In many cases, they are frontline workers. And now they’re being treated as disposable.”

For some residents, the proposals represent a sharp reversal from Alberta’s earlier efforts to attract newcomers. The UCP government invested in recruitment and expanded its provincial immigration nomination targets to address labour shortages. But as a growing number of Albertans sour on immigration, the government position has shifted.

Ximena González, a Calgary-based writer, said when the provincial government began its campaign to bring in more people, it “wanted more workers to exploit”, noting that most workers come from abroad on temporary permits.

“Now, the message feels more out in the open: ‘We wanted you to come, to exploit you. And now, we don’t need you any more – so we will punish you.”

The provincial government has claimed that temporary residents, who make up almost 6% of Alberta’s total population, contribute roughly $150m in tax revenues but cost the province more than $1bn annually in health, education and other social services.

But González argues that there is no data to back that claim.

Economist Gillian Petit notes that temporary residents also remit taxes to the federal government, which helps fund Alberta’s healthcare, meaning those residents probably contribute far more than the province acknowledges. If they contribute less in total tax dollars than other Albertans, it is because they earn less than the median resident. They are also less likely to use healthcare and education resources than the average Albertan.

“In all honesty, if I were a temporary resident and had to choose whether or not to stay, I wouldn’t,” said González, who came to Canada 16 year ago as an international student. “I would not feel wanted, and I don’t want to be treated like a third-class citizen.”

She says that media fixation on Alberta’s fringe independence movement meant the other questions in the referendum received little scrutiny and left voters uninformed.

“The media failed to help people to make an educated vote – instead of just voting based on racism.”

Economist Jim Stanford said hundreds of thousands of residents skipped over those questions on immigration, choosing to only answer the one on separation.

“This cannot remotely be interpreted as a mandate for the government to crack down on immigration,” he said, adding the province didn’t have the power to “unilaterally” act on these proposals. “This was a symbolic ideological exercise and gives a cast of legitimacy to some of these very rightwing nativist sentiments that are bubbling in the far right of Alberta politics.”

During a series of town halls over the years led by the government, more extreme views on immigration were clear. One resident received cheers after suggesting a policy of mass deportations and another said immigrants “harm” children and suggested she might seek asylum in the US.

For Ortiz, the government’s about-face reflects a “betrayal” of the workers who have helped build the province.

“We’re asking people if we should remove the right to access healthcare and education from taxpayers who are, quite literally, building our communities,” she said. “But I also worry that what gets lost in this debate is these people. They are not just labour. They work, study and raise their children here. They need to know they deserve the chance to build a life with dignity and with respect to feel safe and to feel welcome.”