MUMBAI: Canada’s Immigration Minister has announced an intake cap on international students for a period of two years. For 2024, this translates into 3.60 lakh approved study permits – a decrease of 35% from the previous year’s figure. This announcement follows that of requiring students to have double the amount of money in their bank accounts viz:
Canadian dollars
(CAD) 20,635 to be eligible for a Canadian study permit, to meet the cost of living in Canada.
Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association
(CILA) in its press release has highlighted other means that would better protect international students and promote the integrity of the country’s higher education and immigration systems.
CILA
states:
- Federal and provincial governments must work together to identify how to fund our higher education system in a more sustainable fashion so that colleges and universities are not so reliant on international students to fund their operations.
- The federal government needs to set more realistic expectations to international students about the feasibility of obtaining permanent residence following graduation. The federal government, in concert with colleges, universities, and immigration consultants continue to tout Canada’s temporary residence to permanent residence (PR) pathways, when the reality is attaining PR is a very competitive process that is far from a foregone conclusion.
- IRCC may wish to consider increasing the English- and French-language proficiency requirements so that approved international students are better equipped to succeed in Canadian classrooms, the economy, and society.
- Re-introduce the Post-Graduation Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) to international graduates so that employers with genuine labour shortages can obtain work permits for international graduates with in-demand skills. This can also help such international graduates improve their odds of transitioning to PR.
- Better regulate the conduct of immigration consultants in Canada and overseas to deter them from engaging in unethical behavior or with unauthorized agents that exploit international students.
Barbara Jo Caruso
, founder of an immigration law firm and Co-President at CILA has posted on a social media platform, “It is unfortunate that foreign students are the scapegoats for poor management of this portfolio at all levels of government. For almost a decade the number of foreign students has been significantly outpacing the target set by the federal government. So, it is not surprising that a ‘crisis’ has resulted, but it isn’t really fair to set caps. Much more prudent is to manage expectations of foreign students about how long they can stay, especially by cracking down on the bad actors in the industry, limit the right to work in Canada while attending school and increase the criteria for qualifying.”
Ken Nickel-Lane, founder of an immigration services firm states, “The Designated Learning Institute (DLI) list needs a serious clean up for a start. Thereafter, whoever ends up deciding how intake-cap volumes are allocated should also be required to do so in alignment with the ‘Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) and the immigration agency, so that graduates that are coming out are those that are in demand by the industry.”
Pavan Dhillon, immigration attorney was of the view that the minimum fund requirement should be even higher (even though they were just doubled). Further, we also need to see better work permit options for longer-term success for the hundreds of thousands of students already in Canada as temporary residents.
Josh Schachnow, an immigration lawyer and tech co-founder agrees that the government should follow up with more improvements to target the right students and set them up for success in Canada in the long-term.
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