‘Not a back-door entry to citizenship’ Marc Miller stresses importance of caps on international students

His messaging continues to get clearer and firmer:

The era of uncapped intake of international students is over, federal immigration minister Marc Miller said during a visit to Calgary, adding the cost of lost revenue borne by post-secondary institutions from students who would have been enrolled must be replaced by provincial investment in education.

“We have to make this a system that is more quality-oriented,” Miller told Postmedia.

“We have to make sure that we have more diversity, more qualified, more talented bunch of people coming into the country, and to make sure that they know exactly what they’re getting into — Canada is not a cheap place to live in.”

Miller’s comments on the federal government’s renewed approach to immigration came in an interview on Saturday following a ceremony at Stampede where 25 people were granted Canadian citizenship. The special guests at the event included Miller and Mayor Jyoti Gondek.

Miller stressed the path to citizenship for those people had been a long, grinding one. “And they’re going to make Canada even better than what it is already the best country in the world.” But he also emphasized citizenship was a privilege and not a right for everyone who entered the country.

He added: “We need to take a step back and look at the historic volumes of people coming here and their impact on housing and health care, on education and the infrastructure needs of this country,” while recognizing, “that a lot of those people are necessary to maintain the health-care system that we have as part of our national identity.”

Source: ‘Not a back-door entry to citizenship’ Marc Miller stresses importance of caps on international students