Ottawa’s delayed strategy on foreign students

2023/12/16 Leave a comment

Even the Star is critical:

Foreign students didn’t create the country’s current housing shortage. Blame should also not fall on the shoulders of temporary foreign workers, refugee claimants or new immigrants to this country.

Blame rightly falls to governments that failed to see the flashing warning signs of a housing shortage for years and a federal government that has put out the welcome mat to new arrivals and essentially had them sleep on the floor.

But the mushrooming number of international students pouring into this country has been a contributing factor to our housing woes and from a political perspective, they had become a problem for the federal Liberals. If potential voters saw them as a problem, the Liberal had to act. But they had to act carefully so as not to appear to be scapegoating others for their policy failures.

So first steps to curb their numbers are welcome. If the Liberals can sell the changes as a way to protect the well-being of future students, so much the better from a political standpoint. Still, it falls into the category of a move that was long overdue, a tiny fix to a problem long ignored.

Immigration Minister Marc Miller is vowing to crack down on the exploitative practice of luring students here with promises of backdoor permanent resident status. But he cannot move too aggressively, mindful of the fact that international students are a rich vein of revenue for Canadian universities. Here, there must be pressure on universities and colleges to properly support the students who contribute so much to their bottom line.

International students contribute $22 billion annually to this country’s economy and supporting an estimated 200,000 Canadian jobs. He also cannot price a post-secondary education out of reach of students of limited means and make a Canadian degree attainable only to the elite.

Under his revised measures, students will need to show they have at least $20,635 to cover living expenses in this country, in addition to what they need to cover a year’s tuition and travel costs. That’s a significant hike from the current threshold of $10,000, a figure untethered to reality which has not been revised upward for two decades. Miller also plans to reduce the number of hours international students can spend doing paid work, allowing the 40-hour limit to continue only until the end of April, 2024 at which time it is likely to be cut to 30 hours or less. The minister quite rightly argues that working 40 hours per week while studying here is “untenable.”

He also says he will crack down on a system which he likened to the diploma equivalent of “puppy mills” in which diplomas are churned out without providing a legitimate student experience and profit is made on selling “backdoor” entry points to permanent Canadian residence. He’s right. But it must be noted that this has been allowed to fester under the Liberal watch.

Immigration levels hit record highs under the Liberals. Miller has recently announced a freeze on that level beginning in 2026, but his government will welcome 485,000 permanent residents in 2024 and 500,000 in 2025. When the Liberals were elected in 2015, the immigration intake was set at 265,000 per year. Canada’s population hit 40 million last summer, part of the largest year-over-year percentage increase in population in 66 years, with the country on a path to double its population in 25 years. The 2.2 million non-permanent residents living in this country on July 1, 2023, comprised largely of temporary workers and international students, was up 46 per cent over the previous year.

According to documents cited by the Globe and Mail, the government anticipated 949,000 foreign student applicants this year, a number expected to rise to about 1.4 million by 2027.

Freezing immigration levels and limiting the number of international students will help ease the pressure on housing, although those who are struggling with soaring rents or are unable to buy a home are unlikely to see the benefits before the next election. The only solution is to expedite the construction of housing and the Liberals have – again belatedly – begun to act on that. Other measures, while welcome, are really just tinkering on the edges.

Source: Ottawa’s delayed strategy on foreign students

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Mahboubi and Skuterud: Canada must stem the surge in temporary foreign workers and international students

2023/12/15 Leave a comment

More needed analysis and commentary:

Recent years have seen an unprecedented increase in Canada’s non-permanent resident population, far surpassing increases in annual admissions of new permanent residents. The unbalanced growth in Canada’s temporary and permanent migration inflows will inevitably result in a growing undocumented population and forced deportations. Both developments risk inflaming Canada’s immigration politics and undermining public confidence in the immigration system.

It is imperative that the government take immediate steps to stem the continuing growth in foreign student and temporary foreign worker entries.

Several factors have contributed to the non-permanent resident (NPR) population surge, including ad-hoc programs aimed at expanding eligibility for permanent resident (PR) status, increasing postsecondary reliance on international student tuition revenue and eased employer access to temporary foreign workers, most notably those in low-wage occupations.

Statistics Canada estimates that by the third quarter of 2023 Canada’s NPR population had reached 2.2 million, while entries of new permanent residents remained below 500,000 and which the government has announced will stabilize in 2025. The tightening bottleneck in temporary-to-permanent residency flows is, in fact, worse, because most PR slots continue to be filled by applicants residing abroad, not from Canada’s NPR population.

A key factor driving the growth in NPR inflows is the government’s repeated announcements of ad-hoc programs aimed at easing the pathway to PR status for lower-skilled migrants who would otherwise struggle to clear the hurdle of the Express Entry skills-based points system. Allocation of PR slots has increasingly become a lottery incentivizing large numbers of migrants to try their luck at obtaining Canadian PR status.

But given the limited number of PR admissions, large numbers of justifiably hopeful NPRs will be unable to realize their dreams. As their study and work permits expire, many will be unable or unwilling to return to their home countries. These migrants will become increasingly vulnerable to workplace exploitation, distorting wage outcomes in lower-skilled labour markets, and poverty, which government supports are unable to address because of their ineligibility.

Canada urgently requires a multipronged strategy to stem the continuing growth of the NPR population and restore the stability and integrity of the immigration system. In our view, policies should be aimed at augmenting migrants’ own incentives to seek NPR status in Canada.

On the international student front, we recommend reintroducing the cap on foreign students’ off-campus work hours at 20 a week; it was waived in October, 2022, and recently extended to April 30, 2024. The punting of this issue down the road is unhelpful in restoring predictability for prospective foreign students. Study permits have become de facto work permits incentivizing migrants whose primary objective is accessing Canadian jobs, not human capital investments.

We also recommend restricting study permits to institutions of a certain standard. Too many private colleges are essentially used as stepping stones to residency. Designated learning institutionswhose students are currently ineligible for postgraduation work permits should also be ineligible for study permits. The government should also seek to undesignate institutions based on the measured immigration and labour market outcomes of their graduates. Moreover, these metrics should be regularly published by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) to help prospective migrants make informed decisions and to combat false dreams pushed by education recruiters.

On the temporary foreign worker front, the government must reconsider extended measures allowing, for example, 30 per cent of the work forces of employers in specific industries to be composed of low-wage temporary foreign workers. Stemming the growth in the low-wage stream of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and restoring the pre-2020 hiring regulations would recognize recent evidence of the adverse effects of this program on wages and local unemployment rates.

Most important, the government needs to bring back predictability in its system for allocating PR admissions in the economic-class applicant pool. Though well-intentioned, ad-hoc programs aimed at easing the pathway to PR status are contributing to growth in TR inflow. IRCC needs to return to relying on the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) for allocating PR admissions, as it did before 2020. Given the transparency of the CRS “points system” and a stable CRS cutoff over time, unsuccessful applicants can see what human capital investments they need to be successful, thereby advancing the objectives of our skilled immigration program.

If these policy levers are collectively applied, they can stem growth in Canada’s NPR population, restore fairness and transparency in the PR system and secure the immigration system’s integrity and sustainability. In doing so, we can ensure that Canada continues to be a welcoming and prosperous country for all.

Parisa Mahboubi is a senior policy analyst at the C.D. Howe Institute. Mikal Skuterud is a professor of economics at the University of Waterloo, director of the Canadian Labour Economics Forum and a fellow-in-residence of the C.D. Howe Institute.

Source: Canada must stem the surge in temporary foreign workers and international students

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Immigration Minister planning ‘broad’ program to create citizenship path for undocumented in Canada 

2023/12/15 Leave a comment

We will see. However, Minister Miller appears more thoughtful and aware than his predecessors in discussing the issues:

Ottawa is preparing to create a path to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of people who have lived and worked in Canada illegally for years, starting with construction workers, Immigration Minister Marc Miller says.

In an interview, Mr. Miller said he is preparing to create a “broad and comprehensive program” that would allow many without valid documents to apply for permanent residency. Among those included would be people who entered the country legally, as temporary workers or international students, and then remained here after their visas expired.

The minister said he plans to present a proposal to cabinet in the spring on allowing undocumented immigrants to “regularize their status.” But he acknowledged the policy may face opposition.

“The conversation on regularizing people that are here, and by my estimation – my belief – should be Canadian, is not one that’s unanimous in the country,” he said. “We have to have a greater conversation as a country about that.”

There are an estimated 300,000 to 600,000 people living in the country without valid documents, he added. Many have been working here for decades and have children, but risk deportation because they lack formal status.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has been considering creating a program for undocumented workers since shortly after the last election. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s mandate letter to former immigration minister Sean Fraser in 2021 asked him to “further explore ways of regularizing status for undocumented workers who are contributing to Canadian communities.”

Mr. Miller suggested that not all those without valid documents would be allowed to apply for permanent residency, including those who have arrived recently in Canada.

But he said he is planning in the near future to roll out a program that would allow construction workers living in Canada without legal status to apply for residency, to help address Canada’s shortage of skilled workers able to build homes.

Creating a path for undocumented construction workers to settle in Canada would be a “good way to test the narrative” of the wider program he is planning to present to cabinet, Mr. Miller said.

But he said he understands how some immigrants who came to Canada legally may feel about people they think “got a pass.”

“These are people that are already here, already contributing and have kids,“ he said of undocumented workers. “People do get worked up about numbers, but the reality is that they are already here.”

He said it “makes absolutely no sense” that people who have been here for decades and have children have not been able to obtain legal status. He added that Canada’s immigration policy needs refining and “tailoring to the reality on the ground.”

Mr. Miller said he is planning further reforms to Canada’s immigration system to bolster its integrity, including changes to temporary foreign worker and international student programs.

The federal government has raised its immigration targets in recent years. It announced last month that it would freeze the number of new permanent residents it hopes to admit each year at 500,000 in 2026. Recent polls have shown public support waning for the scale of new arrivals, and some of those polls have linked the issue to a shortage of affordable housing. But Mr. Miller said the underlying figures suggest there is still broad support for immigration.

“Of all the countries in the world, Canada is seen, in a vast consensus, as having gotten it right,” he said.

“But when we get things wrong, and we get policies wrong, you create fertile ground for people to weaponize the issue.”

A number of countries, including France, Hungary and Germany, have seen an upsurge of support in recent years for hard-right politicians pursuing anti-immigrant policies. Mr. Miller said he does not want to see this repeated in Canada. He noted “the headwinds we’re seeing across the world with countries that have a significant influx of immigrants – a tendency and an ability to weaponize it.”

“I think the last thing we need as a country is a prominent leader to say something idiotic, or weaponize the issue of immigrants and make it into a campaign slogan,” he said. “We see in countries where it happens what it leads to.”

He said he plans to look at “adjusting our public policies to make sure we’re being we’re being smart about the type of people coming to this country, and what they can contribute.”

He added that there was “robust discussion on both ends of the spectrum” in cabinet about whether to freeze the federal immigration targets, reduce them or raise them further.

“The general consensus was to stabilize it and to have a look over the next year as to what that looks like and the pressures that we continue to face,” he said.

Mr. Miller said in areas such as construction and health care, immigrants are indispensable. “But again, we just have to be a little more careful in how we are in our tailoring these policies to the reality on the ground,” he said.

Last week, he doubled the amount of money international students need to prove they have in order to qualify for study permits. The reform is expected to significantly cut the number arriving here.

Mr. Miller said he is concerned about exploitation of international students by agents, who charge thousands of dollars to help them apply to schools, in some cases sub-standard colleges that he has said churn out graduates like “puppy mills.”

Some students have faced deportation after it emerged that they had entered Canada with forged college acceptance letters provided by agents. Mr. Miller said fraud is only one aspect of the abuse that occurs, but is widespread. “It occurs in source countries, it occurs in Canada. And it’s one where it’s gone unchecked for way too long.”

Source: Immigration Minister planning ‘broad’ program to create citizenship path for undocumented in Canada 

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Globe editorial: When it comes to international students, ‘show me the money’ is only half a policy

2023/12/13 Leave a comment

Valid critique that politicians (and stakeholders IMO) are to blame:

The Liberals, as well as the opposition parties, have been loathe to blame immigrants, temporary foreign workers, international students and refugees for a housing crisis that has been fuelled by rapidly growing demand combined with a stagnant supply. They should be loathe to, because it is the politicians who are to blame.

Until the housing crisis emerged, Ottawa and the provinces turned a blind eye to shady “diploma mills” in Canada that sell dodgy educations as a back door to permanent residency. They also let the temporary foreign workers program turn into a massive cheap labour boondoggle that brings hundreds of thousands into the country.

Ottawa made a shocking error this year when it secretly waived rules for temporary visitors that required them to prove they would leave the country when their visas expired, leading to a huge surge in refugee claims at airports. The Trudeau government has also refused to alter its plan to increase annual immigration targets.

Source: When it comes to international students, ‘show me the money’ is only half a policy

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Macron Suffers Surprise Setback Over Immigration in France

2023/12/13 Leave a comment

Of note (another country having difficulties passing immigration legislation):

President Emmanuel Macron of France suffered an unexpected setback on Monday as lawmakers brought his government’s immigration overhaul bill to a screeching halt, casting fresh doubts on his ability to get key legislation through Parliament.

The bill, which tries to strike a balance between cracking down on illegal immigration and extending work opportunities for migrants with needed skills, had been in the making for over a year. The government struggled to find a mix of measures that would pass muster in the lower house, the National Assembly, where Mr. Macron’s centrist party and its allies do not hold an absolute majority.

But those hopes were dashed on Monday when the lower house passed a motion to reject the bill without further discussion. The motion by the Green party, one of several left-wing opposition groups in Parliament, received 270 votes in favor and 265 against. Parliamentary debate that was expected to begin Monday and last two weeks was immediately cut short.

Immigration has long been a fixation of French politics. The bill would be the 29th immigration and asylum law in four decades in France, a country that is often described by politicians and commentators, particularly on the right, as fending off an out-of-control influx of migrants.

The rejection was a particularly stinging blow for Gérald Darmanin, Mr. Macron’s tough-talking interior minister, who had staked a lot of political capital on getting the bill passed without resorting to a constitutional tool known as the 49.3. The government used that tool, which allows certain bills to be passed without a vote, earlier this year to ram through Mr. Macron’s unpopular pension reform, a method that was ultimately successful but bruising.

Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader, said after the vote that Mr. Macron’s centrist alliance had “forgotten” how to govern without the 49.3.

Source: Macron Suffers Surprise Setback Over Immigration in France

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Ex-BoC boss David Dodge: We need economic strategy focused on investment, not consumption

2023/12/12 Leave a comment

As always, thoughtful analysis, expressed clearly and without ambiguity, nailing the main failing of the government’s immigration approach in terms of improving productivity:

When I ask Mr. Dodge if Canadian businesses habitually rely too heavily on hiring when they need to increase their capacity, rather than investing in more machinery, equipment and technology, he concurs. What’s more, he believes Ottawa’s pursuit of historically high immigration levels is exacerbating this problem – “filling every hole that’s there, rather than allowing the market to work.”

That not only provides a disincentive to invest and innovate, he suggests, but it props up our least-productive companies.

“The last thing we want is a bunch of low-productivity businesses hanging on because we provide them cheap labour. That’s not the way we’re going to raise national income.”

Source: Ex-BoC boss David Dodge: We need economic strategy focused on investment, not consumption

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Clark: Population growth is the housing issue politicians can’t keep ducking

2023/12/12 Leave a comment

Indeed:

All of that is not a reason for Canada to turn its back on immigration, and its many benefits. The problem was an abject failure to plan.

But it does mean that in the short term, there is a policy lever governments can pull now to cool the housing market. That is temporarily slowing the growth of temporary residents – capping the number of new students and new temporary workers. That could prevent another year of high rent increases on new leases.

Avoiding the issue – avoiding an unavoidable fact about the housing crisis – will only pile misery onto past failures.

Source: Population growth is the housing issue politicians can’t keep ducking

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Australia to halve immigration intake, toughen English test for students – BBC.com

2023/12/12 Leave a comment

Given that the Canadian immigration system is similarly broken – lack of integrated planning bt levels and impacts, ongoing service delivery issues, focus on pop growth rather than per capita GDP etc – Canada might wish to consider a more dramatic fundamental review and changes than announced to date:

The Australian government says it will halve the migration intake within two years in an attempt to fix the country’s “broken” immigration system.

It aims to slash the annual intake to 250,000 – roughly in line with pre-pandemic levels – by June 2025.

Visa rules for international students and low-skilled workers will also be tightened under the new plan.

Migration has climbed to record levels in Australia, adding pressure to housing and infrastructure woes.

But there remains a shortage of skilled workers, and the country struggles to attract them.

Unveiling a new 10-year immigration strategy at a media briefing on Monday, Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said the migration system had been left “in tatters” by the previous government.

A review earlier this year found the system was “badly broken” – unnecessarily complex, slow and inefficient – and in need of “major reform”.

A record 510,000 people came to Australia in the year to June 2023, but the minister said her government would “bring numbers back under control” and reduce the annual migration intake by around 50%.

Among the new measures are tougher minimum English-language requirements for international students, and more scrutiny of those applying for a second visa – they must prove that any further study would advance their academic aspirations or their careers. There are some 650,000 foreign students in Australia, with many of them on their second visa, according to official data.

The visa pathways for migrants with “specialist” or “essential” skills – like highly-skilled tech workers or care workers – have also been improved to offer better prospects of permanent residency.

The new policies will attract more of the workers Australia needs and help reduce the risk of exploitation for those who live, work and study in the country, Ms O’Neil said.

Opposition migration spokesman Dan Tehan has said that the government was too slow to adjust migration policies designed to help Australia recover from the pandemic.

“The horse has bolted when it comes to migration and the government not only cannot catch it but cannot find it,” he said at the weekend.

The Labor government’s popularity has dwindled since its election last year, and in recent weeks it has been under pressure from some quarters to temporarily reduce migration to help ease Australia’s housing crisis.

However others, like the Business Council of Australia, have said migrants are being used as a scapegoat for a lack of investment in affordable housing and decades of poor housing policy.

Source: Australia to halve immigration intake, toughen English test for students – BBC.com

For a more in-depth but more gentle take:

The government says these changes are the “biggest reforms in a generation”. It’s been reported the reforms will “dramatically cut”“ the immigration intake. But don’t be fooled by the hyperbole.

Instead of thinking of the strategy as a complete overhaul, the reforms are a number of long overdue remedies dealing with migrant worker exploitation, misuse of international student visas and an overly complex and inefficient bureaucracy.

The intake cuts are overstated and will largely be the result of a natural evening out of migration patterns in the post-pandemic world. Even the Department of Immigration acknowledges the spike in arrivals is “temporary”, a phenomenon labelled as “the catch-up effect” by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. If the current circumstances are only transitory, one wonders why the government is so keen to cut numbers.

It is important to look at how the department plans to reform immigration policy.

The policy document is 100 pages with much detail on the minutiae of immigration procedures. The broad areas covered are revising temporary skilled migration, cracking down on alleged rorting of the international education system, replacing annual migration plans with longer-term forecasting and getting the states and territories, which bear most of the resettling costs, more involved.

Source: The government is bringing immigration back to ‘normal levels’ but cuts are not as dramatic as they seem – The Conversation

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COVID-19 Immigration Effects – October 2023 update

2023/12/12 Leave a comment

Regular monthly data update.

Highlights:

Percentage of former temporary residents transitioning to permanent residency partially bouncing back after September (from 32 to 39 percent, 2023 January to August average 65 percent). Year to date: 404,000 of which 212,000 are former temporary residents.

Temporary residents (IMP): Year to date 757,000 compared to 484,000 in comparable 2022 period

Temporary residents (TFWP): Year to date 172,000 compared to 124,000 in comparable 2022 period

Asylum claimants continue to grow significantly, reflecting easing of visa requirements and other factors: Year to date 117,000 compared to 70,000 in comparable 2022 period. Unclear whether visa exemption for Mexico will remain tenable given sharp increase and rumblings in US border states regarding increasing arrivals from Canada: Year to date 22,000 compared to 12,000 in comparable 2022 period.

The number of new citizens remains strong, largely driven by virtual ceremonies being the default option (almost 90 percent of new citizens participated in virtual ceremonies). Year to date: 317,000 largely the same as the comparable 2022 period. 

Highlights on slide 3.

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How mass immigration is worsening the housing crisis – The Spectator

2023/12/11 Leave a comment

Similar but harsher debate to that in Canada with of course UK particularities, particularly with respect to social housing:

…In England, to put this in context, it means that last year we only built around one-third of the homes that we now need to build because of immigration. We should be able to talk about this openly. We should be able to talk about how immigration is fuelling the housing crisis, driving up house prices and making many homes unaffordable for British families and British workers.

Don’t believe me? Here’s what researchers at the University of Oxford recently said:

‘ … there is some evidence that migration is likely to have increased house prices in the UK. For example, the Migration Advisory Committee (2018) found that a 1-percentage point increase in the UK’s population due to migration increased house prices by 1% … Their finding was broadly consistent with other modelling by the former MHCLG (2018) and the Office for Budget Responsibility (Auterson, 2014).’

In fact, there’s more evidence than people like to think. In Spain, for example, a recent study found that a 1-point increase in the rate of immigration increases average house sale prices by 3.3 per cent (as did this one). And, while in Britain, one (older) study suggested immigration lowers house prices, this was only because more affluent locals ended up selling their homes and leaving their communities altogether, no doubt alarmed at what was unfolding.

Record immigration has not only been driving up house prices; it’s also been pushing up rents in the private rental market, something that becomes immediately obvious to anybody who has had to attend a viewing with some two dozen other applicants.

The fact that, in 2022, net migration is estimated to have added at least half a million people to England’s already absurd rental market is something most pro-immigration lobbyists, MPs, academics, and columnists, who usually live in their own homes, made possible by privileged parents, are unlikely to ever encounter.

…Mass immigration is also piling enormous pressure on Britain’s social housing sector, which used to be reserved for impoverished British nationals who had been paying into the collective pot for years and who had long roots in their local communities.

Today, however, things are very different. Nationally, as the Migration Observatory points out, between 2019 and 2021, 16 per cent of UK-born people were living in social housing compared to 17 per cent of the foreign-born. That figure then climbs to 19 per cent among people born in Pakistan or elsewhere in South Asia, and then to a striking 30 per cent among the rising number of typically low-skilled migrants who were born in sub-Saharan Africa, many of whom have also been shown to be a net fiscal cost, rather than benefit, to the British economy.

In London, almost half (48 per cent) of all social housing is now occupied by households that are headed by somebody who was not born in Britain. The most common households are headed by somebody who was born in Africa (18.4 per cent), the Middle East and Asia (11.7 per cent), or elsewhere in Europe (8.7 per cent).

…All of which raises a number of important questions that you would ordinarily expect to be addressed and answered by our political leaders: Why are so many young British people, workers, and their families forced to pay half their monthly income if not more to live out in the periphery, in places like London’s Zone 4 or beyond, sitting on expensive, packed and dirty commuter trains while wondering why they and other Brits are having to subsidise newcomers, who are frequently economically inactive?

Source: How mass immigration is worsening the housing crisis – The Spectator

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