International study permit data an ‘earthquake’ for Canadian university finances 

2025/02/01 Leave a comment

Overdue correction:

A dramatic decline in international study permits issued last year is quickly becoming an existential threat to the finances of Canadian postsecondary schools, say organizations representing the institutions.

“The drop in international students is like an earthquake hitting an education system that’s already structurally weakened by years of underinvestment,” said Gabriel Miller, president and CEO of Universities Canada.

Provinces where international permit allocations were increased last year are also experiencing a decline in international enrolment, creating gaps in budgets that may lead to program cuts.

The federal government said last week that Canada issued about 40 per cent fewer international study permits among kindergarten to Grade 12, postsecondary and postgraduate students last year, overshooting its 35-per-cent target.

This year, it’s seeking a further 10-per-cent reduction.

A recent report from ApplyBoard, an online marketplace for learning institutions, said the number of permits approved for college students likely dropped by about 60 per cent, while approvals for international undergraduate students fell about 40 per cent.

The total number of international study permits issued by Ontario was also essentially cut in half by the cap. ApplyBoard said it’s projected the province had a 55 per cent decline in international permit approvals for 2024…

Source: International study permit data an ‘earthquake’ for Canadian university finances

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Trump signs executive order to cancel student visas of ‘Hamas sympathizers’ who protested Israel’s war in Gaza

2025/01/31 Leave a comment

Already prompting similar calls in Canada, we article on Poilievre comments below:

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order promising “immediate action” from federal law enforcement against noncitizen college students and others in the United States who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations during Israel’s war in Gaza.

The president has pledged to “deport” all “resident aliens” who joined protests, Trump said in a White House fact sheet.

“Come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” he vowed.

Trump also pledged to “quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before,” he claimed.

The Department of Justice will “aggressively” prosecute what it characterizes as “terroristic threats, arson, vandalism and violence against American Jews” after “the explosion of antisemitism” on college campuses in the wake of Israel’s campaign, according to the White House.

“It shall be the policy of the United States to combat anti-Semitism vigorously, using all available and appropriate legal tools, to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence,” the executive order states.

As The Independent has reported, both antisemitism and Islamophobic threats and violence surged after Hamas invaded Israel in 2023, kicking off the war in Gaza and widespread protests on U.S. campuses.

Under the order, government agencies have 60 days to produce a report “identifying all civil and criminal authorities or actions” to “curb or combat” antisemitism, with an inventory of complaints “against or involving” antisemitism in colleges and universities.

The U.S. Attorney General is “encouraged to employ appropriate civil rights enforcement authorities” to combat antisemitism, the order states.

Source: Trump signs executive order to cancel student visas of ‘Hamas sympathizers’ who protested Israel’s war in Gaza

Meanwhile in Canada:

FIRST READING: As anti-Israel rallies continue unabated, Poilievre calls for deportations

We see on our own streets antisemitism guided by obscene woke ideologies that have led to an explosion in hate crimes,” Poilievre said in a brief address at the official Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony in Ottawa.

He then added, “we must not just condemn these things, we must take action against them.”

“We must deport from our country any temporary resident that is here on a permit or a visa that is carrying out violence or hate crimes on our soil.”

Ever since the October 7 Hamas-led terrorist attacks against Israel, Canada has been hit by hundreds of anti-Israel rallies, blockades, and other actions — many of them organized by a handful of openly anti-Zionist groups including Toronto4Palestine, the Palestinian Youth Movement, and student groups such as McGill University’s Students for Palestine’s Honour and Resistance.

Some of the rallies were initially celebratory, but they quickly shifted to calls for “ceasefire,” often with the claim that Israel was committing genocide.

Now that a Gazan ceasefire has been in place since Jan. 19, rallies have continued unabated, often with calls for Palestinian “resistance” to continue until Israel’s complete destruction.

“The fight isn’t over. In fact, it has just begun,” Toronto4Palestine

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Michael Barutciski: With Trump’s deportations underway, what will Canada’s asylum policy look like? 

2025/01/30 Leave a comment

Useful reminder of limits. But Trump policies undermine the principles underlying the STCA:

In light of the Trump administration’s early moves to deport migrants without legal status in the U.S., there’s been heightened debate here in Canada about how we may (or may not) be positioned to handle a surge of claimants seeking refuge. Beyond the logistical capacity issues of handling high volumes of cases at our border, there are outstanding questions about Canada’s legal obligations to claimants and what, if any, policy and legal scope we have to manage the potential influx. The truth is it is greater than is often understood.

A key source of the confusion is that for years many in Canada have held a false assumption about the legal constraints imposed on our asylum procedures through a landmark Supreme Court decision in 1985, Singh v. Canada. The Globe and Mail’s editorial board recently repeated this mistake, asserting that Canada’s top court decided the Charter guarantees asylum seekers the right to a hearing as soon as they set foot in the country. This misreading of Singh has a real effect on our immigration predicament.

The Supreme Court did establish an important general rule in Singh: all persons who arrive at the border are covered by the Charter, regardless of their immigration status. Yet establishing that the Charter applies is not the same as interpreting the content of these Charter rights in various contexts.

In terms of refugee status determination procedures, the Supreme Court noted in Singh that the claimants, all Sikhs, were going to be sent by Canadian authorities back to their home country. For six of the seven claimants, this meant being returned to India, a country the Court considered dangerous for them given the violent internal tensions at the time. (The other claimant was to be returned to Guyana.)

However, the Supreme Court never generalized by saying that all claimants always have a right to a hearing. That is the exaggerated interpretation encouraged for years by activists and wishful-thinking academics. If claimants come to Canada via a safe third country, such as the U.S., then they can be returned to that country. This is the basic principle at the heart of the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA), which the Court accepted last year when it refused to declare the agreement unconstitutional (as activists and academics have been demanding for years).

In other words, dealing with asylum claimants coming from the U.S. is a different situation than the one addressed in Singh and the legal constraints are not the same. This nuance is recognized in both the 1951 Refugee Convention and Canadian legislation. The convention does not even mention anything about hearings. Its most basic protection is the principle of “non-refoulement,” which stipulates that refugees cannot be returned to a country where their “life of freedom would be threatened.” It allows claimants to be returned to safe countries, which is why the adoption of the STCA was possible in the first place.

Section 101 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act specifically includes eligibility clauses that should suggest caution to anyone who believes automatic access to a hearing is part of Canada’s system. There is an initial determination as to whether the migrant is eligible to make a claim, including various security-related grounds of inadmissibility.

Moreover, there is also a clause rendering claimants ineligible when they come “directly or indirectly to Canada from a country designated by the regulations.” This is the legislative provision that enables return to the U.S. Even a cursory reading of the act should make clear that an automatic right to a refugee hearing was never intended or established by Parliament.

Despite these legal provisions, the Liberals have spent years reinforcing the confusion regarding Singh, constantly asserting that asylum seekers trying to enter “irregularly” at Roxham Road had the right to a hearing. When the government’s inaction regarding the illegal crossings led to record numbers of asylum claimants and public anxiety over the lack of border control, the government eventually negotiated an amendment to the STCA that essentially closed Roxham Road. Nobody seemed to notice that the supposed right to a hearing in Canada disappeared.

It is ironic that Prime Minister Trudeau recently acknowledged in the French version of a YouTube video that asylum seekers at Roxham Road were actually abusing the system. This incoherent and unserious approach was again revealed when Immigration Minister Marc Miller repeated the false argument about a supposed unqualified right to a hearing during a press conference explaining the reimposition of visas on Mexican nationals (who he claimed were abusing the asylum system).

After many years of lax asylum policies, followed more recently by continual controversies, there now appears to be an attempt to debate the country’s genuine asylum dilemmas with the Globe’s editorial board suggesting “new thinking is needed.” Most reasonable Canadians realize that tightening the current asylum system in a manner that treats claimants fairly is sufficiently challenging; we do not need to make it even more difficult by inventing legal constraints.

Singh established that asylum seekers in Canada who risk being returned to a dangerous country benefit from a right to a hearing if they claim protection. The corollary is equally important if we are to explore creative solutions to Canada’s asylum problems: there cannot be a Charter violation if asylum seekers are sent to a safe country. Although it will disappoint activists, the future of a sustainable asylum system will inevitably involve extraterritorial procedures and an extension of the safe third-country idea. We need to properly grasp basic legal constraints to make sure these procedures are as fair and humane as possible.

Source: Michael Barutciski: With Trump’s deportations underway, what will Canada’s asylum policy look like?

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Trump bump: U.S. citizenship renunciation inquiries surge in Canada, lawyers say

2025/01/29 Leave a comment

Of note:

…Alexander Marino, director of U.S. tax law at Moodys Tax Law in Calgary, said that most people renounce U.S. citizenship for tax reasons — the U.S. is one of the few countries that imposes tax based on citizenship, not residency.

This often involves expensive reporting and filing obligations that include estate and gift taxes, even after death.

Marino is also expecting a Trump bump in business.

“I can’t deny that most U.S. expats, in my experience, tend to be more left-leaning than right-leaning. For a lot of people, the election results are a bit of the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Marino said.

“We’re seeing a bump due to the election results.”

Marino said he has seen year-over-year demand increase since specializing in renunciation 12 years ago.

He said the spike in interest now is greater than in 2017 after Trump’s first presidential win, and he expected 2025 to see a record number of people try to give up U.S. citizenship.

Moodys typically offers five to seven renunciation information webinars each year for U.S. citizens living in Canada; this year, they may schedule up to 12, Marino said.

Anyone giving up U.S. citizenship shouldn’t expect the matter to be secret — the U.S. Federal Register publishes quarterly lists of everyone who has surrendered their citizenship. In May 2014, the list named singer Tina Turner, and in February 2017, future British prime minister Boris Johnson.

There were only a few hundred names on the lists in 2005, but numbers have risen sharply since 2014, when the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act went into full effect. It requires that foreign financial institutions report on the foreign assets held by U.S. account holders.

In 2016, about 4,100 names were listed, but the next year, in Trump’s first year in the White House, numbers jumped by more than 50 per cent to about 6,900 names….

Source: Trump bump: U.S. citizenship renunciation inquiries surge in Canada, lawyers say

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Canada’s international student boom changed Brampton forever. As the program scales back dramatically, a strained community tries to adapt

2025/01/29 Leave a comment

Interesting deep dive regarding international students living in Brampton:

…Santos said the city first noticed the number of international students “growing significantly” in 2021 during the pandemic, mostly through reports of an increased number of illegal basement apartments and exponential use of food banks in the community.

At the time, the city helped organize an international student roundtable, summit and charter to discuss the challenges facing international solutions and bring together community leaders — and commit to finding solutions.

Local colleges have been supportive of the efforts, but she said the bigger issue has been all the students who live in Brampton but study elsewhere.

“One of the things we have advocated for is that student visas should be tied to their place of residence, not just their place of study,” said Santos, as it’s the local municipality that has to bear the cost of providing services for the residents, not the place where they might attend school.

The councillor has also asked the province increase the “heads and beds” levy, which sees the province pay municipalities $75 per person annually for those attending colleges and universities in lieu of property taxes to compensate for the cost of services like transit, roads, sewers, parks and recreation. Santos, in line with other municipal groups, has pushed for a doubling of that rate, and also asked that that the money be paid to the municipality where students live as opposed to where they are registered to study.

In Kaur’s case, for example, Toronto would receive the levy — even though she lives in Brampton. 

The city has also launched a residential rental licensing pilot program, aimed at targeting landlords who rent out rooms that are unsafe to students. The program allows bylaw officers to issue fines, but some landlords and critics say the licensing has made it more difficult for students to find any housing at all.

More recently, Santos said she has heard of dozens of cases of sex trafficking among students who have been forced to work as prostitutes in exchange for a place to live. But she said the data on the issue is scarce as most students are too scared to speak up, out of shame and the fear of having their student visas cancelled.

Fears of an ‘underclass’

In November, Brampton council passed a motion asking the federal and provincial governments for more support for students.

The motion asks to expand funding eligibility to allow international students to access existing regional supports, to increase the number of hours they can work in a week to 40 (from the federally mandated 24 hours a week), so students can access legal work from employers. It also asks for money to support a three-year pilot project that offers culturally responsive support around settlement, housing, employment and mental health.

Gurpreet Malhotra, the CEO of Indus Community Service, a settlement agency that supports Indo-Canadians, said the organization is working on the pilot project, and sent a proposal to federal immigration minister Marc Miller at a meeting in November. The two parties met this week.

“Our goal is to advocate with higher levels of government to ensure a better experience for these international students so they can settle and become unscarred and productive members of our community,” said Malhotra.

He said he fears it will lead to the “creation of an underclass,” if things continue as is.  

“When you are working under the table, and living under the table and don’t have access to social services, you have a built-in vulnerability to criminal and other negative activities,” he said.

Brown said while the federal and provincial governments have started to change policy in reaction to a growing backlash across the country, few are talking about how to support those who are already here.

“The question is, are those international students going to try to become permanent residents or are those students going to try to return home, and I don’t think we have clarity on that yet,” he said.

That’s why some local officials say the impact of the federal policies — particularly student caps — will be felt less in Brampton.

“Brampton will be the last place where the number of international students will go down,” said Toor, adding that many students have ties to the community and will opt to stay here.

But he’s unsure of how the city will manage in the long run. “This is not something we can absorb, as a city,” said Toor. “Just the scale of the population increase is immense for the city to handle it all — without planning for it.”

Source: Canada’s international student boom changed Brampton forever. As the program scales back dramatically, a strained community tries to adapt

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CIBC Tal on NPRs: Short-term pain, long-term gain

2025/01/29 Leave a comment

Interesting take and does have provide a logic for regularization. But the devil will be in the details: “If as a society we manage to create the conditions for better integration of NPRs in the labour market over time, we should be able to reverse the negative trajectory in productivity growth of the past few years.”

àWhat conditions, how to establish, how to enforce:

…Due to the recent government response, the pace of NPR arrivals is expected to slow down notably in the coming years, although not by as much as predicted by official numbers. For reasons we have spelled out elsewhere, policymakers and analysts cannot assume that the over one million current temporary residents in Canada with expired visas will simply leave the country over the next two years.

In other words, the demographic change of the past few years is not about to reverse. Economic theory and common sense suggest that that is a good thing. After all, an aging population is viewed as a major drag on productivity in most OECD countries. The youth dividend enjoyed by Canada is unique. Yes, clearly it has been too much of a good thing in a very short period of time.

But from a longer-term perspective, retaining and integrating current immigrants and NPRs would result in stronger potential growth and improved productivity, as more new arrivals find employment closer to their skill level or add to their skillset. If as a society we manage to create the conditions for better integration of NPRs in the labour market over time, we should be able to reverse the negative trajectory in productivity growth of the past few years.

Source: NPRs: Short-term pain, long-term gain

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HESA: Taking Donald Trump Seriously and What it Means for Canadian Higher Education

2025/01/29 Leave a comment

The article on Indian H1-B workers and family concerns regarding their children born in the USA could provide an example of a Canadian advantage along with a more accessible immigration system but uncertain:

…It would of course be nice if we could run the clock back to 2017. Back then, we talked bravely about how Canada might benefit from Trump, what with all the people clamoring to get out because of racism, interference in science, etc. There was, in short, an upside to chaos south of the border. But none of that is going to happen this time. The combination of an underpowered economy, overheated housing markets, and a general disinterest in funding science and education mean that there is little public license to seek a rise in immigration even for the most highly skilled. This is the price we pay for our generalized political complacency: when lemons strike, we can’t make lemonade.

That said, there should be opportunities, mainly research-based, in the maelstrom of change to come. The question is: which universities will be nimble enough to take advantage of them?

Source: Taking Donald Trump Seriously and What it Means for Canadian Higher Education

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Worswick: If Ottawa botches the economy now, Canada might break apart [immigration aspects]

2025/01/28 Leave a comment

Of note:

…Immigration has followed a roller coaster over the past seven years, expanding dramatically and then being cut back to historical levels. Renewing our focus on high-skilled immigration rather than filling lower-wage jobs will help raise our average skill level and standard of living, positioning Canada to manage external shocks such as the proposed U.S. tariffs. Also, we need to rethink our international student policy. We should prioritize students in academic programs likely to have higher income jobs after graduation since many of these students will want to remain as economic immigrants. Given that immigration is a shared federal and provincial jurisdiction, we will need co-operation from both levels of government to achieve an economic immigration program that benefits Canada to the greatest extent possible.

Canadian housing affordability has declined in recent years as we seem unable to build housing fast enough to match our population growth. If this continues, more young Canadians will become disillusioned with Canada and may be attracted to alternatives such as Quebec sovereignty or Western separatism. We must make it a national priority to ensure that housing expands with population growth so that we can gain the important economic benefits from skilled immigration while also ensuring that all Canadians can afford housing.

We should see our national unity issues as opportunities to rally support for addressing these significant policy challenges. If provincial governments recognize that a united Canada is not guaranteed, they will be more flexible in terms of finding policy solutions to our economic challenges rather than risk a further deterioration in our national unity. Also, if the federal government can work constructively with the provinces on these questions, this could go a long way to convince Canadians that we have a future together.

Source: If Ottawa botches the economy now, Canada might break apart

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Canada’s ‘smuggler’s paradise’ under renewed scrutiny amid Trump threats

2025/01/27 Leave a comment

Of interest:

…Akwesasne is part of what law enforcement agencies call the Swanton Sector, a vast stretch of eastern Ontario, Quebec, New York State, Vermont and New Hampshire. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, this is where the majority of illegal crossings happen from Canada – and it’s been on a dramatic rise in the past two years. The agency said it had made 19,300 apprehensions of illegal immigrants in the past fiscal year, up from the average of around 1,000 just a few years ago.

Canadian border officials also say the number of people coming the other direction illegally is on the rise. Last year, CBSA officers caught almost 34,000 foreign nationals along all land crossings with the U.S. who they believed were “inadmissible,” an increase of about 30 per cent from 2023. This is in addition to the more than 1,183 asylum seekers the RCMP caught last year trying to cross into Canada by land. In response to questions from The Globe, Canadian authorities said they couldn’t immediately isolate figures for the Swanton Sector.

On Jan. 7, investigators trailed the men after receiving evidence they say warranted a traffic stop under the Excise Act, which is typically used to prevent tobacco or cannabis smuggling. Akwesasne has a long history as a funnel for both. Tax-exempt cannabis and smoke shops are everywhere on the reserve, and old tobacco factories still stand here, from the era when cigarette companies used the territory to avoid paying taxes on their products….

Source: Canada’s ‘smuggler’s paradise’ under renewed scrutiny amid Trump threats

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Ottawa planning processing centre for asylum seekers in Quebec near U.S. border

2025/01/27 Leave a comment

Of note:

Canadian authorities are planning to open a processing centre for asylum seekers near the United States border in Quebec in case there is a sharp rise in the number of would-be refugees entering Canada.

Earlier this week, the federal government published a notice seeking office space it could lease to accommodate reception and meal distribution areas as well as a waiting room for up to 200 people at a time.

In an e-mail, the Canada Border Services Agency says the planned processing centre is part of its contingency plans “in the event of an influx of asylum seekers.”

The notice from Public Services and Procurement Canada says the building must be located within a 15-kilometre radius of the official border crossing area in St-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Que., south of Montreal.

The notice follows Ottawa’s $1.3-billion announcement in December to beef up border security in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to impose steep tariffs unless Canada reduces the flow of migrants and drugs across the border….

Source: Ottawa planning processing centre for asylum seekers in Quebec near U.S. border

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