….Their plight is the direct fault of Ottawa, say migration specialists.
“Over the past four years the number of people with temporary status in Canada has skyrocketed” because of an executive decision from the office of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, says Richard Kurland, a Vancouver immigration lawyer.
“So there is now a chicken in the python problem,” he said.
“People with study permits, and then post-graduate work permits, who can’t qualify for permanent resident status face taking an airplane ride home in shame and poverty. Or they’ll find a way to stay.”
Kurland expects to see “increasing trends of marriages of convenience, refugee claims and applications for humanitarian and compassionate relief.”
A sign of what’s to come might have already arisen at Seneca College in Toronto, where asylum claims from international students increased from 300 in 2022 to almost 700 in 2023. At Kitchener’s Conestoga College, claims jumped from 106 to 450 during that same period.
University of Waterloo economics professor Mikal Skuterud, a specialist in labour, said “lots of non-permanent residents in Canada are seeing their permits expire and the government is worried that large numbers have no intention of leaving the country.”
The Liberal government created the predicament a few years ago, said Skuterud, when it signalled to the world, particularly those with low skills, the easiest way to become a citizen of Canada is to show up as a temporary resident.
“For migrants, Canada’s immigrant selection system now looks like a lottery, in which a work or study permit is the ticket. That’s a big problem. And it wasn’t like this before 2021.”
The Liberal government made the mistake of dismantling the country’s skills-based immigration system because of a “post-pandemic obsession with labour shortages, which is economic nonsense fuelled by corporate Canada,” Skuterud said.
George Lee, an immigration lawyer in Burnaby, said the “federal government created this problem: They’ve brought in too many people. The government wanted to address labour shortages. But now they say, ‘It’s too much!’ In effect the government is blaming itself.”
Last week, StatCan reported 2.8 million temporary residents in Canada, comprising a record 6.8 per cent of the population. That’s up from 3.5 per cent two years ago.
More than one million are foreign students, most with work permits. Others are classified as “temporary foreign workers” or “international mobility” workers. Another 360,000 are asylum claimants.
In light of Immigration Minister Marc Miller promising this spring to reduce the number of study visas, partly in response to the pressure on housing prices and social services, Kurland said Canada should warn would-be migrants they’re taking a big gamble.
“They now face a loss of their significant investment in time and money. The problem is that the majority of people are unaware that every (newcomer) takes the risk that Canada’s immigration regulations may be changed at any time,” said Kurland, who publishes the newsletter, Lexbase, which previously reported on how Canada’s border services are better tracking when people actually exit the country.
Canada’s problem with an influx of temporary residents is different from what’s facing the U.S. and Europe. Those regions have experienced waves of millions of undocumented migrants. But, for the most part, Canada has explicitly welcomed the record flow of newcomers, most of whom are unskilled.
Skuterud questions the immigration minister’s May announcement that he would like to reduce the number of temporary residents in Canada simply by turning them into permanent residents, particularly through the provinces’ so-called nominee programs.
“The irony of all this is that the government is providing more ad hoc openings to permanent residency to relieve the bulging non-permanent population.” It’s thereby “inadvertently” encouraging more people to start in Canada on a temporary basis with the dream of staying forever, he said.
The surge of temporary residents has not only exacerbated Canada’s housing crisis, Skuterud said rapid population growth, almost entirely from international migration, correlates with Canadian wages staying stagnant.
Lee, who came to Canada on a study visa from China in 1992, supports Canada’s efforts to bring high numbers of international students to the country, saying they’re primed to become engaged citizens since they have learned the culture, to speak English or French, and have developed Canadian-based job skills.
The problem, Lee said, is that when Ottawa tried to address a perceived labour shortage, it went too far and embraced too many newcomers at once. “We need a more balanced approach.”
Kurland suggests Ottawa adopt a “consumer protection” model to more honestly process people who want to move to Canada.
Canada’s immigration department, he said, should ask people who apply online for temporary residency: “If you are planning to possibly immigrate to Canada, do you acknowledge that your plan may fail if Canada immigration law and regulations were to change?”
Skuterud offers a different way forward. He says Ottawa has recently been over-promoting a “two-step immigration” scheme that pushes aspiring immigrants to first enter the country on a temporary basis.
He would like the government to return to emphasizing the more traditional economic-class pathway to permanent resident status, which relied on a transparent, above-board ranking system to select candidates.
