Articles of interest: Immigration

2023/12/08 Leave a comment

Additional polling on souring of public mood on current high levels, related commentary on links to housing availability and affordability among other issues:

‘There’s going to be friction’: Two-thirds of Canadians say immigration target is too high, poll says

Worrisome trend but understandable:

Two-thirds of Canadians say this country’s immigration target is too high, suggests a new poll that points to how opinions on the issue are taking shape along political lines — a shift that could turn immigration into a wedge issue in the next federal election.

A poll by Abacus Data has found the percentage of people who say they oppose the country’s current immigration level has increased six points since July, with 67 per cent of Canadians now saying that taking in 500,000 permanent residents a year is too much.

“The public opinion has shifted in Canada to a point where if a political leader wanted to make this an issue, they could,” said Abacus chair and CEO David Coletto.

“We’re headed into a period where there’s going to be friction.”

Source: ‘There’s going to be friction’: Two-thirds of Canadians say immigration target is too high, poll says

Affordability crisis putting Canadian dream at risk: poll

Yet another poll, focussed on immigrants:

The Leger-OMNI poll, one of the largest polling samples of immigrants in recent years, surveyed 1,522 immigrants across Canada between Oct. 18 and 25. It is one of the few polls specifically surveying immigrants.  

The research finds the cost-of-living crisis is hitting immigrants hard. Eighty-three per cent polled feel affordability has made settling more difficult. While financial or career opportunities were the motivating factor for 55 per cent of immigrants’ journey to Canada, just under half surveyed think there are enough jobs to support those coming in. 

A quarter (24 per cent) feel their experience in Canada has fallen short of expectations.

Source: Affordability crisis putting Canadian dream at risk: poll

Kalil: We simply don’t have enough money to solve Canada’s housing crisis 

Reality:

Housing does not magically appear when there is demand for it. It takes time, infrastructure needs to be built to support it, the construction industry needs to have the capacity to deliver it, and our housing economy needs to hold enough money to fund it – which it does not.

Source: We simply don’t have enough money to solve Canada’s housing crisis

Burney: Trudeau, please take a walk in the snow

Burney on immigration and his take on the public service:

A rapid increase in immigration numbers was touted until it was seen simply as a numbers game, lacking analyses of social consequences, notably inadequate housing, and unwelcome pressures on our crumbling health system. Meritocracy is not really part of the equation, so we are not attracting people with needed skills. Instead, we risk intensifying ethnic, religious and cultural enclaves in Canada that will contribute more division than unity to the country.

The policy on immigration needs a complete rethink. But do not expect constructive reform to come from the public service, 40 per cent larger now than it was in 2015 and generously paid, many of whom only show up for office work one or two days per week. Suggestions that they are more productive or creative at home are absurd.

Source: Trudeau, please take a walk in the snow

Keller: The Trudeau government has a cure for your housing depression

Here’s what Stéfane Marion, chief economist with National Bank, wrote on Tuesday. It’s worth quoting at length.

“Canada’s record housing supply imbalance, caused by an unprecedented increase in the working-age population (874,000 people over the past twelve months), means that there is currently only one housing start for every 4.2 people entering the working-age population … Under these circumstances, people have no choice but to bid up the price of a dwindling inventory of rental units. The current divergence between rental inflation (8.2 per cent) and CPI inflation (3.1 per cent) is the highest in over 60 years … There is no precedent for the peak in rental inflation to exceed the peak in headline inflation. Unless Ottawa revises its immigration quotas downward, we don’t expect much relief for the 37 per cent of Canadian households that rent.”

What are the odds of the Trudeau government taking that advice?

Source: The Trudeau government has a cure for your housing depression

Conference Board: Don’t blame immigration for inflation and high interest rates – Financial Post

Weak argumentation and overall discounting of the externalities and wishful thinking for the long-term:

Of course, immigration has also added to demand. Strong hiring supported income growth, and immigrants coming to Canada need places to live and spend money on all the necessities of life. This adds to demand pressures and is especially concerning for rental housing affordability. Such strength in underlying demographic demand is inflationary when there is so little slack in the economy. Taking in so many in such a short period of time has stretched our ability to provide settlement services, affordable housing  and other necessities. But there is also no doubt that the surge in migrants has alleviated massive labour market pressure and is thus deflationary. Without immigration, Canada’s labour force would be in decline, especially over the next five years as Canada’s baby boomers retire in growing numbers. Steady immigration adds to our productive capacity, our GDP and our tax take — enough to offset public-sector costs and modestly improve government finances.

One thing is certain, if immigration is aligned with our capacity to welcome those who are arriving, it will continue to drive economic growth and enrich our society through diversity, as it has through most of our history.

Mike Burt is vice president of The Conference Board of Canada and Pedro Antunes is the organization’s chief economist.  

Source: Opinion: Don’t blame immigration for inflation and high interest rates – Financial Post

More international students are seeking asylum in Canada, numbers reveal

Another signal that our selection criteria and vetting have gaps:

The number of international students who seek asylum in Canada has more than doubled in the past five years, according to government data obtained under an access-to-information request.

The number of refugee claims made by study permit holders has gone up about 2.7 times to 4,880 cases last year from 1,835 in 2018, as the international student population also surged by approximately 1.4 times to 807,750 from 567,065 in the same period.

Over the five years, a total of 15,935 international students filed refugee claims in the country.

While less than one per cent of international students ended up seeking protection in Canada, the annual rate of study permit holders seeking asylum doubled from 0.3 per cent to 0.6 per cent between 2018 and 2022.

Source: More international students are seeking asylum in Canada, numbers revea

‘It’s unfair’: Haitians in Quebec upset province has opted out of federal family reunification program

Well, Quebec has the right to opt-out and face any resulting political pressure:

The federal program, announced in October by Canadian Immigration Minister Marc Miller, will open the door to 11,000 people from Colombia, Haiti and Venezuela who have immediate family members living in Canada either as citizens or permanent residents.

But when it launched on Nov. 17, it made clear that only those who “reside in Canada, outside the province of Quebec,” would be eligible to sponsor relatives.

The province of Quebec had opted out of the program.

Source: ‘It’s unfair’: Haitians in Quebec upset province has opted out of federal family reunification program

Douglas Todd: Californians taken aback by vast gap between wages and housing costs in Vancouver

More evidence of the disconnect between housing affordability, income and population:

Last month, scholars at the University of California, Berkeley invited a Canadian expert to offer his analysis of the riddle that is crushing the dreams of an entire generation.

“What really surprised them in California was the sharp decoupling there is in Metro Vancouver between incomes and housing prices,” said Andy Yan, an associate professor of professional practice at Simon Fraser University who also heads its City Program.

It’s relevant that Yan was invited to speak to about 75 urban design specialists in the San Francisco Bay area, since it also has prices in the same range (adjusted to Canadian dollars) as super-expensive Metro Vancouver.

But there is a big difference. Unlike Metro Vancouver, the San Francisco region also has the fourth-highest median household incomes in North America.

Indeed, median wages in the California city come in at the equivalent of about $145,000 Cdn., 61 per cent higher than $90,000 in Vancouver.

In other words, while things are rough for would-be homeowners in the San Francisco area, they are horrible for those squeezed out of the Metro Vancouver market.

Why is that? In his California presentation, Yan talked, quite sensibly, about the three big factors that normally determine housing costs: supply, demand and finance.

Source: Douglas Todd: Californians taken aback by vast gap between wages and housing costs in Vancouver

Glavin: Is there a triumphant Geert Wilders in Canada’s future? Not yet, but …

The risk exists but overstated:

….To object to this state of affairs doesn’t make Canada a racist country, and state-sanctioned rejection of the very idea of mainstream Canadian values, coupled with the catastrophic mismatch between immigration levels and Canada’s capacity to accommodate them all, doesn’t mean there’s some hard-right turn just around the corner with a Geert Wilders figure coming out of nowhere.

But it does mean that Canada is barrelling towards a brick wall, and we should stop and turn around.

Source: Glavin: Is there a triumphant Geert Wilders in Canada’s future? Not yet, but …

Antiquated U.S. Immigration System Ambles into the Digital World

Similar challenges as Canada:

Notorious for its reliance on antiquated paper files and persistent backlogs, the U.S. immigration system has made some under-the-radar tweaks to crawl into the 21st century, with the COVID-19 pandemic serving as a catalyst. Increased high-tech and streamlined operations—including allowing more applications to be completed online, holding remote hearings, issuing documents with longer validity periods, and waiving interview requirements—have resulted in faster approvals of temporary and permanent visas, easier access to work permits, and record numbers of cases completed in immigration courts.

While backlogs have stubbornly persisted and even grown, the steps toward modernization at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the State Department have nonetheless led to a better experience for many applicants seeking immigration benefits and helped legal immigration rebound after the drop-off during the COVID-19 pandemic. Swifter processes in the immigration courts have provided faster protection to asylum seekers and others who are eligible for it, while also resulting in issuance of more removal orders to those who are not.

Yet some of these gains may be short-lived. Some short-term policy changes that were implemented during the pandemic have ended and others are about to expire, raising the prospect of longer wait times for countless would-be migrants and loss of employment authorization for tens of thousands of immigrant workers. Millions of temporary visa applications may once again require interviews starting in December, making the process slower and more laborious for would-be visitors. This reversion to prior operations could lead to major disruptions in tourism, harm U.S. companies’ ability to retain workers and immigrants’ ability to support themselves, and create barriers for asylum seekers with limited proficiency in English.

Source: Antiquated U.S. Immigration System Ambles into the Digital World

Thousands of Canada’s permanent residents are afraid to leave the country. Here’s why

Another policy and service delivery fail:

According to an email from Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), there are over 70,000 Ahmad Omars out there, waiting on their first PR cards. This situation has left them trapped in a travel limbo, unable to leave the country or make future plans.

“Initially, the estimated waiting time for the PR card was 30 days. However, 30 days later, it extended to 45 days, and then, 45 days after that, it became 61 days. Now, I find myself significantly beyond the expected waiting time,” Omar said.

“It doesn’t feel like I am actually a permanent resident until I get the card.”

Source: Thousands of Canada’s permanent residents are afraid to leave the country. Here’s why

Saunders: How the push for border security created an illegal-immigration surge

Agree, but likelihood low:

If we wanted to reduce legal immigration numbers, as Mr. de Haas argues, we’d need to change the underlying economy: fund universities and colleges so they don’t rely on overseas student fees; incentivize farms to rely on technology rather than cheap labour (at the cost of higher food prices); make domestic housecleaners and child-minders a strictly upper-class thing again; and settle for lower levels of competitiveness and economic growth.

What doesn’t work is the entire false economy of border security – as years of expensive, dangerous experiments show, it actually amplifies the problem it’s meant to solve.

Source: How the push for border security created an illegal-immigration surge

Rise in net migration threatens to undermine Rishi Sunak’s tough talk – The Guardian

Leaving others to clean up the mess:

Of Boris Johnson’s many broken promises, his failure to “take back control” of post-Brexit immigration is the one that Tory MPs believe matters most to their voters.

Johnson has long fled the scene – Rishi Sunak is instead getting the blame from his New Conservative backbenchers who predict they will be punished at the ballot box in the “red wall” of the north and Midlands.

The former prime minister’s battlecry of “getting Brexit done” at the 2019 election went hand-in-hand with a manifesto promise to reduce levels of net migration from what was about 245,000 a year.

A tough “points-based immigration system” was going to be brought in by the then home secretary, Priti Patel, and supposedly allow the UK rather than Brussels to have control of the numbers.

And yet the latest net migration figures of almost 750,000 for 2022 show that far from decreasing, net migration has gone up threefold. Many economists believe this level of migration is necessary and the natural consequence of a country facing staff shortages and high domestic wages.

Source: Rise in net migration threatens to undermine Rishi Sunak’s tough talk – The Guardian

The Provincial Nominee Program: Retention in province of landing

Good analysis of retention rates by province:

“The Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) is designed to contribute to the more equitable distribution of new immigrants across Canada. A related objective is the retention and integration of provincial nominees in the nominating province or territory. This article examines the retention of PNP immigrants at both the national and provincial or territorial levels. The analysis uses data from the Immigrant Landing File and tax records, along with three indicators of retention, to measure the propensity of a province or territory to retain immigrants. Results showed that the retention of PNP immigrants in the province or territory of landing was generally high. Overall, 89% of the provincial nominees who landed in 2019 had stayed in their intended province or territory at the end of the landing year. However, there was large variation by province or territory, ranging from 69% to 97%. Of those nominees located in a province at the end of the landing year, a large proportion (in the mid-80% range) remained in that province five years later. Again, there was significant variation by province, ranging from 39% to 94%. At the national level, both short- and longer-term provincial and territorial retention rates were lower among provincial nominees than among other economic immigrants. However, after adjusting for differences in the province of residence, sociodemographic characteristics and economic conditions, the provincial nominee retention rate was marginally higher than that among federal skilled workers during the first three years in Canada, and there was little difference after five years. Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia had the highest PNP retention rates, and Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick, the lowest. This gap among provinces tended to increase significantly with years since immigration. Accounting for the provincial unemployment rate explained some of the differences in retention rates between the Atlantic provinces and Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. However, even after adjusting for a rich set of control variables, a significant retention rate difference among provinces persisted. Provinces and territories can benefit from the PNP not only through the nominees retained in the province or territory, but also from those migrating from other provinces or territories. Ontario was a magnet for the secondary migration of provincial nominees. After accounting for both outflows and inflows of provincial nominees, Ontario was the only province or territory that had a large net gain from this process, with significant inflows of provincial nominees from other provinces. Overall, long-term retention of provincial nominees tended to be quite high in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia, particularly when considering inflows, as well as outflows. Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia tended to have an intermediate level, but still relatively high longer-term retention rates. Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland and Labrador had the lowest retention.”

Read the full report: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/36-28-0001/2023011/article/00002-eng.htm

Keller: Why are our schools addicted to foreign student tuition? Because government was the pusher

Unfortunately, a large part of the visa system has been diverted to other purposes. We’re basically selling citizenship on the cheap, with the funds backfilling for provincial governments’ underfunding of higher education.

Source: Why are our schools addicted to foreign student tuition? Because government was the pusher

International students, advocates say Canada should permanently lift 20-hour work cap

Advocates underline point that international students have become a back-door immigration worker stream:

Advocacy group Migrant Workers Alliance for Change has been calling for this change since 2017 and has been fielding increasing calls from concerned students.

The alliance’s organizer, Sarom Rho, said it has been organizing against the 20-hour work limit since international student Jobandeep Singh Sandhu was arrested for working too many hours outside school in 2019.

“This is a question about whether we want to live in a society where everybody has equal rights and protections, or if we’re going to allow a system that sections off a group of people on the basis of their immigration status and denies them the same rights,” she said.

“There are six weeks left until the end of this temporary policy. Every day matters and the clock is ticking. We’re calling on Prime Minister Trudeau and Immigration Minister Mark Miller to do the right thing and permanently remove the 20-hour work limit.”

Source: International students, advocates say Canada should permanently lift 20-hour work cap

‘Canadian experience’ requirements are not just discriminatory – they harm the economy

Change happening but too often Canadian experience applied unevenly. That being said, during my experience during cancer treatment, there were some cultural differences in patient care, reminding me that immigrants would encounter also encounter differences:

In 2021, immigrants made up nearly a quarter of the Canadian population, a historic high. As Canada ages, immigration is projected to fuel the country’s entire population growth by 2032.

It is often said that immigrants help drive Canada’s prosperity. But if “Canadian experience” remains a stumbling block for newcomers to enter the job market, that vision will be nothing but a pipe dream.

Fortunately, I am now employed, working in a field where my past skills are highly relevant and respected. In hindsight, I would have answered that recruiter’s question differently.

There is nothing alien about my “foreign experience,” I would have emphasized. What I learned in China – skills like collaboration, research, empathy and writing – still applies. And I say this as a writer and communicator: a skill is a skill, regardless of where I call home.

Owen Guo is a freelance writer in Toronto. He is a former reporter for the New York Times in Beijing and a graduate of the University of Toronto.

Source: ‘Canadian experience’ requirements are not just discriminatory – they harm the economy

Australia’s political opportunists have stoked hysteria and robbed refugees of their humanity – The Guardian

By former Minister of Immigration 1079-82:

There was a time in Australia when refugees were heroes. In the late 1970s, when thousands of Vietnamese refugees settled in Australia, the then Fraser government publicised their “stories of hardship and courage”. They were presented as individuals with names and faces, possessing great resilience and ordinary human needs. Giving these brave people – nurses, teachers, engineers among them – and their children sanctuary made sense. When we are humane and welcome refugees, we assist them and ourselves.

Much has changed since then. As Fraser’s former minister for immigration and ethnic affairs, I have watched with dismay the shift in Australian public attitudes to refugees over the past two decades, since the Howard government began to pedal hard on the issue, depicting people seeking asylum as a threat to the Australian way of life. The humanity and individuality of refugees has been lost in political opportunism, as dog-whistling slogans stoked the hysterical, sometimes racist elements of public discourse. Yet this politics proved a winner and over the past two decades both major parties came to share the same dehumanising asylum policies. This is evident in the recent ugly, bitter parliamentary debate following the high court’s decision that it is unlawful for the Australian government to indefinitely detain people in immigration detention and the hasty legislative response.

Ian Macphee AO was minister for immigration and ethnic affairs in the Fraser government (1979-1982)

Source: Australia’s political opportunists have stoked hysteria and robbed refugees of their humanity – The Guardian

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He may be Canada’s oldest international student. What his studies say about our immigration system

2023/11/07 Leave a comment

Nice human interest story. As always, when one door is closed, the more entrepreneurial will find a way…:

Luis Diaz may be the most popular student in school.

Every morning, he packs his lunch bag and water bottle in his backpack before his son drops him off at the Nova Scotia Community College in Halifax, where he’s studying tourism and hospitality as an international student.

But this isn’t his first time in college, decades ago he studied at the Instituto Politecnico Nacional in Mexico, where he got his engineering degree in 1978 and went on to a stellar career as a metallurgical engineer, before retiring four years ago.

“I’m surrounded by classmates much younger than me. The energy they have is contagious,” said Diaz, who followed his son’s lead in becoming an international student in Canada. “It makes me feel much younger.”

At 69, Diaz is notably one of the oldest among the nearly 900,000 international students in Canada, the world’s most popular destination for international education, offering a pathway to work opportunities and potential permanent residence.

According to Statistics Canada, less than 5 per cent of international students are 35 or older.

While Diaz is an eager lifelong learner, his return to school also speaks in part to the failures of the immigration sponsorship program for parents/grandparents and the so-called super visa program meant to grant overseas parents like him extended stay as temporary residents.

The sponsorship program allows Canadian citizens and permanent residents to bring their parents and grandparents to the country as permanent residents if the sponsors meet certain income thresholds and commit to providing the required financial support.

The problem is it’s a lottery system and only those who get picked in an annual draw are invited to submit an application. In 2023, there were only 28,500 spots.

And since the pandemic in 2020, the Immigration Department has stopped accepting new people into the pool, meaning that the draws have been restricted to those who had previously entered into the pool.

While the 10-year super visa offers temporary relief for those taking their chances on permanent sponsorship, visa holders must pay for costly health insurance and can’t work or study here.

“It is extremely difficult to apply for parental sponsorship and assist families to be reunited in Canada,” said Toronto immigration consultant Rene Berrospi.

“The super visa and visitor visa are not allowing these people to contribute to the Canadian society. They only allow them to stay legally in the country. But immigrants can still be productive at any age.”

Diaz and his wife, Candelaria Ramirez, 71, have another son, who works as a software engineer in the United States. The couple has been travelling between Denver and Halifax to be with their two adult children, but spent most of their time here during the pandemic.

After consulting with Berrospi, Diaz weighed his options and decided to return to school to “do something meaningful” and for a shot at permanent residence when he learned that Halifax and Campeche, Mexico, are actually sister cities, and there’s an opportunity to start a business to promote tourism between the two places.

In 2021, he enrolled himself in a language school to brush up on his English before he applied to the Nova Scotia Community College last year. He began the two-year, $36,000 tourism and hospitality program in September.

“I am an active man. I can’t spend my life on a couch,” said Diaz, who is taking six full-time courses this term. “This is exciting.”

Diaz is popular among his much younger peers in the classroom, who appreciate his rich life experience and perspectives.

“He’s always very attentive. He asks questions. He’s always helping with examples. He’ll tell us stories with his wife and try to connect things in his life and his culture to things we’re doing in school,” said Zoe Fitzsimmons, 21, who is from Halifax.

“It’s really inspiring he’s going back to school at his age. He’s so nice and so sweet to everyone. He’s like a class dad or the class grandpa to us.”

Diaz says he’s enjoying school a lot but it’s hard returning to the classroom, catching up on new technology and studying in a different language.

His son, Pavel, a former brand manager in Mexico City, has proven to be an important mentor and tutor, given his own share of experience as a former international student in Canada.

“I’m helping him with his assignments and taking him to different networking events in the industry. It’s been an interesting ride for us,” said Pavel, who came in 2013 to study event management at Humber College and now works as an event planner in Halifax.

“Our roles have kind of reversed. My dad is a big NFL fan and I have to check on him to see if he finishes his homework or he can’t watch football on TV.”

Diaz says he would like to complete his studies, get his postgraduate work permit and one day make Canada his permanent home.

Source: He may be Canada’s oldest international student. What his studies say about our immigration system

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

HESA: Canada’s First National Minister of Higher Education

2023/11/01 Leave a comment

Usual insightful analysis by Alex Usher on the planned changes to study permits announced by Minister Miller, particularly the risks associated with rating education institutions and “calibrating” the PGWP in line with labour market needs, given lack of IRCC expertise in these areas, not to mention the operational challenges:

Last Friday’s, Marc Miller, the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Canadian Citizenship (IRCC), announced three changes to the International Student Visa program (link here).  You may have seen a small news alert about it (see here or here).  But it seems that almost nobody caught the full import of the announcement. 

The announcement started out ok, with Miller again swatting down rumours of a cap on international student visas and comparing the idea to “performing surgery with a hammer”.  Miller then announced – or re-announced, or semi-announced, depending on your point of view – three things.

First, starting December 1, 2023, every designated learning institution (DLI) will be required to confirm every applicant’s letter of acceptance directly with IRCC.  This is good.  It’s what pretty much every other country in the international student business has been doing for a couple of decades, and the only reason we haven’t done it before is Ottawa’s catastrophic inability to undertake IT projects (plus, you know, sheer bureaucratic inertia).  Assuming they can launch on time – and I wouldn’t bet the farm on it – top marks, 10/10

Second, the Government re-iterated its desire to launch its deeply under-theorized plan to rank and rate institutions, whose utter incoherence I outlined back here.  The difference is that they’ve changed the language from “trusted institutions” to “recognized institutions” and the implementation date has been moved back to next fall, which gives us all a few extra months to convince the feds that this idea remains infeasible.

So far, so boring.  But pay attention: the third element is a big one.  I’ll quote it verbatim, while adding emphasis where appropriate:

In the coming months, IRCC will complete an assessment of Post-Graduation Work Permit (PGWP) Program criteria and begin introducing reforms to better calibrate it to meet the needs of the Canadian labour market, as well as regional and Francophone immigration goals.

Well, now.  Let’s think about how this might work. 

“Calibrating” the PGWP program with the labour market would require two things.  First, it requires IRCC to decide what skills the labour market “needs” (or, more formally, which occupations will be “in demand” over the coming years.  The feds sort of have this through ESDC’s Canadian Occupational Projection System (COPS), although its worth remembering that this system has its limitations (remember when the system claimed that “university professors” was an occupation facing imminent shortages?  Good times.)  And of course, COPS was just one way of determining future skills shortages: other methodologies, like the one developed by the former Brookfield Institute (now TMU/Dais) can provide quite different answers. 

But that’s not really the hard part here.  We have a lot of different projection systems, but the government of Canada has never used any for the purpose of policy implementation.  In this case, the government would basically have to have enough faith in whatever methodology they pick to say “yes” or “no” to individuals or institutions over something as important as who gets into the country and who does not.  It can model itself on some other countries – Australia’s National Skills Commission maintains a list of in-demand skills for immigration and education purposes,– but it’s a fundamentally new role for this ministry – or indeed anyone in the federal government.  I have my doubts it will go smoothly.  No, the hard part is working out how exactly to link labour market information to the PGWP program.  And I am pretty sure it is going to be something along the lines of “occupation X, meet program Y”: that is, PGWP will only be available for specific programs of study.

This ought to be…interesting.

I mean, the feds’ logic is clear.  What they really want to do is strike hard at rural/small-town Ontario colleges offering loads of “Global Business” diplomas through PPP arrangements with private colleges in the GTA.  since the areas near these schools are the epicentre of the housing shortage that’s currently affecting southern Ontario and tanking Liberal re-election projects.  Nobody thinks the diplomas actually have much educational or social value – and the public perception of them is that they are a backdoor route to immigration (personally, I disagree, I think they are a front-door to immigration, but a back-door to a Temporary Foreign Worker Program, but that’s as may be).  So why not use federal immigration rules to wipe them out?

Well, for one, it’s not 100% clear how the Government intends to link data on occupations to data on programs in a way which is defensible.  At the more technical end of the spectrum, occupations and programs line-up reasonably well, but in humanities, social sciences, business and indeed a lot of the biological sciences, the line from program to employment is a lot looser, and it’s not clear how a crosswalk can be driven.  So, while it should be easy enough to “prove” that Global Business doesn’t have many direct routes to the labour market, it’s not obvious (to me at least) how you can do that in a way that doesn’t sideswipe every faculty of arts and business in the country.

In brief, I foresee both a titanic amount of lobbying around what kinds of methodology will be used to determine “in-demand” skills and a titanic amount of chicanery as institutions re-classify their programming to meet whatever rules and standards the government eventually chooses to set for the PGWP program.   In fact, I think you can guarantee that as of Friday, these two items right now are at the top of the to-do list of every non-GTA college in Ontario, because these new rules have the potential to disrupt their largest income source and drive them to the wall, financially.

And remember, all of this potential change and financial consequences is being driven by the feds, not the provinces.  Specifically, it’s being driven by the freaking Ministry of Immigration, whose understanding of the higher education system might charitably be described as “diddly-squat”.  And yet, despite this lack of institutional expertise, right now Marc Miller is the closest thing Canada has ever had to a National Minister of Higher Education.  Through his unworkable ranking system, he’s claiming the right to distinguish “good” from “bad” institutions, and through the PGWP revisions he’s claiming the power of life and death over hundreds – maybe thousands – of university and college programs across the country.  It’s both unprecedented and absurd.

Provinces only have themselves to blame for this: whatever power over higher education the feds now have exists because of the provincial cheeseparing that drove institutions to seek international students in the first place.  No international student boom, no terrifying leverage placed in IRCC’s hands.

What a country.

Source: Canada’s First National Minister of Higher Education

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

Miller to provinces: If you can’t fix international student rackets then feds will

2023/10/30 Leave a comment

Some stronger messaging from the feds:

The federal government is prepared to crack down on dubious post-secondary institutions that recruit international students if provinces aren’t up to the task, Immigration Minister Marc Miller warned Friday.

Miller made the comments as he announced new rules to curb fraud and “bad actors” in the international student program, following an investigation this summer into more than 100 cases involving fake admission letters.

Provinces are responsible for accrediting schools that can accept international students, which include both public universities and colleges as well as private institutions.

In his final months in the role former immigration minister Sean Fraser raised concerns about the number of private colleges in strip malls and other venues that rely on international student tuition, but in some cases offer a meagre education in return.

Several advocacy groups, including the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change have highlighted cases of student exploitation by some of those intuitions.

Miller said Friday the international school program has created an ecosystem that is “rife with perverse incentives,” and that is very lucrative for the institutions and for provinces that have underfunded their post-secondary schools,

“The federal government is coming forward and opening its arms to our provincial partners, territorial partners, to make sure we all do our jobs properly,” Miller said at a press conference at Sheraton College in Brampton, Ont. Friday.

“If that job can’t be done, the federal government is prepared to do it.”

The immigration department counted 800,000 active study permits at the end of 2022, a 170 per cent increase over the last decade.

“What we are seeing in the ecosystem is one that has been chasing after short term gain, without looking at the long term pain. And we need to reverse that trend. But it will take time,” he said.

Ontario in particular has “challenges” when it comes to the accreditation of post-secondary intuitions, but it is not the only one. Miller did not elaborate on what those specific challenges are.

The Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities did not answer specific questions, but said in a statement the provincial government will “again ask for a meeting with the new federal minister to discuss the planned changes once they’ve been communicated with ministry.”

Sarom Rho, an organizer with the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, said the “fly-by-night colleges” are sometimes partnered with public institutions. But even those can be exploitative, she said.

She said she is working with a group of students who paid tuition up front to one of those intuitions, but were asked for more money just weeks before class enrolment began.

“The school said, ‘Well, if you don’t have the money, you can go back home, earn some and come back,'” Rho said Friday.

She said the federal government must take up the accreditation of colleges and universities that accept international students.

“They are aware of the substandard nature of these institutions, these fly-by-night private colleges,” she said.

Also on Friday Miller announced new rules in the federal government’s jurisdiction to address fraud and “bad actors” in the international student program.

Miller’s department plans to set up a system to recognize post-secondary schools that have higher standards for services, supports and outcomes for international students in time for the next fall semester.

The standards could include adequate access to housing, mental health services, and a lower ratio of international to Canadian students, Miller said, though the criteria hasn’t been finalized.

Details about how exactly recognized schools and institutions would benefit under the new system will be released later, the minister said. As an example, he said applicants for those schools would be prioritized when it comes to processing their study permits.

“Our goal here is to punish the bad actors to make sure that they are held accountable, and reward the good actors who provide adequate outcomes for the success of international students,” the minister said.

The details of that system will be important, Rho said, especially since students often fear speaking out because of their precarious status in Canada.

“Migrant student workers should not be caught in this … carrot and stick system,” she said.

“What will happen to those who do go to the schools that are ‘bad actors?’ They will also be punished. So instead, what they need is protections and equal rights.”

The department is also looking to combat fraud by verifying international students’ acceptance letters from Colleges and Universities.

The extra verification is a reaction to a scheme that dates back to 2017, which saw immigration agents issue fake acceptance letters to get international students into Canada.

The department launched a task force in June to investigate cases associated with the racket. Of the 103 cases reviewed so far, roughly 40 per cent of students appeared to be in on the scheme, while the rest were victims of it.

The task force is still investigating another 182 cases.

“The use of fraudulent admissions letters has been a major concern for my department this year and continues to pose a serious threat to the integrity of our student program,” Miller said, adding that international students are not to blame.

The new rules come as a welcome development to the National Association of Career Colleges, the group’s CEO said in a statement Friday.

“We welcome the opportunity to work with the federal government to improve our international student system by building greater trust and security, supporting Canadian communities, and ensuring that Canada’s immigration programs are student-centred,” the CEO, Michael Sangster said in a statement.

Source: Miller to provinces: If you can’t fix international student rackets then feds will

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Immigration Minister set to combat international student fraud 

2023/10/28 Leave a comment

Overdue baby steps:

Immigration Minister Marc Miller is set to unveil on Friday a package of reforms designed to combat fraud in international student admissions and stop bad actors from preying on those students for financial gain, and to fast-track study-permit applications at colleges and universities that meet high standards.

Among the new measures will be a multilayered authentication system for ensuring letters of acceptance from universities and colleges are genuine. A foreign student needs such a letter to apply for a study permit, an immigration document that allows them to enter the country. Fake letters have been used to obtain permits fraudulently.

…

Source: Immigration Minister set to combat international student fraud

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Federal court rules Canadian study permit refusal based on prior poor academic performance is unreasonable

2023/10/24 Leave a comment

Correct in terms of the academic assessment more the role of the education institution than immigration officers. Blind of course to the reality that many institutions like Niagara grant acceptance more on the basis of financial interests than academic performance. More “visa mills” than anything else:

The Federal Court of Canada has found that an applicant’s study permitrefusal based on past poor academic performance and “inconsistent” academic goals was unjustified, and therefore the application was entitled to judicial review.

In 2021, the applicant, a citizen of India, received a letter of acceptance to enter a full-time graduate program studying International Business Management at Niagara College in Toronto. With his letter of acceptance, the applicant submitted a study permit and temporary residence permit application to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).

A few months later, the applicant received a letter notifying him that his study permit was refused. The officer stated that the two grounds for refusal were low previous academic performance and inconsistent educational goals.

In particular, the officer found that the applicant had low average grades in his core subjects of 40% to 59% from his transcripts from the University of Mumbai. Based on this information, the officer was not satisfied that the applicant had demonstrated the academic proficiency required to successfully complete the study program in Canada.

With respect to the “inconsistency” of the applicants’ educational goals, the officer noted that the applicant initially applied to Data Analytics for Business and was refused, and now applied to an International Business Management. The officer claimed that these educational goals in Canada were not consistent from one application to another and the applicant provided no explanation for this inconsistency.

The court held that the officer’s findings with respect to his previous academic performance lacked justification and transparency. In particular, the officer failed to connect the dots between the applicant’s previous academic history and the likelihood of success in his intended program of study. The court is not in the position to assume that low grades in one area of study means that the applicant cannot excel in or complete a program in another area of study.

The court cited a similar case, Patel v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), in which the judge remarked: “one can complete a program successfully without necessarily excelling in it. And many of the factors that can determine academic success are dynamic, not static”.

Further, Niagara College was clearly satisfied that the applicant had the necessary qualification to complete the program and to make “an important contribution” to the college.

Regarding the consistency of the applicant’s educational goals, the immigration officer failed to provide sufficient details concerning how a previous application to study Data Analytics for Business, meant that the Applicant’s educational goals were “inconsistent”. The applicant provided a letter explaining his rationale for choosing the International Business program. In this context, especially without further justification from the officer, it is unclear how the officer decided that the two applications demonstrated “inconsistent” educational goals.

The implication of this case is that poor academic performance in a prior academic program does not dictate an applicant’s ability to successfully complete another program, nor should it preclude an applicant from obtaining a study permit. In addition, an applicant may seek to pursue different study programs in Canada, as long as they provide rationale or an explanation for their choice.

Source: Federal court rules Canadian study permit refusal based on prior poor academic performance is unreasonable

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Douglas Todd: Foreign-student dreams being crushed in greedy Canada

2023/10/13 Leave a comment

More on exploitative education industry practices for international students, with complicity among governments, education institutions (particularly private), consultants and others.

Not convinced, however, that “taxpayers would be willing to spend more on higher education to support domestic students and protect foreign students from being taken advantage of:”

The record number of international students in Canada is an “asset that is very lucrative,” according to Immigration Minister Marc Miller.

And he’s not kidding. With Canada’s official foreign student numbers at 800,000, and CIBC bank economist Benjamin Tal informing the Liberal cabinet the actual figure is more like 1.3 million, it’s often boasted people on study visas bring about $30 billion a year into the country.

Much of that lucre in Canada, put together by wealthy and middle-income families around the world, goes toward more than 1,600 Canadian public and private learning institutions. The rest is funnelled into the wider economy, including the pockets of big-city landlords.

But a prominent Vancouver businessman and educational philanthropist, Barj Dhahan, who works in higher education in both India and Canada, uses the word greedy to describe the organizations and individuals raking in windfall profits from international students.

The co-founder of the Canada India Education Society, which collaborates with the University of B.C. and Punjabi organizations to educate thousands of students and nurses in India, said he hears stories each week from families of foreign students about how Canada is exploiting and even abusing them.

“They come here because they’ve been sold a dream. And their dreams are dashed,” Dhahan said.

Many international student are upset, or even in despair, when they discover Canadian rents are extreme, their schooling is often shoddy, especially in small private schools, tuition fees are four to eight times that of domestic students, decent jobs are hard to get and their chances of becoming Canadian citizens are low.

Last week, it was learned through access to information that, in 2021, Ottawa’s Immigration Department conducted a survey of 3,700 international students, which found an overwhelming 87 per cent plan to apply for permanent residence in Canada. That’s a spike from 70 per cent in 2020.

Vancouver immigration lawyer and researcher Richard Kurland, who obtained the internal government survey, said there is no way that many aspiring foreign students will be able to obtain coveted citizenship, since there is intense competition for spots.

Given that many families around the planet have literally “bet the farm” to finance their children’s education abroad in hopes they will get immigrant status, Kurland, a frequent adviser to Parliament, believes Canada has a moral obligation to warn of the likelihood of crushed expectations.

The reputation of Canada, and its educational system, is being damaged both here and abroad, says Dhahan, who is also founder of the $45,000 Dhahan Prize for Punjabi Literature and a major contributor to international programs at UBC, Carleton University in Ottawa, and other institutions.

In addition to questioning the cost and quality of education at Canada’s often-tiny private colleges and language schools, most of which rely almost entirely on foreign nationals, Dhahan is appalled tuition fees for foreign students have soared at many of the country’s large public universities.

Dhahan points, for instance, to how UBC now frequently charges a foreign student seven times more than a domestic student. For instance, one year in UBC’s undergrad arts program costs an international student about $45,000, while the rate is $5,800 for a domestic student. The price tag on other programs can be much higher.

Tuition fees for international students are also exorbitant, he said, at most public and private colleges, where students from India are by far the biggest cohort of international students. Chinese students make up the largest group of international students at universities.

Given that many Canadian universities and colleges don’t want to rely so heavily on foreign students to survive, Dhahan believes taxpayers would be willing to spend more on higher education to support domestic students and protect foreign students from being taken advantage of.

Dhahan said it’s disturbing that a lot of foreign students whose parents are not rich are being encouraged by immigration consultants here and abroad to sign up for six-month programs at some of Canada’s more than 900 private schools, mainly so they can gain a work permit.

“Canadian governments have no policing resources to monitor how many actually study, or how many stay in Canada beyond the six-month program,” Dhahan said. “There is no determination as to who leaves and who stays.”

Since the vast majority of foreign students want to eventually become Canadian citizens, Dhahan and Kurland say they are vulnerable to victimization by seedy employers.

Some desperate students, according to Dhahan and recent reports, are paying employers kickbacks worth tens of thousands of dollars to fill out a government form called a labour market impact assessment, which allows them to work longer in Canada so they can apply for permanent resident status.

Listening to troubled families and students over the years, Dhahan has also heard many variations on news media reports about landlords taking advantage of foreign students.

“I would say the reputations of our world-class public colleges and universities are being tarnished right now.” Good quality public institutions are being lumped together with dubious private ones, Dhahan said. And both, he said, are often demanding “rapacious” and “unjust” tuition fees.

In a reference to the West’s past history of colonialism, which often led to the exploitation of the people of developing nations, Dhahan said: “It’s colonization all over again. Just in a different way.”

Source: Douglas Todd: Foreign-student dreams being crushed in greedy Canada

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Foreign doctors take up more medical residency spots as Canadians struggle to get in

2023/10/10 1 Comment

Another distortion of higher education objectives through international students (policy dates from 2010):

Canada has an acute shortage of doctors — a staffing crisis that is expected to get much worse in the years ahead as the number of residency positions on offer fails to keep up with rapid population growth.

Despite those challenges, roughly 1,000 Canadian doctors who went to school abroad are turned away every year because they can’t get residency spots in Canada, according to a CBC News review of medical school data. Physicians are required to go through a residency in order to be licensed to practice.

Canadian doctors who want to come home to work are routinely told it’s not possible because resources are limited and there are only so many residency positions to go around.

Source: Foreign doctors take up more medical residency spots as Canadians struggle to get in

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Canadian universities bet on international students, but global shifts present risks

2023/10/10 Leave a comment

Useful remider:

When the University of British Columbia announced the launch of Vantage College in 2013, the school said it envisioned the program for fee-paying international students would have enrolment of 1,000 by August 2016.

The program would target first-year students who otherwise failed to meet UBC’s English requirements, providing them with extra language lessons in addition to their degree courses.

It would house the students — whose fees are now about $60,000 per year — in a $127 million facility designed by world-renowned architecture firm Perkins&Will, some of its dorm rooms featuring sweeping ocean views.

However, Vantage’s enrolment is currently 172 students, having declined every year since reaching 498 in 2018-2019.

The struggles of Vantage College reflect the unpredictable nature of the lucrative international education sector, as Canadian universities find themselves beholden to geopolitical and economic shifts.

There have been massive changes in the sector, with study permits for Chinesestudents in Canada plunging 40 per cent since 2018. Permits for students from India — where English is far more widely spoken — have meanwhile doubled.

UBC spokesman Matthew Ramsey said in a written statement that “work is underway” to assess the Vantage model.

He said the enrolment shortfalls “come as (international) students are increasingly entering faculties directly and using faculty-specific programming to enhance their English-language skills.”

The federal government said that in 2022  international students contributed more than $22 billion to the Canadian economy, greater than the contribution of auto parts or lumber exports.

In British Columbia, statistics from the province’s Council for International Education showed the sector generated $330 million in government revenue in 2019, creating more than 53,000 jobs.

“It’s a big sector,” said BCCIE executive director Randall Martin, noting the industry covers everything from K-12 education and two-year transfer colleges to language schools and degrees at large universities.

Martin said international students have played an integral role in “keeping the light on” for Canadian universities in rural and remote areas, allowing schools to offer mandated courses they would otherwise struggle to provide.

“In many ways, the sector is a real success. It’s over $7 billion coming into the provincial economy because of international education, and that includes tuition, housing, accommodations, meals … and, yes, I think it’s fair to say that the international student numbers will follow geopolitical trends.”

The industry in Canada — as in most popular international education destinations — largely relies on the high number of students from two countries: China and India.

Statistics Canada data show that students from the world’s two most populous countries accounted for more than half of the almost 550,000 study permits issued by Canada in 2022.

But permits given to Chinese students have fallen from 85,000 in 2018 to just short of 52,000 last year.

A similar slide has been reported by the BCCIE, with the number of Chinese international students in B.C. down from 50,000 in 2015 to 29,670 last year.

Martin said the decline began after the legal saga of Meng Wanzhou, the Chinese tech executive who was arrested in late 2018 and held in Vancouver until 2021, triggering a deep decline in China-Canada relations.

“I think Canada was portrayed as not a safe place for Chinese students in the Chinese media, and our numbers did go down a bit,” he said.

Karin Fischer, who writes a weekly international education newsletter called Latitudes, said while pandemic travel restrictions made the biggest dent in student numbers, the number of Chinese students in the West has not rebounded in the way numbers from India or elsewhere have.

Fischer said higher travel costs and a reluctance among Chinese families to endure lengthy separations from children post-pandemic are contributing factors. But deteriorating economic conditions in China — reducing both students’ ability to pay and find work after graduating — may be a key reason their numbers haven’t recovered.

“Going to study in another country is an enormous investment, even for a middle-class Chinese or Indian family,” Fischer said. “What is the expectation that they have about earning that degree? What is their return on investment?

“I wonder if some (Chinese) families are thinking, ‘God, should we spend all this money up front if we’re worried about (whether) our child is going to graduate and not have a job to come back to?'”

Tuition for Vantage College in 2023-2024 costs around $60,000, while other international students at UBC pay from around $42,000 to $58,000.

Domestic students’ tuitions range from around $6,000 to $9,000 a year.

The drop in Chinese students, Fischer said, tends to disproportionately affect Vantage College and other similar “pathway” programs for students needing English-language support.

The University of South Florida shuttered a similar pathway centre for international students recently because it wasn’t profitable, Fischer said.

“If you don’t have the volume of students, they’re really challenging,” she said of pathway programs. “And they worked particularly well for Chinese students because they had that combination of students who needed the extra language but who were generally academically prepared — and who could afford to pay for that.”

Indian international students tend to be proficient in English and do not require pathway programs, Fischer said.

Ramsey said UBC originally built the 1,049-room Orchard Commons complex to house both Vantage’s students and domestic first-year students, boosting integration and helping “create a positive experience for all students.”

A recent visit to the complex’s cafeteria at lunch time showed little sign of students in need of language support, with fluent English the language of choice.

Ayumi Yamamoto, a Japanese exchange student who started attending Vantage in September, said she does not live at Orchard Commons but at nearby Fairview Crescent.

She described Orchard Commons as “not crowded” and offering ample space for her and other Vantage students.

“They always have empty seats, at least one of them,” Yamamoto said.

While the number of Chinese students have fallen across Canada, overall international student numbers are on the rise, largely due to students from India.

Statistics Canada showed study permits issued to Indian students rose from 107,000 in 2018 to almost 226,000 last year. In B.C., their number went from 12,040 in 2015 to almost 75,000 in 2022.

Martin said much of that growth stemmed from immigration policy changes that allowed students seeking a two-year diploma to stay in Canada and work here for three years, opening the door to permanent residency.

But recent strains between Canada and India over the killing of a Sikh separatist leader in Surrey, B.C., have created more uncertainty. After Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last month said New Delhi may have been involved in the killing, India issued a travel advisory that warned of violence against Indian nationals and students in Canada.

Fischer said there is a precedent in Canada’s dispute with Saudi Arabia over the kingdom’s arrest of human rights activists in 2018. Permits issued to Saudi students fell from 5,080 in 2017 to 1,185 in 2019.

But Fischer said Saudi Arabia had been paying for students to go abroad and pulled their scholarships during the dispute.

“A place like India, it is almost entirely students paying their own way,” she said. “So it’s hard to know (of India’s impact) because it’s individual students making all sorts of individual choices.”

Canadian universities have been looking to diversify their international student populations beyond India and China.

Graham Barber, assistant director of international relations at Universities Canada, a national advocacy body for universities, said recent outreach has focused on countries such as Mexico, Nigeria, Vietnam, Brazil and the Philippines — places with growing middle-class populations and young people willing and able to travel to study.

“We (have) world-class institutions that are really, really good at this,” Barber said about finding new markets. “One of the great things about being in Canada is there’s such a diverse population here. They really have those people-to-people ties to be able to pivot quickly to different areas and to work with new partnerships.”

UBC’s Ramsey said while the Vantage model may be under assessment, its supportive approach to international students isn’t going away.

“It’s too soon to say what form that may take in the years ahead,” he said. “What we can say is there is a need for this type of instructional model on our campuses now and moving forward.”

Source: Canadian universities bet on international students, but global shifts present risks

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Sabrina Maddeaux: International students are lucrative assets — Marc Miller says so

2023/10/02 Leave a comment

Unfortunate choice of words that meets the standard definition of a political gaffe: telling the truth. However, she should at least acknowledge that the provinces are equally complicit, particularly Ontario as freezing fees and allowing private colleges encouraged much of the abuse;

As Canada’s population continues to explode in a clearly unsustainable — and unethical — fashion, the federal Liberals continue to insist there’s no problem. Typically, they do this moralistic backpatting under the guise of embracing diversity.

Except when the mask slips and they say the quiet part aloud, like when Immigration Minister Marc Miller called international students “an asset that is very lucrative” during question period last week.

The admission struck a vastly different chord than when he told CBC News last month that his chief concern was “the stigmatization of particularly people of diversity that come to this country to make it better.”

So, which is it? Are Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals chiefly concerned about the wellbeing of newcomers, or do they primarily view them as cash cows for post-secondary institutions and low-wage employers? Because right now, it can’t be both.

Statistics Canada recently reported Canada’s population grew by over a million people between July 2022 and July 2023, with nearly all the growth coming from immigration. Even more striking is the 46 per cent increase in temporary residents over the same time period.

Remember, these numbers are vastly undercounted — by around a million, according to some estimates. We won’t get more accurate numbers from Statistics Canada until sometime next month.

Canada has an increasingly poor reputation for the way those temporary residents are treated once here. Too often, they face exploitative work conditions, low wages and substandard living conditions, alongside scam artists and diploma mills looking to cash in on those who desire to live here permanently.

Miller was right when he said immigrants want to come to Canada and contribute to its betterment, but what was left unsaid is that we don’t seem to care much about their betterment as long as someone’s benefiting financially.

Just three weeks ago, a United Nations special rapporteur who specializes in modern slavery called our temporary foreign worker program a “breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery.” This was after a visit to Canada where he spoke to migrant workers who reported unsanitary living conditions, overtime with no pay, wage theft, no access to healthcare and fear of reporting abuse.

This week, the Senate concluded our temporary foreign worker program is “probably in need of a critical rethink” after studying the issue for months.

Meanwhile, the extent of the exploitation suffered by international students continues to be exposed. This week, another Senate report found foreign students were being misled, often intentionally by “education consultants” paid by Canadian colleges to recruit overseas, that studying in Canada will automatically lead to permanent residency.

Some of these “schools” — if they can be called that — don’t even have proper classrooms, instructors or class schedules, let alone accommodations or support services. Tuition is sky high and, while some students come from wealthy backgrounds, many more rely on their families taking out high-interest loans back home or re-mortgaging the family farm.

For these students, there’s more at risk than simply being unable to work in their chosen field or obtain permanent residency — their families have put everything on the line for what can be a cruel mirage of an opportunity.

This immense pressure, combined with Canada’s too-often disappointing reality and dismal living conditions, has contributed to a reported increase in suicides among international students. One funeral home told CBC News this spring that they used to repatriate no more than two student bodies to India per month, but that number has more than doubled in the last year.

It’s worth noting Canada doesn’t actually track the number of international student deaths, let alone suicides, within our borders. Perhaps it’s more convenient not to know.

International students are also increasingly falling victim to sexual exploitation as they struggle to afford rent and other necessary expenses.

Trudeau’s Liberals can’t wash their hands of responsibility by blaming a few bad actors and calling it another day on the Hill. These problems have worsened significantly since 2015 when they came into power with a determination to turbocharge immigration at any cost, with no plan for sustainability. This was no secret among those paying attention, although many in politics preferred to look away.

The recent Senate report also went so far as to say the federal government itself is “perpetuating an inflated sense of hope” by not being clear with prospective students about the actual process of obtaining permanent resident status when advertising the advantages of studying here.

Canada sells its immigration program as a vehicle for hope. In reality, it’s become loaded with human tragedy and tales of horror. It appears the Liberals are fine with that, as long as newcomers continue to be lucrative assets for the right stakeholders.

Source: Sabrina Maddeaux: International students are lucrative assets — Marc Miller says so

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