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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Downe: All foreign students need security checks

2023/09/29 Leave a comment

New to me as an issue but given the large numbers, not unexpected even if a very small percentage of international students:

The continuing lack of security checks for all international students is putting Canadians at risk.

The recent disclosure by the federal immigration minister that 700 foreign students are facing deportation following the discovery that forged acceptance letters from educational institutions were used to enter the country raises questions about how carefully—if at all—these students are vetted before coming to Canada. This concerning situation is made worse given the fake enrolment scam came to light after a public tip rather than a government investigation.

A number of these suspicious students have been identified by the Canada Border Services Agency as not attending university or college, but involved in criminal gangs. Since at least 2018, the Canadian government has been aware that student visas were being used to move gang members into Canada.

In 2022, more than 800,000 international students came to Canada: an increase of almost a third in one year. In addition to recognized universities and colleges, there has been a surge of new colleges and schools that seem to exist to take advantage of our weak admission rules for foreign students. This rapid and free-wheeling admittance can have real life impacts on Canadians. 

As reported in my hometown newspaper, The Guardian, at 9 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2021, a young woman walked into a Staples store in Charlottetown, P.E.I., and spoke to an employee about buying a desk. After a discussion, she walked away and continued shopping in another aisle. She was followed by the employee and sexually assaulted. The employee was in Canada under a study permit issued by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. 

In this case, the foreign student pleaded guilty and received a conditional discharge rather than a criminal conviction. Thus, he would not have to leave Canada before completing his studies at the University of Prince Edward Island.

Since this was not the first case involving someone on a study permit who committed a sexual assault but who didn’t receive a criminal conviction, citizens are wondering if the threat of deportation and having to leave their studies is being used as a “get-out-of-jail-free card” for students from abroad.

According to media reports, the woman has paid a high price for the sexual assault. She has quit her job, suffers panic attacks, and is fearful of being in stores and near strangers, while the international student gets to finish his degree.

The question is: why is it not mandatory that all applicants for study permits be required to pass a criminal background check prior to the student visa being issued? Are we really only relying on the honour system to ensure criminals aren’t slipping through the cracks, or the gut instincts of immigration officers to follow up with individual applicants?

Obviously, the vast majority of international students coming to Canada are not committing offences. Indeed, they are contributing to the diversity and success of our country, but we must ensure that both Canadians and newcomers are protected by implementing and maintaining proper checks before these students come to Canada.

Foreign nationals who committed crimes should be deported, and our court system—particularly our judges—need to be aware that security checks are not done on most of the students before they come to Canada.

The deportation issue is obviously a problem for some of our judges, as it is an additional penalty in that a criminal conviction may result in removal, but the safety of Canadians and those who abide by Canadian law during their temporary stay here should be the priority.

As the federal minister responsible for immigration recently stated: “In general, applicants for a study permit are not required to provide a police certificate as part of their application. Applicants should check country-specific requirements for more information. Nonetheless, if the immigration officer processing the application deems it necessary when reviewing a prospective student’s application, they will ask the applicant for a police certificate.”

Evidently, the process outlined by the minister highlights massive security gaps in the present system that is neither working to protect Canadian citizens, nor for the legitimate international students who come here to study.

Percy Downe is a Senator from Charlottetown, P.E.I.

Source: All foreign students need security checks

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Ravi Jain: Fix immigration system to unleash full potential of newcomers

2023/09/28 Leave a comment

Good sensible and practical recommendations, particularly with respect to international students and the need to refuse study permits for colleges where students are “not even eligible to apply for coveted work permits upon graduation”

Screenshot below showing steep increase of Indian students at colleges from HESA:

Tensions are high between Canada and India after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced last Monday that he had evidence linking the Indian government to the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. India, which had previously accused Nijjar of committing terrorist activity in the state of Punjab, denied the allegation. The rift between Canada and India now threatens to impact our immigration sector, which is why the conflict must be resolved as quickly as possible.

In retaliation for the accusation last week, India paused visa services for Canadians wishing to visit and issued a travel advisory discouraging travel to Canada. This could impact the number of Indian students coming to Canada. We cannot afford to lose our leading source country for immigration.

Last year, 118,095 Indians became permanent residents. This does not include the hundreds of thousands of Indians entering as temporary residents (workers, students and visitors). For context, the next largest source country was China, at 31,815.

These newcomers are needed because Canada’s population isn’t just aging — it’s already aged. Our birth rate is too low. To maintain our standard of living, we need immigrants. Unlike the United States, where the majority of immigration is family-based, Canada relies mostly on economic immigration. We rely on India to fill our more ambitious immigration targets.

Proponents for more immigration talk of better employment opportunities down the road for Canadians, because greater diversity fosters innovation and trade. Critics argue that GDP per capita is the priority metric, and that it’s being depressed by large numbers of new entrants. In particular, they point to the 900,000 international students that Canada is on track to admitting this year (roughly triple from a decade ago) who can be used to provide cheap labour and relieve employers of the need to innovate.

Neither the proponents nor the critics are wrong. To reap the benefits of immigration, we need to tweak a few things.

First, governments need to focus on productivity. We shouldn’t be only 70 per cent as productive as Americans and less productive than Europeans. Many owners of small- and medium-sized businesses (which are responsible for more than $2 trillion in assets) will retire soon, their kids not interested in taking the reins. Canada must bring in entrepreneurs to boost our faltering productivity.

We also need to stop blaming international students for the country’s ills, including our lack of housing. Canada’s housing shortage has existed for decades, so it’s unfair to blame students now. Governments at all levels need to solve the housing crisis urgently.

Provincial governments should not rely on international students to make up for shortfalls in funding to our universities and community colleges. The number of applicants, however, are rising every year, with government forecasts estimating that Canada will receive 1.4 million applicants in 2027. International students contribute around $22 billion in tuition to our economy.

But this system has been exploited. There have been reports of poor educational quality with some colleges overenrolling and others holding classes in strip malls or movie theatres. This often happens when students enroll at a private collage partnering with a public college, with the latter issuing the diploma.

These colleges are on the federal government’s approved list for student visa issuance, but some graduates are not even eligible to apply for coveted work permits upon graduation, unlike those who attend public institutions. The federal government should therefore prevent student visa issuance in these scenarios.

We should also monitor immigration consultants more closely. Their numbers have risen rapidly, to more than 11,000. Some consultants make false promises, guaranteeing pathways to permanent residency even though only 30 per cent of temporary residents obtain it within 10 years of arriving.

Fraud and negligence are rampant among some registered consultants in Canada, as well as their non-registered counterparts in India. For instance, it was reported this summer that 700 students from India faced deportation after it was found that they were accepted to come to Canada on fake admission letters. The problem needs to be solved.

It is high time we required all consultants to work under the supervision of lawyers, who are professionally regulated and stand to lose their investment in law school if they face severe discipline.

I have practiced in this area for more than 20 years, and while a small number of immigration lawyers have been disciplined professionally, I regularly see victims of immigration consultants who enroll students at private college programs that don’t lead to work permits. These consultants will even arrange fake jobs and suggest making refugee claims simply as a way of staying in Canada.

While these changes could reduce immigration from India, this would ease Canada’s dependence on one country for international students. India would remain a main source country, but the numbers would come down to a more reasonable level.

The fraying relationship between Canada and India is incredibly unfortunate. Let’s at least use this opportunity to examine the benefits brought by Indian immigrants and temporary residents and improve the faults in our system that allow for exploitation.

National Post

Ravi Jain is an Ontario-based immigration lawyer at Jain Immigration Law. He serves as co-president of the Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association.

Source: Ravi Jain: Fix immigration system to unleash full potential of newcomers

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Foreign students being tricked into thinking they can get permanent residency by studying in Canada, experts warn

2023/09/27 Leave a comment

More on the report by Senators Omidvar, Youssugg and Woo:

Foreign students, some of them confused by false promises from immigration consultants, are being misled into thinking that studying at Canadian postsecondary schools is a guaranteed route to remaining permanently in the country, senators and immigration experts are warning.

A report by Senators Ratna Omidvar, Hassan Yussuff and Yuen Pau Woo about the federal international student program warns that there are not enough permanent residence spots to cater to the rising number of these students coming to Canada, and calls on Ottawa to make clear that the process of staying permanently is highly competitive.

Although attending a Canadian college or university can help a foreign student gain permanent residence here, success is not assured. Under a program known as Express Entry, Canada’s immigration system assigns scores to would-be permanent residents based on their work experience and other factors, and only the highest ranked are invited to apply.

The senators’ report also calls for federal action to stop education consultants – who are paid by Canadian colleges to recruit students abroad – from overselling the ease of getting Canadian work permits after graduation. In some cases, international students are denied these permits because their colleges are not “designated learning institutions,” meaning the schools aren’t on a government list of approved institutions.

In comments to the House of Commons last week, Immigration Minister Marc Miller said international students are an asset to Canada and its future. But he said there needs to be a crackdown on consultants giving them “false hope.”

The senators’ report says it is often argued that the federal government itself is also “perpetuating an inflated sense of hope” among people who come to study in Canada.

“While the Canadian government is being honest in highlighting the immigration advantages of studying in Canada, it can perhaps do more to be forthright about the highly competitive nature of the permanent residence application process,” the report says.

The federal Immigration Department forecasts that the number of foreign students applying to come to Canada each year will rise to 1.4 million by 2027, according to an internal policy document. This year, around 900,000 are expected to study in Canada.

While Ottawa is increasing its immigration targets in the coming years, with a goal of admitting 500,000 permanent residents a year by 2025, the senators’ report says there will still not be enough spots to cater to the number of international students who wish to stay after graduation. It notes that while the number of permanent residents admitted each year is capped, there is no such cap on the number of temporary residents, including students.

Most international students want to gain permanent residence after they finish their studies, a 2021 survey of students for the Canadian Bureau for International Education found.

The survey found that 73 per cent of respondents planned to apply for postgraduation work permits, which allow former international students to work in Canada temporarily. The survey also found that 59 per cent said they intended to apply for permanent residence.

But not all postsecondary programs make students eligible for postgraduation work permits. The senators’ report says international students need to be made aware of this.

Ms. Omidvar, one of the report’s authors, said in an interview that the federal government should directly communicate with foreign students about the conditions for working and staying in Canada, to counter what she called “misinformation” from education consultants.

“It is the federal government’s responsibility to communicate with the students. When the visa is issued it should be accompanied by a letter,” she said.

Toronto immigration lawyer Michael Battista said many people discover after finishing their studies that they have been rejected for postgraduation work permits because the schools they attended, often private colleges, were not designated learning institutions.

Some return to their home countries, while others have to start their studies again at designated colleges, he said.

Mr. Battista, who is also an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto’s law faculty, said applications for permanent residence are becoming far more competitive. Qualifications that a few years ago would have allowed students to obtain permanent residence now aren’t enough, he said.

“International students are really being sold a false story,” he said, adding that many skilled graduates have waited so long for permanent residence that they have given up.

Ms. Omidvar said in some cases entire families have saved up to send one person to study in Canada. Some families in India have sold their land to pay student fees, she added.

The senators’ report says research by Statistics Canada found that 30 per cent of international students who came to Canada in the 2000s became permanent residents within 10 years of arriving.

Source: Foreign students being tricked into thinking they can get permanent residency by studying in Canada, experts warn

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Ottawa forecasts 1.4 million international student applications a year by 2027, document shows

2023/09/22 1 Comment

Hard to deny the impact such numbers would have on housing, healthcare and infrastructure pressures and the increased numbers of disillusioned students given worse economic outcomes and likely frustration for the majority who will not transition to permanent residency.

But unlikely to convince the denialisms among the various interest groups that favour higher numbers.

Good that IRCC officials are carrying out this analysis:

The number of foreign students applying to come to Canada each year is forecast by the federal immigration department to rise to 1.4 million by 2027, an internal policy document says, which also raises concerns that such growth is “unsustainable.”

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada forecast the rapid rise in the number of foreign students in a paper last month about establishing a class of “trusted” universities and colleges, which would qualify for faster processing of international student study permits.

The document, obtained by The Globe and Mail, says that from 2019 to 2022 study permit applications for overseas students have increased by nearly 300,000 a year.

“By 2027, volumes are forecasted to nearly double to 1.4 million applications per year,” it says.

The federal document was sent to a select group of universities and colleges taking part in a pilot to establish the proposed trusted-institutions framework.

The IRCC paper forecasts that applications from foreign students will reach 949,000 this year, and just over one million next year. The number is projected to rise to 1.1 million in 2025, 1.28 million in 2026 and 1.4 million in 2027.

It says a recent strategic immigration review – and a continuing review of the international students program – has raised a number of concerns including “unsustainable growth in application volumes, impacting education quality, community infrastructure, and IRCC processing capacity.”

The paper says that the rapid growth in the intake of foreign students “has disrupted processing times” for study permits to enter the country. Meanwhile universities and colleges have become “increasingly dependent” on international students for revenue, in some cases not providing international students with “a positive education experience in Canada.”

It is currently piloting metrics to determine which universities and colleges are eligible to be counted as trusted institutions. To qualify they would have to share data annually with the immigration department, including the number and percentage of international students living in university housing.

Alex Usher, founder of Higher Education Strategy Associates, said on-campus housing is often not the cheapest option and this measure could reward universities attracting the wealthiest international students

Housing Minister Sean Fraser – the former immigration minister – floated the prospect of a cap on international student numbers at the cabinet retreat in Charlottetown last month, saying the number of foreign students is putting pressure on rental markets and driving up costs. Immigration Minister Marc Miller said at the retreat that around 900,000 students are expected to enter Canada this year.

A Senate report on Canada’s international student program, published Wednesday, said that many international students are forced to live in crowded, sub-standard housing, with universities failing to provide them with accommodation, even though they pay far higher tuition fees than Canadian students and inject around $22-billion into the economy each year.

One of the report’s authors, Senator Hassan Yussuff, questioned assertions that international students are to blame for the shortage of affordable housing, saying that many are living in cramped and overpriced accommodation with little protection from avaricious landlords.

The Senate report quoted findings by Statistics Canada that 40 per cent of study permit holders live in unsuitable accommodation compared with 9 per cent of the rest of Canada’s population.

“Housing supply and affordability are a decades-old problem that cannot be solved by putting the burden principally on international students,” the report said.

It said that reducing international student numbers will reduce housing demand although the benefits would vary in different parts of the country and depend on the “tenancy preferences of Canadians.”

The Senate report said 51 per cent of international students settle in Ontario, with 20 per cent in B.C., and 12 per cent in Quebec.

The report added that the number of foreign students coming to Canada could be affected by diplomatic disputes with India and China, the “top international source countries.”

The IRCC, in assessing whether universities and colleges qualify as trusted, will gather information from government of Canada databases, such as on the “rate of adverse outcomes for study permit holders” –including convictions of international students for crimes in Canada. Ottawa will also check the approval rate of study permits to attend an institution.

It will also assess the “average teacher-student ratio” for the most popular courses taken by international students, retention and completion rates, foreign students’ ability to speak English or French, and the proportion of students who transition to permanent residency in Canada.

It says following the pilot, universities and colleges would be able to apply and the trusted institutions system could be up and running by spring next year. Foreign students applying to attend colleges and universities on the approved list could “receive expedited processing for the 2024 academic session.”

Source: Ottawa forecasts 1.4 million international student applications a year by 2027, document shows

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Tensions with India raise concerns fewer international students will choose to study in Canada

2023/09/22 1 Comment

Could be a good thing given the stories of fraud and exploitation and failed expectations. But not good for the institutions that rely on the revenues:

Diplomatic tensions between New Delhi and Ottawa threaten to curtail a relationship that funds a significant portion of Canada’s postsecondary education system.

The government of India issued a statement Wednesday warning Indian students in Canada about “growing anti-India activities and politically-condoned hate crimes and criminal violence.”

The statement urged students and other Indian nationals to exercise caution, but did not recommend against travel to Canada entirely. Instead it warned students of a “deteriorating security environment” and advised against visiting regions or venues targeted by those with what it called an “anti-India agenda.”

It’s the latest salvo in a growing diplomatic crisis between the two countries. On Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in the House of Commons that Canadian security agencies had been pursuing credible allegations of links between agents of the government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh Najjar, who supported the movement for an independent Khalistan.

Canada expelled an Indian diplomat earlier this week and India responded by doing the same to a member of Canada’s High Commission in New Delhi.

There is some concern that the Indian government could continue to stir fears about conditions in Canada, which might diminish demand for Canadian postsecondary education.

India issued a similar warning for students in Canada last year, however, and it had little, if any, impact. At the time Canadian police services could not point to any rise in anti-Indian violence.

Students from India make up about 40 per cent of the more than 800,000 international students in Canada, according to the Canadian Bureau for International Education. They are by far the largest single group at Canadian schools, followed by China at about 12 per cent and the Philippines at 4 per cent. At least six Ontario colleges have more students from India than from Canada.

International student tuition, which is several times higher than for Canadian students, has become essential to the finances of many postsecondary schools.

Roopa Desai Trilokekar, a professor of education at York University, said there is some risk that if this diplomatic fight escalates, the government of India could use its platform to discourage Indian students from applying to Canada. Something similar occurred more than 10 years ago with respect to Australia, after incidents that targeted Indian students in that country, she said. Study applications to Australia subsequently dropped.

Canada was already getting negative press in India because of difficulties with housing and work conditions that many students face when they arrive, she said. The diplomatic feud will only heighten the publicity around some of these issues, she said.

“I would imagine that we’re going to see a dip. But I don’t know how large the dip will be. And it will depend whether any official stances will be taken by either of the governments,” Prof. Trilokekar said.

She said the Canadian government, which is reviewing its international education policies, should reconsider the role of education in its geopolitical strategy.

“It’s going to require rethinking. There’s a lot of dependence on students from India.”

Gautham Kolluri, an international student recruiter based in Ontario, said he has already heard from students concerned that supporters of an independent Khalistan would attack Indian students in Canada.

But Mr. Kolluri said he doesn’t believe this diplomatic dispute will seriously reduce the number of students interested in coming to Canada. Demand from India is very high, he said. And unlike Saudi Arabia, which recalled students on government-funded scholarships during a diplomatic dispute with Canada in 2018, India does not have a ready mechanism to alter student migration, he said.

Jaspreet Singh, founder of the International Sikh Students Association, said he doesn’t think the political tensions will affect Sikh international students in Canada. He said India is unlikely to shut off a migration path that offers opportunity to young people who might otherwise have difficulty finding work or a spot in a university.

“If they tried to do something like this, there would be a huge backlash,” he said.

Source: Tensions with India raise concerns fewer international students will choose to study in Canada

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