Ottawa hikes the funds foreign students need to qualify for study permits

2023/12/09 Leave a comment

Better late than never as these changes should curb some of the abuse and exploitation, particularly by private colleges. Refreshing clear language on “puppy mills,” “back-door” entry points, “enough is enough.”

Will be interesting to see what push back from institutions and provinces with his threat to limit visas starting next fall, a year out from the election:

Learning institutions that are profit-making “back-door” entry points to Canada should be “effectively shut down,” he said.

He added that if provinces do not take action by the beginning of the next academic year, his department may start refusing visas for students applying to enroll at this type of institution.

“Enough is enough,” he said. “If provinces and territories cannot do this we will do it for them, and they will not like the bluntness of the instruments that we use.”

Source: Ottawa hikes the funds foreign students need to qualify for study permits

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Canada looking to stabilize immigration levels at 500,000 per year in 2026

2023/11/03 Leave a comment

One of the general articles covering the plan with Phil Triadafilopoulos stating the obvious that housing pressures will continue with these high levels give the time it takes for housing to be built:

After increasing its immigration targets several times in recent years, the federal government announced Wednesday it’s aiming to maintain its target of welcoming 500,000 new permanent residents in 2026.

Immigration Minister Marc Miller said the target is meant to support the labour supply while easing pressures on housing and health care.

“What Canadians are telling us, what economists are telling us, is that we have to dive into the micro-economic impacts of immigration,” Miller told a press conference.

The government has steadily increased its immigration targets in recent years to boost the workforce and support an aging population.

Last year, the government released a plan to grant permanent residency to 465,000 people in 2023, a figure that’s set to rise to 500,000 by 2025. The immigration target for 2015 was under 300,000.

Miller said Wednesday the government is now levelling off its planned immigration intake to see what sorts of adjustments can be made to Canada’s immigration programs.

“Those numbers were needed but now we have to take a look at them, where we feel they’re reasonable and plateauing in a space where we think it makes sense,” he said.

“We have a lot of complex calculations that we need to make and measures we need to adjust. I think it’s sometimes politically convenient to come out with a hammer-type approach… It’s more on the level of finer surgery that we need to adjust.”

Canada’s population grew by a record 1 million people in 2022. The population also surpassed the 40 million mark earlier this year.

That population growth is coming at a time when the country is also facing a housing shortage. Almost 5.8 million new units will have to be built by the end of the decade in order to fix the housing supply, said a report from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation released in September.

Miller admitted the housing shortage was a factor in the decision to level off immigration targets. He said it was not the main factor.

“If that were the sole reason, it would totally be misunderstanding the challenges I think we’re facing as a country,” he said.

Many experts have said that the root causes of this housing shortage are not related to immigration. Red tape and anti-development sentiment at the municipal level, for example, can lead to major delays in housing projects.

The federal government is pushing municipalities to adjust their zoning bylaws through its housing accelerator program.

Miller maintained that Canada will need to maintain immigration levels in order to provide the workers who can build houses.

Earlier this year, the government announced changes to the express entry system that would prioritize tradespeople for permanent residency. Miller said those changes have attracted roughly 1,500 tradespeople from abroad.

But Phil Triadafilopoulos, a political science professor who specializes in immigration at the University of Toronto, said high levels of immigration will still put pressure on the housing market.

“I don’t know whether pausing at a historically high level of immigration is really going to do much to ease affordability issues around housing,” he told CBC News. “Those pressures are going to persist, I think.”

The government’s target for economic immigrants is holding steady at 60 per cent of total immigration, according to the new plan

Goldy Hyder, president and CEO of the Business Council of Canada, said the government should boost that portion to 65 per cent.

“Unfilled job openings for highly skilled and educated professionals remain stubbornly high. If not addressed with urgency and ambition, this shortage of leading talent will have a large and lasting impact on Canadian technological innovation, labour productivity and capital investment,” he said in a media statement.

Jenny Kwan, the NDP’s immigration critic, said the Liberals’ plan lacks transparency.

‘While the government’s immigration levels plan document talks about ensuring newcomers can successfully resettle in Canada, there are no plans attached to make that happen. Once again, it’s all talk and not action,” she said in a media statement.

Source: Canada looking to stabilize immigration levels at 500,000 per year in 2026

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Miller shares strategy for Canada’s immigration system, ahead of new levels plan

2023/11/02 Leave a comment

The messaging before the levels plan, along with a glossy communications piece:

The federal government’s priorities for improving Canada’s immigration system include better aligning the number of people welcomed to the country with what the labour market needs, as well as services and infrastructure, says a report released Tuesday.

“With an aging population, people living longer, families having fewer children, Canada imperatively needs immigration to rebalance our demographics and support the growing need for workers,” federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said Tuesday.

“Today, we’re laying out our plans to build an immigration system that can meet the future demands of our country,” Miller added as he released a report outlining key actions intended to strengthen the immigration system, based on consultations with stakeholders.

The report comes ahead of the federal government’s annual immigration levels plan, which Miller is expected to table in the House of Commons on Wednesday.

Among the changes outlined in the report is the need to develop a “whole-of-government” approach to immigration growth. Such an approach would take housing, health care, infrastructure and other services into account when planning immigration levels.

Canada’s immigration system has faced scrutiny recently as high levels of newcomers drive population growth and put pressure on the housing market. Last year’s immigration plan, released in November, said Canada would welcome 500,000 immigrants per year by 2025.

Miller suggested Tuesday the constraints in the housing market are the result of a failure to take action by both Conservative and Liberal federal governments, as well as the provinces.

However, he pointed recent steps by the federal government to address the housing shortage, including the rollout of the housing accelerator fund, which gives cities additional money to boost housing development.

The report also offers a guidefor other action the federal government has either begun or is in the processing of developing to improve the immigration system.

That includes developing a new francophone immigration policy that will “enhance the vitality of francophone minority communities, while maintaining and increasing the demographic weight of French linguistic minority communities in Canada,” according to a news release.

The report proposes creating a chief international talent officer position to better align immigration programs and pathways with the labour market.

It says the federal government is also looking at creating a “recognized institutions framework” to fast-track study permits for educational institutions with high standards.

Source: Miller shares strategy for Canada’s immigration system, ahead of new levels plan

Government explainer: An Immigration System for Canada’s Future: A plan to get us there

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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

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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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Ottawa reviewing virtual citizenship ceremonies as petition calls on government to pull the plug – CBC News

2023/10/10 Leave a comment

Latest article on “citizenship on a click.” Petition closes today at 3 pm:

Source: Ottawa reviewing virtual citizenship ceremonies as petition calls on government to pull the plug – CBC News

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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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New immigration minister says one-click citizenship oath still worth considering [No, it’s not]

2023/09/26 Leave a comment

Latest public statement by the Minister:

The new immigration minister is still considering a controversial option to allow new Canadians to take their oath of citizenship with the click of a button, but there are no immediate plans to implement it, he said Monday.

The government asked for public feedback in February about the idea to allow new Canadians to skip a virtual or in-person ceremony and opt instead to take the oath with the click of a mouse.

Consultation documents posted online say the new regulations were expected to come into force in June 2023, but the government has been mum about its plans since then.

The department is still mulling it over, Immigration Minister Marc Miller said Monday, and he thinks it’s a good idea.

“You don’t want to take these moments lightly, but we do need technological options,” Miller said on his way into Question Period. 

“The department has been criticized, rightly, for not being adjusted to the 21st century and that option is one I think that we should preserve.”

It’s particularly important for people who live in remote or rural communities, who shouldn’t have to drive long distances to swear their oath, he said. 

Earlier this year, then-immigration minister Sean Fraser pitched the idea as a temporary option to help work through backlogs of people waiting for their citizenship. 

The change is expected to save people up to three months of processing time, the government consultation documents said. 

The responses to that consultation offered mixed views on the idea: some called it a forward thinking approach, while others thought it would degrade the value of in-person ceremonies. 

The department said in a statement Monday that the comments will “inform the next steps and the development of implementation plans.”

“I’ve heard from Canadians and advocates of the importance of actually being in person. I’ve also seen the importance of virtually, when there’s no question about someone’s loyalty or citizenship or oath or the seriousness he should take the Canadian citizenship,” Miller said Monday. 

“It’s about keeping the options open in the 21st century.”

Miller said he’s administered the oath three times since taking over the immigration file during the summer cabinet shuffle, and recognizes that preserving an in-person option is “paramount.”

“We have to we have to obviously preserve those.”

The government expects in-person participation will drop even more once the one-click option is introduced, and there would likely be fewer ceremonies overall.

Conservatives have vowed to oppose the measure over concerns it would “cheapen” the citizenship oath.

The government wants to “reduce it all to a click on a website or an app as if citizenship were no more than consenting to terms in a contract,” Conservative immigration critic Tom Kmiec said in a statement Monday.

“The Trudeau Liberals are abandoning this special tradition and reducing our citizens to a bureaucratic number.”

During the pandemic, the government added the option to allow people to pledge their allegiance to Canada in a virtual ceremony, and the practice has continued. 

“We saw a firefighter in B.C. that was able to do it on the fly,” Miller said, and suggested the option should remain. 

“I think we need to maintain those.”

Even with the virtual ceremonies, there were still 68,287 people in the backlog as of July 23, waiting to take their oaths and enjoy all the benefits of Canadian citizenship.

Source: New immigration minister says one-click citizenship oath still worth considering

Link to petition opposing the change: https://petitions.ourcommons.ca/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-4511

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Minister, advocates say they fear international students will be blamed for housing crisis

2023/09/11 Leave a comment

None of the commentary I have seen blames international students for the housing crisis but rather correctly notes that they, along with high levels of permanent and temporary residents, are significant contributors. After all, over 90 percent of Canada’s population increase is immigrant-driven.

The advocates/activists claims are self-serving, as is often the case. Equally, they fail to acknowledge time lags in increasing housing.

The only encouraging note is Minister Miller’s recognition of the “perverse incentives” by provincial governments and education institutions that have let us to this situation. But his interest in having discussions “with provinces about the systemic underfunding of higher education” is unlikely to deliver any meaningful results in the short-term:

Immigration Minister Marc Miller and student advocates across the country say they worry about immigrants and international students being singled out for blame because of the housing crisis.

“It’s one of my fears,” Miller said in a recent interview with CBC News. “I do worry about the stigmatization of particularly people of diversity that come to this country to make it better, and that includes international students.”

Miller told CBC Radio’s The House last week that Canada is on track to host around 900,000 international students this year. In 2011, that figure was just shy of 240,000.

Source: Minister, advocates say they fear international students will be blamed for housing crisis

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