Indian students rejected the most for international student permits in Canada

2025/11/06 Leave a comment

Given most of the growth has been from India, the extent of college recruitment in particular and the examples of fraud, not that surprising:

…For the second year in a row, Canada cut the number of international student permits in order to bring down the number of temporary migrants and to deal with fraudulent applications.

As a result, about 74% of Indian students applying to study at Canadian colleges and universities were rejected in August — a big increase compared to about 32% in August 2023, says Reuters, which was provided with immigration department data.

Indian applicants also dropped from 20,900 in August 2023, when they represented just over one-quarter of all applicants, to 4,515 in August.

During the past 10 years, India has been Canada’s top source of international students and in August,  it also had the highest study-permit refusal rate of any country with more than 1,000 approved applicants….

Source: Indian students rejected the most for international student permits in Canada

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Record number of people applying to come to Canada to work, study or visit were refused in 2024

2025/02/28 Leave a comment

Ottawa refused a record number of would-be visitors, international students and foreign workers seeking to come to Canada last year.

According to data obtained by the Star, immigration officials rejected 2,359,157 or 50 per cent of temporary resident applications in 2024, up from 1,846,180 or 35 per cent the year before. The refusal rate — covering study permits, work permits and visitor visas — hit the highest level since 2019, before the pandemic.

Among the three subgroups, 1.95 million or 54 per cent of visitor visa applicants were denied last year — up from 40 per cent in 2023, along with 290,317 or 52 per cent of study permit applicants (up from 38 per cent), and 115,549 or 22 per cent of those who applied for authorization to work in Canada (down slightly from 23 per cent).

The federal government has set aggressive targets to rein in the number of temporary residents in the country under tremendous public pressure amid the affordable housing crisis and rising costs of living faced by Canadians post-pandemic. It also reduced the annual intake of new permanent residents by 20 per cent to 395,000 in 2025, 380,000 in 2026 and 365,000 in 2027.

To clamp down on the surging temporary resident population in the country, Ottawa has tried to limit new entries while banking on migrants already here to leave voluntarily after their legal permits expire, with a portion of them transitioning to permanent residence under eligible programs.

However, immigration data appears to show a different story when it comes to showing the door to migrants who are already here.

Migrants with expiring temporary resident status are eligible to extend their legal status by applying for what’s called a visitor record. The document allows them to remain here legally but doesn’t let them work or study.

Immigration Department data showed the number of visitor record applications received doubled from 196,965 in 2019 to 389,254 in 2024. The refusal rate hovered at around five per cent. Last year, extension was granted to 321,277 temporary residents — only down slightly from 333,672 in 2023.

“If you remain here and you cannot legalize yourself either as a student, a worker or a permanent resident, the fallback solution is a visitor record,” said Ekaterina Neouimina, who speaks on behalf of the Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association as a founding member.

While she’s not surprised by the jump in refusals of temporary immigration to Canada, she said it doesn’t make sense that the visitor record approvals remained high.

Source: Record number of people applying to come to Canada to work, study or visit were refused in 2024

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One in three Chinese immigrants fail to acquire Australian citizenship amid ‘unwarranted delays’

2019/10/28 Leave a comment

Some interesting data. Have not looked at recent Canadian citizenship pass rates to know if there is a similar pattern here.

But we do know that Chinese immigrants have a relatively lower naturalization rate than many other groups: 77.2 percent compared to the overall naturalization rate of for those who immigrated to Canada 2006-10 (Census 2016):

One in three migrants from mainland China has failed to acquire Australian citizenship since 2012 amid the growing political debate over Chinese influence.

The figure, the highest of any nation in the top 10 sources of new Australian citizens, follows a collapse in the number of Chinese residents approved last financial year, when only 11 per cent of these applicants were granted citizenship as Home Affairs struggled to keep up with demand.

The department pulled that figure back up this year, with 42 per cent of Chinese applications between 2017 and 2019 approved overall.

But figures, given in response to questions on notice in Parliament show that, since 2012, just 64 per cent of applicants from China were approved, compared with 69 per cent from the Philippines, 77 per cent from Britain and India, and 90 per cent from South Africa. The figures exclude migrants from Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Up to 390 Chinese migrants have had their citizenship put on hold for three years, while 9600 have been waiting for two years despite already being permanent residents for several years. At the same time, 2350 Afghani migrants have been waiting since 2015 to have their citizenship applications processed.

A Home Affairs spokesperson said the department did not treat citizenship applications from people from certain backgrounds more favourably than others.

The spokesperson said processing times could vary due to individual circumstances, including the time it takes to receive additional character and national security information from external agencies and the time it takes for the applicant to attend a citizenship ceremony or receive a citizenship certificate.

The Morrison government has blamed the delays on an increase in the complexity of applications. An Auditor-General’s report dismissed this in February, finding that “overall, the relative complexity of the applications lodged has decreased” and the backlog was due to tighter security screenings.

The Home Affairs spokesperson said the department had implemented a number of strategies to improve processing times and reduce the on-hand caseload of applications, without “compromising on national security” or “program integrity”.

The figures come amid a decline in Chinese applications overall. The absolute number of applications for Australian citizenship by residents of Chinese heritage has halved since 2017, when there were 14,707 applicants, compared with 7999 last year.

Political tension between the Chinese and Australian governments has grown since 2017, when former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull angered the Chinese government by introducing foreign interference laws. Mr Turnbull last year banned Chinese telco giant Huawei from building Australia’s 5G network due to national security concerns.

Scott Morrison, who is yet to visit Beijing since becoming prime minister in August last year, has become more aggressive in his differences with China on global trade policy since visiting US President Donald Trump in September. Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne has also sharpened her criticism of the deteriorating situation in Hong Kong.

The chair of the Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia, Mary Patetsos, said the federation hoped people from all backgrounds and nationalities would receive equal treatment in relation to the processing of their citizenship applications.

“I think this is what an overwhelming majority of Australians would expect as citizens of a country that strives to be fair, equitable and democratic,” she said.

“We must also remember that unwarranted delays in the processing of citizenship applications cause significant hardship for families.”

Labor MP Julian Hill, who asked for the figures from Home Affairs and has launched a parliamentary inquiry into the citizenship audit, said the delays had caused widespread anxiety among migrants in his Melbourne electorate of Bruce.

He said some applicants were unable to travel where they needed to without an Australian passport, or apply for jobs in the public service or defence force.

“Then of course there is the big issue of family reunions. People are in my office weekly because they are desperate,” he said.

“Until they are citizens, their family reunion applications will get no priority. That means they have not been able to see their wife, husband or kids for years. The sheer inhumanity of that is astounding.”

Source: One in three Chinese immigrants fail to acquire Australian citizenship amid ‘unwarranted delays’

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Fewer Canadians being refused entry at U.S. land border

2017/03/28 Leave a comment

Always important to have the numbers and data to inform discussion and debate, both the numbers of refusals as well as overall numbers of people crossing the border:

Fewer Canadians are being turned away at the U.S. land border in recent months despite mounting concerns that Donald Trump’s immigration policies are making it much harder to cross, The Canadian Press has learned.

Refusals of Canadians at American land crossings dropped 8.5 per cent between October and the end of February compared with the same five-month period a year earlier, according to U.S. government statistics

The total number of Canadian travellers denied entry also dropped: 6,875 out of 12,991,027 were refused entry, a refusal rate of 0.05 per cent.

Between October 2015 and February 2016, 7,619 out of 13,173,100 Canadian travellers were denied entry to the U.S., a refusal rate of 0.06 per cent.

About 180,000 fewer people attempted to cross the border in the most recent figures.

The figures, confirmed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, contrast with recent anecdotal reports of Canadians denied entry into the U.S., with many placing the blame on the policies of the Trump administration, including its controversial attempts to ban arrivals from several predominantly Muslim countries.

A further breakdown of the border data shows a sharp drop in Canadian refusals at the U.S. border in the first two months of this year as 2,600 Canadian travellers were denied entry, compared with 3,500 for the same two-month period of 2016.

‘Much more cautious about crossing the border’

But Canadian immigration and civil liberties advocates caution the numbers don’t tell the whole story.

Immigration lawyer Lorne Waldman said he is fielding more calls than ever from people planning a trip to the U.S. and wanting to make sure they have the paperwork they need. The decreased rate of refusal could be just that people are now better prepared than they used to be, and so fewer are being turned away as a result, he said.

“People in Canada used to take it for granted that they could just go to the border . . . but that’s no longer the case,” he said.

Source: Fewer Canadians being refused entry at U.S. land border – Canada – CBC News

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