International Student Stream Needs a Makeover
Tighter rules and stronger enforcement are needed to save Canada’s student visa program, says Toronto immigration lawyer Robin Seligman.
A recent Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada obtained by the Toronto Star revealed that as many as one tenth of all international students in Canadian post-secondary institutions are suspected of violating the conditions of their study permits.
Seligman, principal of immigration law boutique Seligman Law, says the report offers a welcome reminder of the student visa program’s limitations.
“It’s a good program, but there needs to be much more monitoring and greater attention paid by the government to the impact it’s having on job prospects for Canadian citizens and permanent resident graduates,” she says. IRCC relies on school administrators across the country to report on the status of their international student populations, which have ballooned since 2014, when immigration policy changes smoothed the path to permanent residence for students coming from abroad. Since the changes, the Star reports that the total number of international students in Canada has jumped by 73 per cent; from around 330,000 in 2014 to around 570,000 in 2019.
According to the IRCC report, a nationwide survey of administrators carried out in the spring of 2018 identified 28,000 study permit holders flagged as “potentially non-compliant” by their schools out of 316,000 international students accounted for. However, the total number of suspected breaches could be much higher, since more than 10 per cent of post-secondary institutions failed to submit any data on enrolment, while those that did omitted the status of a further 50,000 students between them.
The range of alleged breaches varied wildly, with some international students cited for academic suspensions and others for failing to show up at all, according to the IRCC report. Meanwhile, around 5,500 permits were revoked in 2018.
The authors also recorded a worrying level of fraud in student visa applications: after verifying 10,400 acceptance letters from post-secondary institutions in supporting materials submitted by foreign students, 1,240 or 12 per cent of them were found to have been faked.
Seligman says the report should serve as a wake-up call to the federal government. In addition to stepping up monitoring and enforcement efforts, she says eligibility should be limited to students enrolling in educational programs that are at least two years in length – except for masters degrees and that private schools and private colleges should not be eligible for this program.