January 22, 2024 Radio Interview Discussion the Newly Announced Cap on International Students
On Monday, January 22, 2024 I joined host Ben O’Hara-Byrne on his program, A Little More Conversation, to discuss the newly announced caps imposed on international students (and by extension to the Designated Learning Institutions that have become addicted to that source of funding).
2024 01 22 Ben OHaraByrne interview on intl caps
Transcript
Ben O-Hara-Byrn…: We’ll start too with the whole idea of immigration because there was a major immigration announcement today from the federal government. Canada is imposing a national cap on the intake of international students into this country. The Immigration Minister Marc Miller provided details today as the liberal government held a cabinet retreat in Montreal. The cap is expected to result in approximately 365,000 approved study permits. That’s a decrease of 35% from 2023.
Marc Miller: One, a temporary two-year cap on new international student permits. It is the latest in a series of measures to improve program integrity and set international students up for the success in order to maintain a sustainable level of temporary residence in Canada as well.
Ben O-Hara-Byrn…: Some of the numbers are quite incredible. There are apparently more than a million people in Canada right now on student visas. Miller says the cap will not apply to students at graduate level of studies, including masters and doctoral students. Those people who are looking for study permit applications at the elementary and secondary school levels will also be exempt. But starting Monday, prospective students applying for a Canadian study permit will have to provide an attestation letter from the relevant province or territory. Ottawa will require each of Canada’s provinces and territories to establish a process for issuing those letters.
Marc Miller: Even though we’ve put a lot of thought into this, these are still very pretty much blunt measures from the federal government. We’re playing with taps that we’re turning on and turning off and allocating between province.
So did we get it right? We’ll see, but we need to work with provinces in the meantime to make sure that they’re doing their jobs.
Ben O-Hara-Byrn…: Of course, if you think about it, not long ago, and we talked about Australia and this very issue last week on the show, not that long ago, international students were being … we were rolling out the red carpet for them. But of course what’s happened is that there have been a lot of challenges for the students as well. I mean, there’s a housing shortage. They’re going specifically to certain areas, mostly to the GTA and to the Lower Mainland. So rents, they’re already high. They’re finding it tough to live. There’s also sort of a whole gray area here, unregulated foreign agents trying to sort of lure people here with promises of education that mightn’t be exactly what they appear to be, and people looking at studying here as a backdoor to working and earning permanent residence in Canada.
You add that all up and it creates some issues. But is this the answer? Already Premiers, don’t forget, education is a provincial jurisdiction and foreign students drive a lot of the … I mean, part of the funding model of a lot of schools in a lot of places is foreign students. So for instance, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew said today he’s seeking more details from Ottawa and says there could be consequences if the overall number of international students in his province drops.
Wab Kinew: But if there’s a reduction in the number of international students coming to our province, that is going to make tuition for Manitoba students already in the system more expensive potentially.
Ben O-Hara-Byrn…: Raj Sharma is an immigration lawyer, author of Inadmissibility and Remedies. He joins me now. Raj, thank you.
Raj Sharma: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Ben O-Hara-Byrn…: We were all, I think anybody who, especially in your shoes was anticipating this was coming. We just didn’t know what the details were. So your reaction just to the announcement and what it contains?
Raj Sharma: Ben, I guess my initial reaction was I suppose some degree of whiplash given the number of changes that have occurred in the immigration portfolio. I’ve been doing this for about 20 years. Prior to that, I started my career as a immigration hearings officer.
This department, this area of law is characterized by rapid change. That still doesn’t prepare you for the rapidity of change. And so we had massive change, massive focus on the international students, and you can almost see the Eye of Sauron descend on the international students after a number of concerning incidents.
Ben O-Hara-Byrn…: Yeah, we ran into a problem here, right? I mean, I think everyone understood the need to bring in … I think everyone understood the rationale between bringing foreign students to Canada. It was good money for the colleges. The university system was kind of reliant on that extra money. It was a way of attracting smart, young people to this country. Hopefully they would stay afterwards. Where did it get out of control that if it did?
Raj Sharma: You’re right. I mean, we’ve got this massive, let’s call it, near explosion in terms of the numbers of international students since the liberal government took power in about 2015. It didn’t start off this way. It didn’t start off as the international students being milked for double, triple, quadruple tuition fees. There was this sort of confluence or convergence of issues. You had the provinces hold funding to their post-secondary institutions. And given of course, expenses, inflation, et cetera, et cetera, the post-secondary institutions then saw the ability to charge these international students double, triple fees as a way to cover that shortfall of funding. So all of a sudden international students became …
Ben O-Hara-Byrn…: The funding model essentially.
Raj Sharma: In essence. And so you had international students years ago perhaps contribute $7 billion to the Canadian economy in primary, secondary, tertiary sort of let’s say outcomes. But you now have international students contributing 22 billion. That is larger than other sectors of our economy that have been around far longer than this sort of wave of international students that have come here over the past five, six years.
And so with that brought in part growing pains. Unlike the United States, unlike other countries, we do not have a cap on temporary residents. We go after permanent residents. We set a number, 350,000, 400,000, 500,000, 450,000. We have this model there. We do not have anything like that in terms of temporary residence.
And so what you have then of course is you have this new minister, all right, he’s got some of my sympathy and he’s thrown into the thick of things and he’s got to master this massive file. And you have Sean Fraser now at housing, you have liberal cabinet ministers including former immigration ministers expressing shock and dismay at liberal government immigration policy.
Ben O-Hara-Byrn…: Yeah. It doesn’t make much sense. I was speaking, we did something on Australia last week because they had encountered the same issue with housing problems, a large number of foreign students coming, some concerns over some of those institutions, ghost schools, they were calling them, this idea that the system was being gamed a little bit. I don’t think that’s the major problem, but it’s certainly one that people have an eye on.
And part of what was pointed out there was that the pandemic caused a huge surge too ’cause there was sort of a stop in the number of students coming. All of a sudden all those who were here stayed, and then a whole new influx came in, and that led to the huge growth in the number of foreign students. Was that the same here?
Raj Sharma: If you look at, and that’s very astute. If you look contextually, if you look at our contemporaries, let’s look at the United Kingdom, in many ways, they’re 5, 10 years ahead of us in terms of these sort of concerns. There’s also Australia and New Zealand that have followed our economic model in terms of permanent residency. So we’re close to our Commonwealth cousins down south there.
The UK has done a number of steps to restrict or put a freeze or a chill on immigration. The UK a few months ago under their newest prime ministers, they’ve gone through prime ministers more than we’ve gone through immigration ministers.
Ben O-Hara-Byrn…: Indeed.
Raj Sharma: But their Prime Minister, the son of immigrants, and …
Ben O-Hara-Byrn…: Rishi Sunak, right?
Raj Sharma: Rishi Sunak, Suella Braverman, former Home Minister, also the daughter of immigrants and perhaps an immigrant herself, anti-immigrant policy. The UK is offshoring refugee adjudication to Rwanda where we accept refugees from. But they also limited open work permits for individuals studying, the spouses of international students studying the UK, they stopped that.
I had no expectation that we would follow that, and that’s exactly what we did. Today’s announcement is no more open work permits for the spouses of international students unless those international students here are at the master’s or doctorate level class. So we went down the UK path, which is far more restrictive than we have ever been.
In terms of Australia, yes, it looked at the international students and so did we. International students, in my opinion, are perfect, let’s say stem cells, perfect potential future permanent residents. They’ve been here. They’ve paid double or triple tuition. They’ve worked here. They’ve paid taxes here. They’ve got to meet security and language proficiency levels. This is the ideal sort of nursery of future permanent residents to Canada.
Along the way, however, we got tangled up in the weeds. We had integrity issues. We had hundreds of students. India is the number one source country for international students for many, many years now. We had integrity issues. We had hundreds of students that entered Canada using false, fraudulent admission letters. We had international students accessing food banks, even though they’re supposed to show sufficient funds for the duration of their studies here, and international students going on YouTube and saying, “Well, here’s a way to get free food in Canada.”
You can see why that Sauron Eye started to focus in on international students because there’s integrity issues and of course the proliferation like mushrooms of these DLIs, Designated Learning Institutions above massage parlors. These colleges at DLIs that came out of nowhere, they’re running classes in defunct cinemas and theaters.
Ben O-Hara-Byrn…: Raj Sharma is an immigration lawyer. He’s with us. We’re talking about an announcement from the federal government today to curb the number of international students coming to this country. There are more than a million here right now on student visas, and the feeling is there’s not enough housing. The support system isn’t in place. It’s not good for the students. It’s not good for the country. So in comes the curb.
Raj, when you look at this though, do you think they’ve got the balance right because clearly it’s going to impact different provinces differently, Ontario specifically? And a lot of institutions depend on this money. So we know there are the bad actors, but when you look at the bad actors, how prevalent is it? Is it really the problem we think it is?
Raj Sharma: Ben, when you look at the messaging out of this government, bear in mind, 10 months ago, international students were heroes. And to the extent that we lifted the restriction of their hours, we said, “No, no, no, you can work as many hours as you want. Obviously we don’t know how much you’re going to be able to study, but no problem, you can now work 40 hours or even more.” And so they were heroes 10 months ago under Sean Fraser, now the Housing Minister, and now his tune has changed. Now they’re zeros. Now when you look at this sort of housing, they’re being blamed for housing access and affordability. They’re being blamed for an issue that has been with Canada for decades now.
Ben O-Hara-Byrn…: For sure. I don’t know if they’re being blamed as much as this is the easiest one to tackle.
Raj Sharma: No, I agree.
Ben O-Hara-Byrn…: This is like an easiest one. This is the one you look at the wide scheme of things and think, “Okay, we can stop this fast.” I wouldn’t want to blame international students. They just want to come here and get ahead in life. Right?
Raj Sharma: Yeah.
Ben O-Hara-Byrn…: You can’t blame them.
Raj Sharma: Yeah. Please tell me how international students are going to be buying houses given their temporary-
Ben O-Hara-Byrn…: Some do, but not many. Yes, indeed.
Raj Sharma: Not many. And yes, maybe they’ll impact the rental. But that rental market is going to be impacted in specific areas in our vast country. That’ll be in the GTA, the Brampton area or the Lower Mainland. Again, I don’t see international students driving up housing rental issues in Nunavut or Saskatchewan.
But again, let’s call it a canard, let’s call it red herring. But I think you’re right, which is it’s the easiest way to tamp down on temporary residents and we don’t have limits. And yes, this is something that we can address fairly quickly.
Now, Canadians need to be prepared, and that’s fine. You restrict international students, and this is exactly what’s going to happen now. You restrict international students and what’s going to happen without additional provincial funding, you will have an increase to the tuition fees of domestic students. So my kids are about to get into high school, so yeah, let’s accept that trade off, but let’s identify that trade off, which is fine. Restrict international students and drive up tuition fees. Unless provincial governments are okay with funding their institutions, which here before they do not seem to be okay with.
Ben O-Hara-Byrn…: Right. As long as they get the … I mean, even Miller 10 months ago said this was surgery with a hammer, right? That’s how he referred to it. But you do get the impression that it had to be fixed somehow. I just wasn’t quite clear because Australia did something similar. They sort of upped the English language requirements. The deal was to make the influx of foreign students fit what you need as a country as opposed to simply offering them an education and seeing what happens, right? I mean, I think that’s been part of the problem is it was kind of done you felt in a bit of a haphazard way for a long time, and now they’re trying to reel it back in.
Do you think these caps will actually make a difference, and do they get rid of the schools that, as you were saying, the ones, the strip mall schools that you’ve never heard of? I mean, there was a stat out that 20% of foreign students here weren’t even studying, which is concerning obviously.
Raj Sharma: I’ll disagree with that particular study by Statistics Canada because it doesn’t quite capture the nuances there. It’s not 20%, but let’s put it this way, do a 80/20 analysis. We can’t compare Evergreen College to Waterloo University. Evergreen College had something like 90% non-compliance.
So the key here is to focus on the few bad apples, which yeah, may indeed spoil the rest, but the bad actors are largely concentrated in Ontario, not in Alberta or Saskatchewan or Manitoba and BC, and let’s look at the numbers. Add up every province. Leave Quebec out of the equation. Add up every province, put it on one side and put Ontario on the other side. Ontario has more international students than the rest of Canada minus Quebec.
The bad actors are in the GTA, largely speaking, and I’m sure there’s a number in the Lower Mainland as well. Growing up what’s that saying? Don’t hate the player, hate the game. I mean …
Ben O-Hara-Byrn…: Yeah. Well, this was definitely a game. Do you think they got it right? Do you think they’ve got it right here? ‘Cause I think that’s the big question. Everyone understands, okay, maybe a million plus is too many. Okay, so the universities depend on this money. Do you think they got it right today?
Raj Sharma: I think the masters and doctorate students, which are legitimate students, they’re coming here, they are studying and they’re studying in particular stem, let’s say, fields. Yes, they now get three-year open work permits. Let’s say you do a master’s prior, it’s a year, year and a half. You only get a year, year and a half post-grad work permit. Absolutely. The masters, doctorate students, let’s improve the quality of the students and let’s support our quality institutions, UBC, Simon Fraser, UofA, UofC, et cetera, et cetera.
Yes, it was getting ridiculous. You had public colleges paying money to private colleges and theaters and strip malls to deliver courses, and then you grant that student a credential and with that credential, that person can get an open work permit. That’s done. That’s not going to-
Ben O-Hara-Byrn…: That’s over. That’s over.
Raj Sharma: That’s over.
Ben O-Hara-Byrn…: Raj, well, thanks so much for your input on this and your insight. I guess we’ll see, right? We’ll see, but this seems like something that kind of got out of control under this very same government and now they’re trying to figure out how to stuff it all back into the bottle and I’m not sure it’s going to work.
Raj, thank you so much.
Raj Sharma: My pleasure.