Canada has a message for its international students: you all might not be welcome. This comes at a time when Canada is reviewing how many long-term visas it grants to foreign students as it plans to slow down immigration amid a record rise in its population. Many officials are trying to match the labour market demands with the foreign students, Immigration Minister Marc Miller told Bloomberg. This can be a concern for Indian students, who form the biggest cohort of international students in Canada.

Canada has always encouraged universities and colleges to bring in educated and working immigrants, but now it is putting a stop to a degree implying a future job and even citizenship, Marc Miller told Bloomberg.

People should come to Canada and think of going back home is the current stance of the Canadian Minister.

He said a study visa was not a promise of long-term stay in Canada.

“That should never be the promise. People should come here to educate themselves and perhaps go home and take those skills back to their country,” he said. “That hasn’t always been the case recently.”

Due to such measures, the number of Indian students seeking a Canadian visa has also reduced.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is facing immense pressure over the rise in the cost of living, competition for housing, which is not readily available and a higher rate of unemployment.

CANADA IS CUTTING DOWN INTERNATIONAL STUDENT VISAS

Canada has already taken measures to deal with this crisis. It has put a cap on the number of international students’ visas. It plans to issue 300,000 visas this year, as opposed to 437,000 last year.

Officials are looking at the pool of students they plan to keep and the ones they plan to send back to their home countries.

Canada plans to do a better job of assuring jobs for international students which aligns with the subject they have studied, said Miller. There is a conversation around labour needs and “how we match post-graduate work permits to an increasingly contracting shortage of labour” in Canadian provinces.

“The logic for having uncapped or uncontrolled draws from abroad is no longer there.”

The number of people with such visas has grown rapidly in Canada. The visa holders were 78% more in 2022 than in 2018.

Study visas have been seen as an easy and less costly way of getting permanent residency in the North American country that has a relatively easier citizenship process.

By capping study visas for international students, Canada is trying to reduce the number of people seeking permanent residency and citizenship in the country.

The government is also looking at how a sperate programme focused on bringing temporary foreign workers has been used and even abused, said Miller. The plan is to reduce immigrants from 7% to 5% now.

CANADA BEING SEEN AS LESS WELCOMING: MARC MILLER

“Canada is now being seen as less welcoming as it has been before” for students, said Marc Miller.

A study visa “is less and less being seen as a cheap way to attain permanent residency or entry into Canada, and more of a qualitative proposition — which is where we want to see it go back, to its original intent”.

Miller was, however, worried about signs of racism in the country.

“We’ve built a very important consensus around immigration in Canada, but that’s being chipped away at.”

The drop in the number of students being given a student visa, along with the rise in sentiments of racism towards immigrants can be a big problem for the Canadian government to grapple with.