Canada’s Immigration Targets are a Betrayal to International Students
Canada’s immigration minister recently provided an update on the country’s immigration targets for the next three years. There wasn’t much in the way of news to rush out the door.
TL;DR: Amidst polls suggesting Canadians are concerned about the relationship between immigration targets and housing prices, there will be no overall increase in 2026. The numbers for 2024 (485,000 new permanent residents) and 2025 (500,000) remain the same.
My thoughts? These permanent resident (PR) numbers are a distraction from what we should be talking about: temporary residents (TRs). Canada has no targets related to international students, temporary foreign workers, or visitors. The number of TRs in Canada have been growing significantly in recent years, in large part because Canada does a great job of marketing Canadian study/work experience as a pathway to PR.
The problem is that the recently released PR targets aren’t high enough to accommodate the estimated 2.2 million TRs in the country, many of which came to Canada with the goal of staying permanently.
And there is no plan to slow down the number of TRs coming into the country, even though there will not be a growth in the PR target. By the end of 2023, we’re expecting to host around 900,000 new international students, up from 807,260 at the end of 2022. Canada’s largest private application aggregator predicts that Canada will issue around 600,000 new study permits in 2023.
The number of temporary foreign workers is growing as well. Last year, Ottawa allowed companies to double the ratio of low-wage foreign workers in their labour force from 10% to 20% in years.
Because of several wonderful programs created in response to crises in places like Sudan, Iran, Turkiye, Syria, and Ukraine, we have many more temporary residents who currently call Canada home.
So, what we’re seeing in terms of numbers is what I’m having in conversations with temporary residents inside Canada: the pathways to PR are narrowing, becoming increasingly competitive.
IRCC knows this. The former minister of immigration created three separate extensions for post-graduation work permit holders due to COVID-19, but also because he understands that there are many international student graduates who aren’t able to obtain PR and who have strong disincentives for leaving Canada. Some will certainly return to their home country if their PR aspirations don’t work out before their work permits expires. Some have quite literally mortgaged the family farm to pursue their interlinked education and immigration goals in Canada. My bet is that overstaying a work permit is a real possibility for many.
Amidst plenty of finger-pointing at education institutions, agents, lawyers, and RCICs like myself, I’m old enough to remember how much IRCC marketed Canadian education as a pathway to PR. In 2016, former minister John McCallum was published frequently saying things like "International students are the best source of immigrants, in the sense that they're educated, they're young, they speak English or French, they know something of the country. So we should be doing everything we can do to court them."
And court them Canada did.
And now the door to PR is closing to many of them. And it’s a betrayal to the dream that Canada’s own immigration ministers have promoted.
We need a pathway to PR for the many people who were told that it was possible. It doesn’t have to be in 2024 or 2025, but the international students and workers who have contributed so much to Canada deserve the opportunity to continue to be part of this country. An unequal society with an ever-increasing population with precarious immigration statuses isn’t a healthy one.
Here are a few other program-specific numbers that merit attention:
· Express Entry: The three main programs that feed it will increase as planned in 2024 but then plateau. With the introduction of category-based draws, my prediction is that CRS cutoffs will remain out of reach for many.
· French-speaking targets outside of Quebec are increasing: have at least CLB7 in French? Canada wants you.
· Provincial Nominee Programs: After a big bump last year, these get a modest increase going forward, but I expect them to get more competitive as people look for alternatives to Express Entry.
· Parents & Grandparents: More patience will be required for anyone wanting to sponsor their parents, as the numbers here are inching up marginally. The Liberals delivered on a campaign promise in their first mandate and then seem to be pinching this off quietly.
· Refugees, Protected Persons, Humanitarian & Compassionate: These numbers are going down at a time when global demand (at an estimated 110 million) is growing. Considering how much the Liberals benefitted from a more compassionate stance in response to Syrian refugees, it’s worth pointing out that Trudeau’s Canada is becoming more talk and less action when it comes to helping migrants in need.
