Gone are the days when Canada sent a work visa upon graduation.
Today, Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced the upcoming changes to post-graduation work permits for foreign students.
The picture comes from the Internet
According to the report, for more than 10 years, international students studying any higher education program in Canada are eligible for an open work permit after graduation, regardless of whether their course of study and major are related to Canada's economic needs.
In general, a post-graduation work permit is valid for up to three years, and graduates can obtain permanent resident status through the federal EE or provincial nominee program after accumulating sufficient work experience.
However, this is about to change.
In an effort to control the number of international students, Mark Miller hinted at changes to the rules for post-graduation work permits.
To better align economic immigration with labor market demand, Miller began prioritizing people with healthcare, science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) professional backgrounds to apply for permanent resident status; and areas involving trade, transport, agriculture and agricultural products.
In other words, in addition to these majors, it may be difficult to obtain visas for those in business and service industries, or it may be difficult to obtain visas with a relatively long period of validity.
Experts believe that the post-graduation work permit system can be an effective tool for achieving Ottawa's goals, including restoring the integrity of international education programs, improving the quality of permanent resident candidates, and aligning their studies with the needs of the labor market.
The last major change to the previous post-graduation work permit scheme was in April 2008, when fresh graduates were allowed to obtain an open work permit for up to three years depending on the length of their study program, with no restrictions on where they studied or the type of work.
As a result, more and more international students are being drawn to universities that have nothing to do with Canada's labor needs for cheaper and shorter academic programs, ending up stuck in low-paying jobs like warehouses, restaurants, and gas stations.
For example, many students from India even have to apply for subsidies + part-time jobs, and the focus is not to study.
The picture comes from the Internet
And in March, Miller announced a goal to reduce the number of temporary residents in Canada by 20 percent (or 500,000) by 2027 from the current 2.5 million.
This includes hundreds of thousands of people who hold a Post-Graduation Work Permit (PGWP).
Focus!! In the future, the PGWP duration for international graduates can be adjusted according to their course of study, aligning it with the requirements of the demand area.
The picture comes from the Internet
According to CBC News' analysis of federal data, Canada tends to fill places in business programs when recruiting international students, and does little to meet the needs of workers in health care and skilled trades.
CBC has obtained data from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) that shows the field of education chosen by foreign students who have been granted an Ottawa study permit each year since 2018.
Experts say the data shows that neither the federal government, nor the provincial government, nor Canada's colleges and universities are focusing their recruitment of international students on meeting the country's most pressing labor needs.
"From these data, there is a real gap in oversight," said Rupa Banerjee, associate professor at Toronto Metropolitan University and Canada Research Chair for Migrant Economic Inclusion Studies.
The data, which had not been made public before, showed that from 2018 to 2023, 27% of study permits were approved for business-related projects, which is more than any other field.
During the same period, only 6 per cent of permits were issued to foreign students studying programmes in the health sciences, medicine or biological and biomedical sciences, while vocational and technical training programmes accounted for only 1.25 per cent.
Banerjee said the data shows that too many foreign students are drawn to Canada for higher education programs that have few good job prospects in areas of demand.
"Instead of really trying to bring in the best and brightest talent to fill the vacancies in the labor market, we're bringing in low-skilled, low-wage, replaceable and exploitative temporary foreign workers as students," Banerjee said in an interview.
Recruitment does not match the demand for skilled workers.
She said the data showed that federal and provincial governments were failing to ensure that international student recruitment was aligned with Canada's demand for skilled workers.
It seems that it will be difficult for non-STEM majors to stay in Canada to get PR in the future, but at the same time, such a reform will also screen out a large number of Indian students. After all, now Toronto, Calgary, and Vancouver in Canada are all about to become Little Mumbai.