Tens of thousands of international students who spent years finding a pathway to permanent residency are out of options

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Tens of thousands of temporary residents who came to Canada as international students might be forced to return to their home countries in the next year – the result of a recent series of immigration policy changes that has left them with no prospect of obtaining permanent residency.

Policy experts estimate that between 70,000 and 130,000 international students holding postgraduation work permits (PGWP) will see their visas expiring in 2024 and 2025. Most, they predict, will not receive visa extensions or an invitation to apply for permanent residency because of Ottawa’s shifting approach to immigration that is aiming to cap the number of temporary residents and low-wage foreign workers in the country.

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“There is a lot of panic amongst people who have now been here for years studying and working and paying their taxes,” said Vasanthi Venkatesh, a law professor at the University of Windsor, whose area of expertise includes immigration and citizenship law. “They came to this country through student programs that were arguably presented by policy makers as a path to permanent residency. Now you have rule changes coming out in piecemeal fashion every few weeks and that has a real effect on people who are already here.”

Postgraduation work permits are issued for between nine months to three years to foreign students who have obtained a diploma or degree at a Canadian college or university.

Under the Liberals, the number of PGWPs issued began to soar rapidly – incentivizing international students to work and remain in Canada was, in fact, part of a deliberate policy to address the country’s waning population growth and pandemic-related labour shortage. At the height of the pandemic in 2021, Ottawa swiftly granted permanent residency to 90,000 temporary workers and international students on postgraduation work permits. That same year, the government introduced a measure that allowed people with expiring PGWPs to apply for an 18-month extension.

By the end of 2023, there were 396,235 PGWP holders across the country, almost triple the number from 2018.

Student visa approvals projected to drop by almost half this year: report

That same year, a series of policy reversals and changes began to take place. Ottawa stopped granting extensions to PGWPs and noted that granting permanent residency to temporary residents in bulk was a one-time emergency pandemic measure. The government also abruptly changed its criteria for permanent resident (PR) selection in the Express Entry system – a score-based application process that determines eligibility for permanent residency. It began prioritizing French speakers and people with job experience in health care, skilled trades, agriculture, transportation and STEM – science, technology, engineering and mathematics – fields as opposed to those with Canadian-specific education and experience.

“Nobody knows the probability of a successful permanent residency transition now because the PR selection system has become highly non-transparent and unpredictable,” explained Mikal Skuterud, an economist at the University of Waterloo. “What we do know is that the government is not going to grant extensions to expiring visas so there will now be many, many people in situations where they either remain in Canada undocumented or leave.”

There is no precise data that reflect exactly how many foreign graduates currently holding PGWPs will see their visas expire this year. The Naujawan Support Network – a labour advocacy organization based in Brampton, Ont. – estimates that approximately 70,000 PGWP holders will not obtain permanent residency before their visas expire and be forced to leave Canada in 2024 and 2025.

Prof. Skuterud estimates that approximately 131,000 permits could expire this year – if one were to assume that most PGWPs issued had three-year durations. But he noted that an exact figure was tough to determine.

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Sarabjit Singh came to Canada from Punjab, India, in January, 2020, to study business management at Algoma University’s Brampton campus. He was already a mechanical engineer by training in India, but decided to enroll in a diploma program because he thought that having a Canadian education would increase his chances of obtaining permanent residency.

But PR draws for the immigration stream he intended on using for his application – Canadian Experience Class – were paused for almost three years, between August, 2021 and May, 2024. When draws resumed, he found that his application simply did not meet the cut-off score to gain permanent residency. Candidates who spoke French, and who worked in other fields were prioritized. He has worked as a machinist at a factory in Brampton for three years now, and his PGWP expires this September.

“Some people got lucky. They got PGWP extensions. Some of them even got PR straightaway. I got unlucky. I paid so much to study here, and I’ve been working hard, paying my taxes. What did I do wrong?” he said.

Mehakdeep Singh, an international student on a PGWP, is in a similar boat. He arrived in Canada from India in 2018 and studied to be an HVAC technician at Fleming College in Peterborough just to increase his chances of obtaining permanent residency.

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He got a job as a supervisor for a security company, but soon found that he had no chance of obtaining permanent residency through the Canadian Experience Class because draws were paused. He changed fields, working as a baker in North Bay, Ont., with the hopes of using another immigration stream – the provincial nominee program. He’s still waiting for a response, but his PGWP expired in July, and he is now on a visitor visa. After living in Canada for six years, his only option at this point is to re-enter the country through the temporary foreign worker program.

Both Sarabjit and Mehakdeep are part of a growing number of workers and students on expiring work permits campaigning for Ottawa to grant them an extension to their visas and a “fair pathway” to permanent residency – specifically, a guarantee that draws from all streams of the Express Entry system will be conducted regularly. They have set up a protest site in Brampton and intend on staying there until the government acknowledges their situation.

“For years, the government framed education not as an end in itself, but as a means to live in the country permanently. Their own slogan was “Study. Explore. Work. Stay,” noted Parmbir Gill, a Toronto-based labour lawyer and member of the Naujawan Support Network. The organization has been helping former international students navigate changes in the immigration system.

“Nobody from India or elsewhere would ever have come to Canada just to pay exorbitant tuition fees to a third-rate private career college in a Brampton strip mall, and then leave. They’ve come here to stay, on the terms set by the government,” he said.

One of more insidious consequences of Canada’s messy immigration landscape, notes Mr. Gill is the involvement of bad actors who are looking to take advantage of students desperate to remain in the country. People with expiring work permits, he says, are being advised to purchase “LMIA jobs” for tens of thousands of dollars.

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A Labour Market Impact Assessment is issued to companies that want to bring in foreign workers. An LMIA job is essentially a one-year work permit for a temporary foreign worker. Both Sarabjit and Mehakdeep say they have been offered LMIA jobs for a fee of up to $35,000 by job recruiters in Brampton, but rejected the offers because of cost.

Ottawa also recently shuttered a temporary program that allowed people on visitor visas to apply for a work permit from within Canada citing the involvement of bad actors. According to Mr. Gill, some PGWP holders were advised to use the program to apply for visitor status just to extend their ability to remain in Canada.

“Each of these paths is presented to these students as a way to maintain status and continue working. But each path will lead most people to a dead end eventually and expose them to greater debt and exploitation along the way,” he said.

Prof. Skuterud said he understood the frustration faced by PGWP holders because they planned their migration and uprooted their lives when immigration rules were vastly different. “Many of them might remain here without status, in the hopes that they will eventually get status,” he said.

In January, Ottawa announced a two-year cap on international students and said it would stop issuing PGWPs to international students who complete programs at schools operating under a public-private partnership model. That permit was a key draw for students to attend private colleges that team up with public colleges through curriculum licensing agreements.

But Dr. Venkatesh, the law professor at the University of Windsor, believes that none of those changes will fix the current situation of existing PGWP holders with expiring permits, and no shot at permanent residency.

“We wanted these people in when we were struggling with a labour shortage. Now we are reneging on our promise of a pathway to PR and chasing them out. The right thing to do is to grant them PR status,” she said.