Students walk past the University of Toronto campus in Toronto on June 10, 2020. Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
Universities are warning that Canada’s struggle to process visas for international students in time for the start of fall classes is jeopardizing a key pathway for potential new immigrants.
And a new report from RBC Economics, released Thursday, outlines the importance of international students to Canada’s immigration strategy and labor market needs, concluding that Canada’s citizenship process, as it calls it, “ it needs an urgent reset.”
In recent years, Canada has become a favorite destination for international high school students, receiving more than 560,000 study permit applications in 2021. Many have been attracted by policies that encourage students to find work and become permanent residents after graduation.
Canada has also benefited from pandemic border closures in some countries, as well as political currents considered unfavorable to immigration.
But competing countries are revising those policies to try to make their universities and graduate work programs more attractive destinations for top talent, said Paul Davidson, president of Universities Canada, an umbrella group that lobbies on behalf of nearly 100 Canadian Schools.
Pandemic restrictions closing the flow of international students to Australia have been lifted. Trump-era policies that limited immigration to the United States have been replaced by initiatives aimed at retaining international talent. And the U.K. is emerging from its Brexit debates with graduate work policies that mimic those of Canada, Davidson said.
International students waiting for Ottawa visas are at risk of missing the start of classes
Canada’s international student recruitment machine is broken
Canada cannot afford to leave students hanging with study permit delays, he said.
“Universities have done an outstanding job of marketing themselves virtually and getting students to enroll online. That’s 90 percent of what they have to do. And then if we can’t get it [the students] on campus, it’s a blow, not just to the colleges,” Davidson said.
“This is the third or fourth autumn like this, where we have not been able to meet the visa processing mark.”
Immigration Minister Sean Fraser said this week that his department has prioritized the processing of international study permits, but admitted it will come too late for some students.
Asma Imtiyaz, a 22-year-old from India, planned to attend York University this fall to earn a graduate certificate in accounting and then secure permanent residency. But he has been waiting for his visa to be approved for three months. It now appears he will have to postpone his offer of acceptance and put his plans on hold for a year, he said.
A large number of students, probably thousands, are in the same situation, the government says.
Part of the problem, according to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, is that demand is so high. The department said it had completed 360,000 applications this year as of July 31, compared with 306,000 in the same period a year ago, and expects to complete another 104,000 in August.
International students, whose numbers have more than doubled in the past decade, have been a financial boon to Canada’s post-secondary system, injecting $6 billion a year in tuition alone at a time when funding from provincial governments has stalled
The share of university revenue that comes from tuition increased from 21.5% to 28.8% over the past decade, while the share of provincial grants has declined from 41.5% to 32, 5%, according to Statistics Canada. Most of this growth in tuition revenue comes from international students. Fees for international undergraduate students averaged just over $33,000 last year, compared to about $6,700 for domestic students.
At UBC, for example, international fees accounted for more than $545 million in 2020-21, compared with $375 million for domestic students, according to its 2022 budget documents. In Ontario’s university system, the international students make up about 30 percent of the student body and provide 68 percent of tuition revenue, according to a 2021 report by the Auditor General of Ontario.
The reality of life in Canada for international students
But “as the global war for talent intensifies, Canada must fine-tune its policies to maintain its edge,” says the RBC Economics report. “The country’s recent health workforce shortage is a wake-up call that Canada should be more strategic about tapping into and expanding its international student pool. The looming shortage of STEM, trades and skills needed for the new green economy are already on the horizon”.
More than 157,000 former international students transitioned to permanent residency in 2021, an indication of the growing importance of international education to Canada’s immigration strategy, the report says. And immigrants with Canadian work and study experience tend to fare better financially, according to RBC, with median wages of more than $44,000 a year among those admitted in 2018, compared to about $25,000 for those without Canadian experience.
International students have characteristics that make them attractive to employers, according to the report. They are twice as likely as a home student to have studied engineering and 2.5 times more likely to have studied maths or science. But a growing number of the international cohort are choosing shorter cycle university diplomas.
The report makes seven recommendations, including that Canada expand the number of international students making the transition to permanent residency, focusing on those trained in STEM, health care and trades related to the green energy transition.
It also recommends making more work-study opportunities available to international students to help them transition into the Canadian labor market.
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