Feds to Further Limit Number of International Students Entering Canada

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister Marc Miller speaks in the foyer of the House of Commons before Question Period on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on June 12, 2024. The Canadian Press/ Patrick Doyle

The federal government plans to further limit the number of international students entering Canada in 2025, reducing the number of international study permits by 10 percent.

The new target for international student permits will be reduced to 437,000 for 2025 and 2026, down from the 485,000 permits given out in 2024, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada announced on Sept. 18.

Ottawa will also revise the national immigration system by restricting work permit eligibility for spouses of master’s degree students to those enrolled in programs lasting a minimum of 16 months, as well as to spouses of foreign workers in management or professional occupations or in sectors with labour shortages. The Post-Graduation Work Permit Program will also be revised to introduce more rigorous criteria.

A two-year cap on international students was announced in January by Immigration Minister Marc Miller. The cap brings the number from more than 560,000 students in 2023 down to roughly 360,000. Miller said the student visa system was “a bit of a mess” and the measures would give federal and provincial governments more time to tackle issues with the system.

Canadian universities accepted a record 1,040,000 international students in 2023, a 29 percent increase over 2022. This included 427,000 international students from India, 101,000 from China, 49,000 from the Philippines, and 46,000 from Nigeria.

Temporary and permanent immigration into Canada has increased at a record pace since 2022. The number of non-permanent residents in the country more than doubled from 2021 to 2024, reaching more than 2.7 million, while Ottawa has increased its target levels for new permanent residents to 500,000 by 2025.

Miller said during the press conference that while immigration is important for Canada’s economy, the Liberal government had “allowed certain aspects of this to get overheated and probably for too long.” He also acknowledged there was “more than anecdotal evidence” that the influx of international students had negatively impacted rental markets in many cities.

Asylum Seekers

Miller also addressed the issue of asylum seekers in Canada, saying there are “unsustainable numbers” of asylum seekers coming to Ontario and Quebec.

A media report on Sept. 11 indicated that Ottawa was preparing a plan to relocate tens of thousands of asylum seekers from those provinces to other locations throughout Canada. A total of 235,825 people are currently seeking asylum in Canada, according to the federal government briefing document obtained by The National Post.

Miller told reporters that while a working group of his provincial counterparts and Canada’s premiers had come together to work out a fair distribution system for asylum seekers, he no longer believes the working group is “actually helpful.” Miller accused three Conservative premiers—Alberta’s Danielle Smith, New Brunswick’s Blaine Higgs, and Nova Scotia’s Tim Houston—of seeking to “weaponize this working group.”

“They took a theoretical number of asylum seekers based on the last year’s number of asylum seekers, divided it up by the population, and assumed that the federal government would impose a number of asylum seekers on them,” Miller said. “The other provinces need to step up, but there was no point in time where anyone said the federal government was going to impose thousands of asylum seekers on unprepared provinces.”

Higgs reacted to the redistribution proposal on Sept. 11 by saying Ottawa was preparing for a “sudden and unilateral” imposition of asylum seekers on the province. He said it would send 4,600 asylum seekers to the province without “any financial assistance or any opportunity to build the resources and capability to manage it.”

The same day, Smith said Alberta was opposed to Ottawa’s plan to “relocate tens of thousands of asylum claimants to Alberta, especially without any financial assistance to support the province in doing so.”

“Excessive levels of immigration to this province are increasing the cost of living and strains public services for everyone,” she said. “We are informing the Government of Canada that until further notice, Alberta is not open to having these additional asylum seekers settled in our province.”