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15-01-2024
OTTAWA/ TORONTO: The Canadian government is aiming to reduce the intake of international students in the country in the near future.
“It’s really a system that has gotten out of control,” Minister for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Marc Miller said, as he indicated capping the volume of international students admitted to Canada in the months ahead.
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In an interview with the network CTV News, he said, “That volume is disconcerting,” referring to roughly 900,000 international students currently studying at Canadian institutions.
The Canadian government appears to have targets in consideration, though Miller did not make those public. “We have a sense of what those numbers would look like, what the reduction of those numbers look like. Out of courtesy to my colleagues in the provinces, those are discussions that we’re first going to have around the negotiating table,” he told CTV News during the course of an interview which will air on Sunday.
The largest cohort of international students from any country come from India. According to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) data, till the end of November 2023, they accounted for 215,910 out of the total of 
579,075, over 37%. The comparative figure for the prior year was 225,835 out of 548,785, or over 41%. The numbers have escalated sharply over the past five years when the number of Indians getting study permits was at less than half the current figure, at 107,070 in 2018.
Canada has already started taking measures with regard to international students since late last year. On December 7, IRCC announced that for new study permit applications received on or after January 1 this year, a single applicant will “need to show they have CA$ 20,635 (approximately ₹12.7 lakh), as against CA$ 10,000 (about ₹6.14 lakh) earlier.
In October 2023, it had announced that starting December 2023, designated learning institutions (DLIs) will be obligated to verify the acceptance letters of each applicant through the IRCC.
Miller also referred to these measures, as he said, “We need to be doing our jobs and making sure that we have a system that actually makes sure people have a financial capability to come to Canada, that we’re actually verifying offer letters.”
“And now it’s time for us to have a conversation about volumes and the impact that that is having in certain areas,” Canada’s Immigration Minister stressed. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
