(Bloomberg) — Canada is reviewing what number of long-term visas it grants to overseas college students, underscoring the federal government's want to gradual immigration and inhabitants progress.
Federal and provincial officers have been discussing find out how to match labor market calls for to worldwide college students, Immigration Minister Marc Miller mentioned in a cellphone interview. Though Canada has for years used universities and faculties to herald educated, working-age immigrants, research visas mustn’t imply a assure of future residency or citizenship, he mentioned.
“That ought to by no means be the promise. Folks ought to come right here to teach themselves and possibly go dwelling and take these abilities again to their nation,” he mentioned. “This was not all the time the final case.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has confronted mounting stress over the rising price of dwelling, intense competitors for scarce housing and better unemployment. Earlier this yr, Canada set a brand new cap on the variety of worldwide scholar visas it points — it's anticipating fewer than 300,000 new scholar permits this yr, down from about 437,000 final yr.
Now officers are contemplating who amongst that group of scholars ought to keep after they graduate.
Canada must do a greater job of creating positive jobs for worldwide college students are commensurate with the research they've undertaken, Miller mentioned. There’s a dialog about reflecting workforce wants and “how we match graduate work permits for an more and more contracting workforce scarcity” within the provinces.
“The logic of getting uncontrollable or uncontrollable exterior pulls is not there.”
The variety of folks in Canada with these visas has grown quickly: there have been 132,000 new PGWP holders within the nation in 2022, up 78 per cent from 4 years in the past, in line with authorities knowledge.
Adjustments in immigration coverage will want dialogue between governments and enterprise, Miller mentioned. The Trudeau administration can also be trying intently at how a particular program that enables firms to use to herald short-term overseas staff has been “used and abused,” Miller mentioned, and he has pledged to cut back the proportion of short-term residents to 5 % of the inhabitants, from almost seven %.
International staff in Prince Edward Island have been protesting in latest weeks — with some even happening starvation strikes — after the provincial authorities reduce the variety of gross sales and repair everlasting residency nominations.
“Canada is now being seen as much less welcoming than it was” to college students, Miller mentioned. However the upshot of that, he mentioned, is that a research visa “is being seen much less and fewer as an affordable approach to get everlasting residency or entry into Canada, and extra as a top quality proposition — the place we wish to see it go.” . returns to its authentic objective.”
Nevertheless, after collaborating in a roundtable dialogue with native media in Surrey, British Columbia, which has a big inhabitants of South Asian immigrants, Miller mentioned he’s additionally troubled by indicators of racism in Canada.
“We've constructed a vital consensus round immigration in Canada, however that's being eroded.”
With the assistance of Randy Thanthong-Knight
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