A new plan for international students
Experts offer their takes on what could be done to improve the postgrad work-permit process
For more than a decade, international students have been able to pursue any post-secondary program and still be eligible for an open work permit upon graduation — whether or not their studies are relevant to what the Canadian economy needs.
But that’s about to change. With a cap in place to rein in the number of international students, Immigration Minister Marc Miller has already hinted at coming changes to the rules on postgraduation work permits.
Those permits have helped make Canada a top destination for foreign students and have been blamed for the country’s runaway international enrolment growth. But experts say Ottawa needs to use them as tools for Canada’s labour market needs, and to provide a clearer path to permanent residence.
“When it comes to international students and the issuance of postgraduate work permits, it’s clear that the work is not done on that end,” Miller told a news conference after a recent meeting his provincial counterparts.
“Provinces said that they need postgraduate work permits (to) have a longer date for people that are in the health-care sector and in certain trades. And I simply said to them, ‘Bring us the data and we’ll be accommodating.’ ”
The access to an open work permit to remain in Canada after graduation has been a strong incentive for people to come study here, as the immigration system has increasingly drawn on candidates already in the country to be permanent residents. It rewards those with Canadian education credentials and work experience.
Over the years, enrolling in post-secondary education has been promoted by recruiters as a shortcut for immigration to Canada, contributing to the exponential growth of international enrolment, which has put pressure on the housing market and other resources.
Following public backlash, Miller in January introduced a two-year cap on the study permits allotted to each province to rein in the international student population, which surpassed one million last year.
The applications Canada is prioritizing
To better align the economic immigration streams with the labour market, Miller has also started prioritizing the permanent resident applications of those with a background in health care; science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) professions; trades; transport; and agriculture and agri-food.
Experts said the postgraduation work permit system could be an effective tool to achieve Ottawa’s objectives in restoring the integrity of the international education program, improving the candidates’ quality in the permanent resident pool and aligning their studies with labour needs.
The last major changes to the postgraduation work permit program came in April 2008, allowing recent graduates to obtain an open work permit for up to three years — depending on length of their program of study — with no restrictions on location of study or requirement of a job offer.
As a result, an increasing number of international students have gravitated to cheaper and shorter academic programs in colleges with no bearings on Canada’s labour needs, and got stranded in lower-paid jobs in warehouses, restaurants and gas stations.
A recent report by the CBC found that business-related programs accounted for 27 per cent of all study permits approved by the Immigration Department from 2018 to 2023, more than any other field. However, just six per cent of all permits went to foreign students for health sciences, medicine or biological and biomedical sciences programs, while trades and vocational training programs accounted for 1.25 per cent.
What the experts say we could do
Immigration policy analyst Kareem El-Assal said the government could easily manipulate the durations of the postgraduation work permits to international graduates based on their enrolled programs to gear them toward studying in fields that are in demand.
By lengthening the permits for international students with backgrounds in these occupations while shortening it for those in a field with an oversupply of labour, El-Assal said it would encourage students to pursue education in the targeted disciplines and hence, increase the pool of immigration candidates with the relevant skills that Canada needs.
“Part of it is going to be blunting the demand and part of is going to be aligning the skills of new students with what we are looking for with the (permanent) immigration system,” noted El-Assal, founder of Section 95, a website dedicated to analyzing Canada’s immigration system.
Since January, Miller has made some changes to the postgraduation work permit program by stopping to issue work authorization to international graduates of public-private college partnerships, which the minister has blamed for the international enrolment surge.
He has also extended the work permits of graduates of master’s degree programs to three years while restricting work permits to spouses of international students in a postgraduate degree program only.
Barbara Jo Caruso, co-president of the Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association, said that was a smart move.
“We should identify programs that match what the labour needs are,” she said.
“If we need a lot of nurses or we need a lot of computer programmers, then those programs should have a pathway for postgraduation work permits.”
However, to make it work, Caruso warned that immigration officials must have clear messaging to prospective students about what academic programs are entitled to postgraduation work authorization and state the information front and centre on the person’s study permit, so they could decide if they still intend to come here.
“That’s really incumbent on the government to be transparent,” she said. “Otherwise, the whole international education program would take a bad hit.”
It doesn’t help that the federal government has continued to promote Canada as a destination to “Study, Explore, Work and Stay” on the Immigration Department’s website and in its international student recruitment posters.
Immigration consultant Kanwar Sierah said he’s concerned that tying postgraduation work permits to specific programs would have little impact on the supply chain of skilled trades workers, as most students learn through apprenticeship, and the post-secondary sector may not have the capacity and infrastructure to to deliver.
“You might be missing a lot of occupations and you might only be targeting just 10 per cent of the trade occupations that offer formal education,” said Sierah, who is also calling for a revamp of provincial apprenticeship programs.
In March, Miller announced the goal of reducing the number of temporary residents in Canada by 20 per cent or 500,000 people by 2027 from the current 2.5 million people, which include hundreds of thousands of postgraduation work permit holders.