[2023] Good News: Canada Immigration Retain More International Students

Interpretation of Canadian Student Immigration Policy

The report focuses on three goals related to international students:

1. Attract international students to study in Canada.
2. Ensure the fairness of international student programs.
3. Improve service and communication for international students during the study permit and immigration process.

IRCC’s response has focused on steps that can and are already in place to help achieve these three goals and assist international students through the permit application, study and settlement processes in Canada.

Attract international students

The government recognizes that the number of study permit holders is expected to increase to approximately 753,000 from 2022 to 2023. While the overall number has increased, applications from students from certain countries have not been fully considered.

In response, IRCC has committed to:

1. Explore the expansion of the Study Direct Program (SDS) to specific Asian, African and French-speaking countries. SDS is a fast track to obtaining a study permit for candidates from 14 countries.
2. Investigate study permit refusal rates in Quebec (particularly for French-speaking African students) by establishing a working group between the Ministry of Immigration, Francification and Integration (MIFI) and IRCC.
3. To explore how best to facilitate the transition to permanent residence for international students, especially those who have the skills, experience and language proficiency needed to succeed in Canada.

Ensuring Fairness in International Student Programs

CIMM highlighted a number of issues in its initial report to IRCC to ensure fairness in the planning and application process for international students. In response, IRCC has committed to ensuring fairness across the International Student Program (ISP) through review and practice in the following ways.

1. Continue to investigate issues related to accessibility, race, and gender to learn more about the unique challenges customers face.
2. Establish a disaggregated data and analysis framework (DDAF). Disaggregated data is data that has been filtered, based on demographic characteristics, to understand its specific relationships; to better understand how specific groups of people are affected by specific policies or phenomena.
3. To explore patterns and determinants of social welfare across immigrant groups, with a focus on different ethnic groups.
4. Review the selection process for international students to evaluate students based on criteria more relevant to their potential merit.
5. Improve customer service and communication.

Improve service and communication for international students

Many of CIMM’s recommendations relate to the importance of providing clear and transparent information to clients and stakeholders, including processing times and reasons for rejections. IRCC also responded to this.

1. It highlights the hiring of 1,250 new processing staff by late fall 2022 to assist with processing capacity and releases data on the backlog every month.
2. Commitment to cooperate with designated learning institutions (DLI) to collect registration and identity information data of international students, and DLI will submit the data to IRCC for real-time processing.
3. Interested in continuing a pilot program similar to 2022, in which immigration officers, when making decisions about Temporary Resident Visa (TRV) applications, proactively publish their decision statements to ensure transparency and ease of understanding.

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