How the Canadian dream became a gamble for Indian students

Just a few years ago, admission to a university in Canada was an easy path to a work permit and then permanent residency. Thousands of Indian students, mostly from Punjab, were admitted to these universities, called degree mills, to obtain a degree in a profession and then obtain a work permit that would, in due course, lead to permanent residency and then citizenship.

That smooth road to the Canadian dream The immigration process has been thrown into turmoil by Canada’s struggle with unemployment and a weak economy. Thousands of students and temporary foreign workers, who also arrived as students, have taken to the streets to put pressure on the Canadian government. But as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s minority government, supported by the NDP, became unpopular, in part for allowing uncontrolled immigration, it decided to limit the number of temporary foreign workers, which would mean the deportation of thousands of students, as well as those who had found work after completing their courses.

International students and foreign workers hit the road

Although work permits and residencies are a matter of privilege and not a right, international students and foreign workers, many of them from Punjab, have taken to the streets in hopes of gaining support from Indian-origin Canadians who form a sizable voting bloc. A protest in the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island (PEI) has been brewing for several months as temporary foreign workers and students camp outside the state legislature.

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In February, the Prince Edward Island government announced it would reduce the number of people from other countries it nominates for permanent residency in Canada through the Provincial Nominee Program (PNP), CBC reported. The number of nominees will be reduced by 25 per cent in 2024, partly as a result of pressure on Prince Edward Island’s health care system and housing market. The province’s new population strategy specified that, of the spots that remained, priority would be given to people who work in specific occupations, such as health care and construction. That means hundreds of immigrants in other industries, such as retail and services, might not have their work permits extended when they run out in the coming months.

Protests by international students and temporary foreign workers have spread to several provinces.

Canadian officials insist that a study permit is not necessarily a path to permanent residency. “That should never be the promise. People should come here to get an education and maybe go back home and bring those skills back to their country,” Canada’s Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister Marc Miller said in an interview.

The protest culture has spread among international students in Canada. Another type of protest by Indian students has also made headlines. At several universities, students who failed exams protested, claiming that the grading system was unfair. In one case, such students were granted another chance after protesting. The protesters insist that universities fail them to obtain additional fees charged for re-examinations.

The protests erupted after Trudeau said Monday that the country would reduce the number of low-wage foreign workers to encourage Canadian companies to invest in their own workers and youth. The decision came after a UN special rapporteur warned that Canada’s reliance on temporary foreign workers is a “breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery.” Temporary foreign workers are often paid low wages and exploited by employers in a variety of ways.

Excess of foreign workers

The easy path to work permit, residency and citizenship has drawn hordes of young foreigners from the global south to Canada in search of a first-world lifestyle. But their growing numbers have created an employment crisis not only for locals but also for temporary foreign workers. A few months ago, a video went viral showing a long line of temporary foreign workers at a Tim Horton for some low-wage jobs.

According to Better Dwelling, Canada’s largest independent housing news outlet, use of Canada’s low-wage temporary foreign worker stream has skyrocketed in recent years. These positions are up 7% to 83,654 workers in 2023. Growing at twice the pace of the general population is already fast, but it’s actually a slowdown. Last year’s annual volume was a whopping 291% higher than in 2018, just five years ago. In the first quarter of this year, Canada has already seen 28,730 such positions, or 34% of last year’s total volume. Through the first three months of 2024, more low-wage jobs have already been created than Canada saw in all of 2018.

Temporary residents and recent immigrants are driving up Canada’s unemployment rate, as a record number of newcomers welcomed into the country to fill labor shortages are now struggling to find work, Bloomberg reported. The unemployment rate for temporary residents, including foreign workers, international students and asylum seekers, was 11% in June, according to Bloomberg calculations. Using comparable data, the unemployment rate for all workers was just 6.2% in the same month. Immigrants who arrived in the past five years are also struggling to find work, as their unemployment rate hit 12.6% in June.

“The largest weighted contribution to the increase in the unemployment rate has been the temporary residency category,” Derek Holt, an economist at Scotiabank, said on BNN Bloomberg Television last month. While the U.S. has seen a widely covered rise in both authorized and irregular migration, the scale of the increase actually pales in comparison to Canada’s growth rate. For every 1,000 residents, the northern nation brought in 32 people last year, compared with fewer than 10 in the U.S. (With contributions from the Agency)