Canada goverment is concerned about 'integrity' of student immigration system
The Minister of Immigration is concerned that post-secondary education in Canada is often used as a backdoor into Canada.
Canada's Immigration Minister Marc Miller spoke with the CBC. He said the Canadian government is concerned about the integrity of the education system for hundreds of thousands of international students, not just that incoming students are putting additional strain on housing, which the country has been troubled with lately. The ruling Liberal Party has been repeatedly criticized by the opposition for failing to address the housing crisis.
Miller said 900,000 international students will arrive in Canada this year, more than ever before. That's double the number of international students who arrived in one year 10 years ago.
The minister recognizes that Canada's higher education ecosystem, which is attracting an increasing number of international students, is "is very lucrative," but it also has downsides, such as fraud within the system. Some people use higher education in Canada as a "backdoor" to immigrate to the country, according to Miller.
The Immigration Minister stated that private and public universities generate CAD 20-30 billion in revenue annually by attracting international students. Canada is becoming an increasingly popular destination for students from abroad, and one of the main factors for this is that it is relatively easy to obtain a work permit in this country.
"Some people are making a lot of money out of it legitimately, some people are gaming the system, and my principal concern is with that integrity of the system," Marc Miller shared with reporters.
Also, the minister is not so much concerned about public universities as he is about "the private colleges that have just ballooned in different parts of Canada."
The large number of international students is putting additional strain on housing, which is already in short supply in the country. In this regard, Housing Minister Sean Fraser recently stated that the government is considering limiting the number of international students as one of the measures to ease the housing crisis. Minister Miller was skeptical of the idea.
"Just putting a hard cap, which got a lot of public play over the last few days, is not the only solution to this," Miller said.
