International students play a crucial role in enriching Canada’s social, cultural, and economic fabric. However, recent years have seen challenges to the integrity of the international student system, with institutions exploiting the system for revenue, leading to an unsustainable influx of students. To address this, the Government of Canada, led by the Honourable Marc Miller, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, has introduced measures to stabilize and manage the growth of international student numbers.
Key points of the announcement:
1.) Temporary two-year cap on the number of international student permits issued. For 2024 the cap is expected to be 364,000 – an overall reduction of 35%. Each province will be assigned a fixed number of study permits that are proportional to its population and have to decide how it distributes them among the designated learning institutions.
2.) To implement the cap, as of January 22, 2024, every study permit application submitted to IRCC will also require an attestation letter from a province or territory. Provinces and territories are expected to establish a process for issuing attestation letters to students by no later than March 31, 2024. As there is no process in place yet, this could essentially mean that no new study permit applications will be submitted to IRCC until after March 31, 2024.
3.) Current study permit holders and study permit renewals will not be impacted. Those pursuing master’s and doctoral degrees, and elementary and secondary education are not included in the cap.
4.) These temporary measures will be in place for two years, and the number of new study permit applications that will be accepted in 2025 will be re-assessed at the end of this year.
5.) Starting September 2024, international students starting a study program that is part of a curriculum licensing arrangement will no longer be eligible for the PGWP. (Under curriculum licensing agreements, students physically attend a private college that has been licensed to teach the curriculum of an associated public college.)
6.) International students who have graduated from master’s programs or other short graduate-level programs will be able to apply for a 3-year work permit.
7.) In the weeks ahead, open work permits will only be available to spouses of international students in master’s and doctoral programs, as well as those in professional programs (medicine, law). The spouses of international students in other levels of study, including undergraduate and college programs, will no longer be eligible.
Changes to International Student Program aim to protect students
At the end of 2023, several measures were introduced aimed at strengthening Canada’s International Student Program and at better protecting genuine students from fraud. These measures include:
- Since December 1, 2023, post-secondary designated learning institutions (DLI) have been required to confirm every letter of acceptance directly with IRCC submitted as part of a study permit application from outside Canada. This new, enhanced verification process aims to protect prospective students from letter‑of‑acceptance fraud and to help them avoid similar problems that some students faced earlier in 2023 as a result of that type of fraud. It also ensures that study permits are issued and foreign nationals arrive in Canada based only on genuine letters of acceptance.
- IRCC will adopt a recognized institution framework to benefit post-secondary DLIs that set a higher standard for services, support and outcomes for international students. These DLIs will benefit, for example, from the priority processing of study permits for applicants who plan to attend their school.
On December 7, 2023, Minister Miller announced that the cost-of-living financial requirement for study permit applicants will be raised so that international students are financially better prepared for life in Canada. For 2024, a single applicant needs to show they have $20,635 in addition to their first year of tuition and travel expenses. This change was implemented for all new study permit applications received on or after January 1, 2024. This threshold will be adjusted each year when Statistics Canada updates the low-income cut-off (LICO). LICO represents the minimum income necessary to ensure that an individual does not have to spend a greater than average portion of income on necessities.
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