Canada’s 2024 cuts to international study permits led to significantly larger reductions in study permit approvals than intended, according to a report by the auditor general tabled in March 2026.
The report found the reduction in study permit approvals was driven by a decline in applications and lower-than-projected approval rates, with smaller provinces disproportionately affected.
Read more:
Should I stay or should I go? Rural international students face housing, job crunch
The report also highlights how the reforms failed to meaningfully improve oversight and program integrity. Instead, they emphasized surveillance and monitoring.
For decades, international students were celebrated in Canada for their economic contributions, skills and diversity. But as the number of temporary migrants in Canada skyrocketed after the COVID-19 pandemic, international students became convenient scapegoats for a broader housing and affordability crisis.
Read more:
International students cap falsely blames them for Canada’s housing and health-care woes
In 2024, the federal government announced a major shift, cutting the number of international study permits it would issue by roughly a third. In part, this was justified in the name of reining in excess and fraud.
Examining shifting policy
As researchers who have studied the racialization of Asian international students and their experiences, we’ve watched as federal policy and public discourse around international students has dramatically shifted, making students’ daily lives more difficult, often with inadequate institutional supports.
In our recent book Not your Cash Cow, Not Your Scapegoat: Student Migration and Canadian Universities, we study the experiences of over 145 international students from China, India and South Korea at five flagship universities.
We find that colleges and universities continue to support international students through piecemeal services, rather than reckoning with what it would mean to become anti-racist organizations.
(Getty Images/Unsplash)
Changing notions of student migrants
Another report issued recently from the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, presented to the House of Commons, acknowledges aspects of international students’ precarity and vulnerabilities.
But solutions to address these conditions are notably absent from its recommendations. Instead, it reinforces claims that position international students as contributing to housing costs, health-care wait times and youth unemployment.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang
In the 2025 budget, the federal government signalled yet another shift in its approach and language around international students.
The budget announced a desire to welcome international graduate students as part of a broader strategic effort to recruit exceptional “global talent,” with new scholarships for international doctoral students.
This approach repositions certain international students as highly desirable. It privileges those with high levels of cultural and economic capital. At the same time, it signals a desire to further cut the number of study permits available generally.
A racialized group facing racist backlash
As the volatility of the past few years makes clear, policy efforts remain focused on managing the scale and composition of international student populations.
University discussions of international students tend to celebrate their diversity while ignoring race, while student migrants have been on the receiving end of xenophobia and racism.
Read more:
International students are not to blame for Canada’s housing crisis
The vast majority of international students in Canada come from Asia: Indian students make up the largest share, with many hailing from Punjab.
Much of the blame in terms of casting international students as responsible for housing pressures has been directed at these Indian students, even as they themselves are among the most affected. This has occurred alongside an alarming rise in police-reported hate crimes targeting South Asians.
Chinese international students also experienced the brunt of anti-Asian racism during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Skepticism around Canada’s global alliances
The federal government’s current shift towards welcoming “global talent” is its Canada-India Talent and Innovation Strategy, which aims to boost national science and innovation capacity.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
This also coincides with rampant skepticism over China’s growing role in international science and concerns over intellectual property.
At the same time, international students face greater scrutiny, regulations and differential tuition policies.
Many international students pay up to six times what domestic students pay. Average international student tuition has continued to increase since 2024, while many programs and student services are being cut to the detriment of students and communities.
Diverse experiences of Asian students
Our research examines how the administrative and legal category of the “international student” flattens the diverse and heterogeneous experiences of students from Asia and their multidimensional everyday lives.
The stereotypes, micro-aggressions, othering and racism that international students face on- an off-campus were exacerbated by COVID-19 but predate and outlast the pandemic.
We also found that international students are often not included in their institutions’ equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) efforts, which tend to focus primarily on domestic students.
International students are also under-supported by campus support services that often lack cultural awareness and sensitivity. Such conditions contribute to a sense of conditional belonging and inclusion.
Yet, despite these structural and interpersonal challenges, many international students from Asia build deep connections and communities, often through online networks or in spaces comprised of multiple ethnic communities. Many continue to hold long-term aspirations to stay in Canada.
Shift in buzzwords
The shift in federal language, which now names selected “exceptional” international students as a source of “global talent,” is not new.
It echoes earlier innovation strategies of the 2000s, which sought to recruit international students as skilled migrants and “highly qualified personnel” for a knowledge economy.
As with prior waves, this language shift represents long-standing patterns in Canadian history, whereby immigration policy oscillates between recruitment and restriction.
If our project teaches us anything, it’s that the shift from scapegoating international students to now selectively welcoming “global talent” will not change broader structural conditions. New recruits will still face challenges around racism and integration.
It may even introduce new forms of academic competition and suspicion in a society where some institutions have already been criticized as “too Asian.”
Neighbours, classmates, friends
Our research has made clear that recent policy shifts risk reproducing long-standing assumptions — that international students are welcome only to the extent that they are useful. We call this “transactional integration” in our book. Previously, international students were useful for their revenue and future labour, but now Canada needs them for its competitiveness agenda.
(Jordan Gonzalez/Unsplash)
Yet again, this transactional and conditional approach to inclusion means Canadian may never get to know the international students who come to study, with their full and complex lives and their distinctive needs.
These are people who will be our neighbours, classmates and friends — if we are willing to see student migrants defined by qualities other than their visa status.
