Canada to make new rules for the betterment of International Students

The Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration wants the government of Canada to take actions to attract, help and safeguard international students in Canada that are coming or are already present there. IRCC also replied to this latest announcement.

Parliament's Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration studies immigration and citizenship in Canada. Also, it monitors multiculturalism policies in the country and oversees IRCC. According to the CIMM report, many overseas students find themselves in precarious and risky situations despite Canada's popularity as a destination. IRCC should also address these issues, according to the report.

Three primary goals were addressed in the report regarding foreign students:

• Luring more foreign students to study in Canada;
• Improving service and communication for international students
• During the study permit and immigration processes, as well as ensuring equity in the international student programme.

In response to the report, the IRCC concentrated on the actions that could be taken in relation to these goals as well as those that already exist; it covered each individually with the aim of lowering vulnerabilities and assisting foreign students as they go through the application, study, and settlement processes in Canada.

Recruiting international students to study in Canada

According to the latest statistics, there will be over 753,000 international students with Canadian study permits between 2022 and 2023. However, CIMM continued to express concern over the department's continued undervaluation of applications from specific nations and groups.

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In response, the IRCC promised to: Look into expanding the Student Direct Stream (SDS) to particular French-, Asian-, and African-speaking nations. For applicants from 14 countries, the SDS offers a fast-track stream for obtaining a Canada study permit;

• It also stated that it intends to establish a working group between the Ministry of Immigration, La Francisation et de l'Intégration (MIFI) and the Immigration and Refugee Council Canada (IRCC) to investigate the rate of study permit rejections (generally speaking and for Francophone African students specifically), destined for Quebec;
• Maintain and re-evaluate the scope of the Nigeria Student Express (NSE) stream—a Canada study permit stream created to assist students applying from Nigeria; and
• Looking at the best ways to support international students' transition to Canada permanent residence, especially those who have the knowledge, experience, and proficiency in the English language needed to flourish in Canada.

Ensuring parity in the programme for international students

A number of prospective actions were also mentioned by the CIMM to ensure equity in the international student programme and application procedures. As a result, the IRCC pledged to examine its procedures and guarantee equity throughout the International Student Program (ISP) by:

• Continuing to ask questions about accessibility, race, and gender in the yearly voluntary client experience survey to find out more about the particular difficulties that clients face based on their demographics;
• Develop a framework for disaggregating data and analytics. Disaggregated data is data that has been filtered to better understand the specific connections it has based on demographic traits; for instance, to better understand how a certain set of individuals is impacted by a certain policy or phenomenon;
• Reviewing the selection procedure for international students and evaluating students on criteria more closely related to their potential value;
• Improving client service and communication; and
• Analyzing racial differences in social well-being across different immigration cohorts

Improving interactions with overseas students

There was a strong emphasis on giving clients and stakeholders clear and honest information, particularly regarding processing timelines and reasons for refusals, in the CIMM recommendations. This is what IRCC has done in response:

• Pledge to collaborate with DLIs to collect international student enrolment and status information, with DLIs submitting real-time information to IRCC;
• To assist with processing capacity, 1,250 new processing personnel have been hired by the end of 2022; and

Demonstrating a desire to continue programmes like the 2022 pilot programme, which required immigration officers to proactively release their decision notes along with selected temporary residence visa (TRV) applications at the time of the decision in order to ensure transparency and comprehension.