By David L. Thomas, August 18, 2025
Canada’s immigration system has undergone a dramatic transformation over the past twenty years. Once a tightly controlled process that separated education and work permits for foreigners, with clear boundaries for temporary residency, it has gradually evolved into a complex pipeline where international students have largely become de facto economic immigrants. What began as a simple accommodation for a relatively small number of foreign students has evolved into a strategy to attract talent for potential immigration purposes, generating huge revenues for educational institutions and then expanding into a vast, loosely regulated system that now maintains over a million international students on temporary status.
This shift has brought unintended consequences: growing exploitation of workers, increased strain on public services, and a surge in refugee claims. As the federal government maintains high immigration targets and hesitates to impose stricter controls, many are beginning to question whether the disorder is accidental, or by design.
When I started my career as an immigration lawyer 35 years ago, international students were strictly forbidden from working in Canada. In those days, the federal government required international students to prove they had adequate funds to fully support themselves during their temporary stay in Canada.
The studies also had to be legitimate. Those of us in the business back then can remember student visa applications being refused because the officer felt the student’s intended course of study was inconsistent with their age, lifestyle or intended career plans. Applications were highly scrutinized, and a student might be refused if the officer suspected there was a dual purpose for coming to study. Under the old Immigration Act, 1976, there was a clear distinction between temporary and permanent visa categories. Specifically, if it appeared the student was hoping to remain in Canada permanently, the application would be rejected. A student visa would be inappropriate, because it was intended only for an admission into Canada for a temporary purpose.
Regardless of their country of origin, most of these foreign students had one thing in common in the early 1990s – they were rich. The number-one source country of foreign students was the United States, followed by Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea. These students mostly came from wealthy families abroad who could finance their children’s education at Canada’s world class universities. This fact was not lost on the institutions of higher learning themselves, and so it became the norm that international students would pay slightly higher tuition fees. The spread between domestic and international tuition started to grow in the late 1990s, and by 2006, the average undergrad tuition for foreign students was triple the amount paid by Canadian students. Then it got worse, and between 2010 and 2019, average tuition fees for international undergraduate students grew by 90.2 per cent while at the same time domestic student fees increased by an average of only 27 per cent. By 2023, foreign student fees were the University of Toronto’s largest source of revenue, making up 43 per cent of its income. Post-secondary institutions became hooked and dependent on this new source of funding. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence to even suggest that Canadian students have sometimes been displaced from admission in favour of more lucrative clientele from abroad.
In the 1990s, there was a different point system for immigration to Canada for an “independent” applicant. Points were awarded for an applicant’s level of education, their ability to speak English and French, the type of occupation for which they had training and experience, etc. Immigration lawyers like me used to travel the world to meet potential applicants who might garner enough points to qualify. Those days are over.
The 2002 Immigration and Refugee Protection Act largely erased the distinction between the intention to reside temporarily versus permanently, and the concept of dual intent was introduced. The Immigration Department started to realize that many of these international students had the qualities Canada is seeking. They were well-educated (in Canada), they could speak one or both official languages well, and they usually had the resources available to become successfully settled in Canada. The one deficiency in most cases was the lack of work experience. In 2008, the federal government formalized the Post-Graduation Work Permit for all students, without requiring a specific job offer in their field of study. The work permits could be issued up to three years, easily facilitating the need for job experience to qualify for permanent status in Canada. Ottawa also introduced the Canadian Experience Class in 2008 to capture these graduates before they returned to their home countries. (We gave little thought to whether we were robbing poor countries of the doctors and engineers that they more desperately needed.)
The experiment worked so well that, by 2015 and the introduction of the Express Entry system, it became almost impossible to apply for immigration without having studied and worked in Canada first. And so, the cycle began.
The student demand grew exponentially. Universities and colleges became dependent on the foreign tuition stream, but why should they get all the lucre? Vocational colleges lobbied for their fair share of the international cash. The provinces set the rules for what constituted a proper college, and regulations were often fuzzy. This gave rise to a massive spike in fly-by-night schools operating in strip malls and office buildings. Their primary purpose was not to educate people but to facilitate their admission into Canada on student visas.
At the same time, all the stakeholders lobbied the government to allow students to work part-time. Starting in 2006, foreign students could apply for an off-campus work permit for 20 hours maximum per week, to help them off-set the high cost of tuition and the cost of living in Canada. At first it seemed like a good idea, helping local businesses find a steady stream of workers for their low-paying jobs. The program worked so well, it exploded, and by 2014, all student visas carried the automatic right to work anywhere for up to 20 hours per week. The study-work program became so popular that the international student scene in Canada was no longer the domain of the rich. For a while, post-pandemic, students were even allowed to work 40 hours per week.
With a much-expanded pool of potential applicants, the industry grew exponentially. Universities and Colleges dedicated resources to travel the world to recruit more students. Bogus and semi-bogus schools popped up everywhere. The immigration consultant business exploded and Ottawa authorized a new category of consultants, “Regulated International Student Immigration Advisors.” (Fun fact: when I worked for the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants, I was told there are about 14,000 unlicensed immigration consultants in India’s Punjab region alone, which is more than the actual number of licensed immigration consultants in Canada.) Office buildings were converted into high-density student residences to facilitate the flood of international students pouring into the big cities.
The demand was high because the pathway had been firmly established: If you want to immigrate to Canada, go there as a student. This became the sure-fire way to gain permanent resident status. The Immigration Department changed everything to facilitate it. And over time, that student will be able to sponsor their parents, grandparents, and maybe their siblings for immigration to Canada too.
Desperate people do desperate things
In some countries, there are businesses that will temporarily loan you a large sum of money for a few days so you can produce a bank statement showing you have enough funds to support your student visa application. Poor students borrow money from relatives and friends to facilitate their tuition and living expenses. This ends up putting tremendous pressure on those students when they arrive.
In some cases, remaining in Canada to work requires an LMIA (Labour Market Impact Assessment), which in my experience used to be much harder to get from the government. Unscrupulous employers will actually sell LMIA’s to desperate foreigners for $10,000, $20,000 or more. (Yes, they pay that money for the opportunity to work in a low-paying job that hopefully, one day, will facilitate their permanent immigration to Canada.)
In a well-known case I adjudicated, several young men from India paid $40,000 to a consultant for an LMIA to work as a truck driver. They were hastily trained and then brutally exploited. They were paid half of what they were promised (far below minimum wage) and trained to forge logs so they could drive for longer periods than legally permitted. They allowed themselves to be exploited for two reasons: the consultant threatened their deportation if they complained; and, they had borrowed that $40,000 from friends and relatives who were not wealthy people. These young men had no choice. If they didn’t go through one or two years of exploitation, they would have no chance of securing permanent resident status, at which point they could quit, look for better employment and pay off their debts.
And quit these lousy jobs, these employees will. While government programs facilitate permanent immigration status for certain undesirable jobs (such as live-in caregivers or long-distance truck drivers) the reality is that most people leave these jobs as soon as their permanent status arrives, when they are no longer tied to their employer. This necessitates a new cycle of recruiting. New job vacancies require a steady flow of newcomers who are desperate enough to put up with exploitation (and perhaps unwittingly facilitating or being coerced into criminal activity such as smuggling drugs across the border.)
What is the scale of this problem? Thirty years ago, we used to admit around 30,000 international students per year. By 2023, the number of international students in Canada exceeded 1,000,000. In 2024, the government finally started to take notice that, just maybe, this was impacting access to housing, health care and other resources. The beleaguered Trudeau government promised to cut back the flow. This resulted in large-scale protests from international students who complained they had been duped, because all along they intended to convert their student visas into permanent resident status.
With that route curtailed, what has been the natural consequence? Inland refugee claims have skyrocketed – rising from 12,060 in 2021 to 112,920 in 2024. That marks over a 900 per cent increase over three years. Canada’s inland refugee claim backlog is in the range of 260,000 to 280,000 cases. The anticipated processing time for most of these claims is estimated to be four years. The Immigration and Refugee Board’s capacity has expanded, but inflow of new claims consistently outpaces final decisions.
Where is the biggest source of the refugee claims? The number one source country is the same country that is our number one source of foreign students (at 26 per cent): India. They are mostly students and temporary workers with status that is expired or expiring. No problem for them. There are plenty of “advisers” who will coach them on a fashionable story to tell to ensure their refugee claim will be accepted. The process will take years, and in the meantime, they can stay in Canada, work, collect assistance, use the food banks, and access healthcare. (The acceptance rate of refugee claims is approximately 82 per cent.)
In addition to the estimated 500,000 to 700,000 undocumented people in Canada, in Q1 2025, there were over 3 million people in Canada on temporary visas, mostly study permits and work permits.
Unintended consequences? Or not?
Simple remedies have been suggested, such as: tracking departures; enforcing deportation orders by actually removing people; increasing scrutiny of visa applications; all these measures could be easily undertaken and yet, they are not being pursued.
It is no secret that “Century Initiative” founder, Mark Wiseman, is one of Prime Minister Carney’s close advisors. Along with co-founder Dominic Barton (Trudeau’s Ambassador to China) the Century Initiative group advocates for Canada’s population to grow to 100 million by year 2100 through massive immigration.
The current chaos in our immigration system is not popular with most voters, Canadian-born and immigrants. Carney’s stated aim for a modest decrease in the temporary population to from 6.8 per cent to 5 per cent still leaves about 2 million students, workers and asylum claimants competing for housing, health care and other resources – still historically high numbers.
Whatever the Carney government may say, the facts speak for themselves. It brought in and renewed 817,000 people in the first four months of this year. Although the Carney government reminds us this is lower than Trudeau’s recent targets, the new stated immigration targets through 2027 remain huge compared to the previous decade.
We are bringing people into Canada at a much faster rate than we can build new housing and increase our health care resources for them. The increased demand means our young people struggle and in particular can’t afford traditional housing. Obviously, this exacerbates the fertility crisis that we have witnessed for at least a couple of decades. Is immigration the answer to that fertility crisis? Or is it part of the problem that has caused it? Has massive immigration over the last 30 years made life easier or harder for Canadians? Are we even having a debate about this?
Whether Canadians are for it or not, the current government strategy appears to double down on the immigration bet.
David L. Thomas is a lawyer and mediator in British Columbia as well as senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. From 2014 to 2021, he was the chairperson of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in Ottawa. In addition to private business interests, Thomas also formerly served as a vice-chair of the discipline tribunal of the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants and as a mediator for the BC Human Rights Tribunal. Aspects of this analysis are drawn from the author’s professional experience and judgment.
