More than 200,000 international students in Canada will see their work permits expire by end of 2025

More than 200,000 international students will see their work permits expire by the end of 2025 – many of them, however, might not successfully obtain permanent residence status in that time frame because of recent changes in immigration policy.

New data obtained by The Globe and Mail from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada show that there are 203,260 international students in Canada who hold postgraduation work permits that will expire in the next 15 months. Almost 70,000 of those permits expire between Sept. 1 and Dec. 31, 2024.

Postgraduation work permits (PGWP) are issued for between nine months to three years to foreign students who have obtained a diploma or degree at a Canadian college or university.

Tens of thousands of international students who spent years finding a pathway to permanent residency are out of options

Obtaining permanent residency as a PGWP holder used to be a fairly predictable process under Express Entry, an immigration system launched in 2015. The system effectively prioritized high-skilled workers and foreign graduates from Canadian institutions who had Canadian work experience, awarding them a score under the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) and then issued invitations to apply for permanent residence every two weeks to those with the highest scores. In 2016, the Liberals streamlined the Express Entry system even further to favour international students by awarding them bonus points for having studied at a Canadian postsecondary institution.

By the end of August this year, there were 471,810 PGWP holders, more than triple the number of permit holders from 2018, according to federal government data.

But as the number of permanent-residency (PR) hopefuls increased, a series of policy changes made during the pandemic unintentionally made it more difficult for PGWP holders to transition to PR status.

Ottawa halted a policy introduced during the pandemic that granted 18-month extensions to PGWPs to help ease a labour shortage. Those extensions would have enabled those with expiring PGWPs to wait out a backlog in PR applications that had accumulated during the pandemic.

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The government also changed its criteria for selection within the Express Entry system – it began prioritizing French speakers and people with job experience in health care, skilled trades, agriculture, transportation and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields as opposed to those with Canadian-specific education and experience. PR draws for the Canadian Experience Class immigration stream that most PGWP holders use were paused for almost three years, between August, 2021, and May, 2024. When draws resumed, the cut-off score to gain permanent residency in the Express Entry system had increased substantially, making it almost impossible for many applicants with a Canadian education and work experience to qualify.

Recently, hundreds of international students on expiring PGWPs set up a protest site in Brampton, Ont., campaigning for Ottawa to grant them an extension to their visas and a “fair pathway” to permanent residency – specifically, a guarantee that draws from all streams of the Express Entry system will be conducted regularly.

IRCC did not respond specifically to a query from The Globe about the percentage of PGWP holders with permits expiring in 2024 and 2025 that will be granted permanent residency.

Historical data from Statistics Canada show that between 2016 and 2020, approximately 40 per cent of PGWP holders were granted PR status within two years of receiving their work permit. Between 2011 and 2015, 73 per cent of PGWP holders obtained permanent residency within five years of receiving their work permit.

In an e-mailed statement, the ministry noted that work experience gained through holding a PGWP did not necessarily guarantee permanent residency.

Aissa Diop, director of communications for Marc Miller, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, said that the government’s current policy on immigration is to reduce the level of temporary residents and stabilize the level of permanent residents.

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“Part of the reduction in temporary residents includes transitioning some of them to permanent residency. But if they don’t qualify under any permanent resident program, then they have to go home. We cannot keep opening the taps saying everyone is welcome here,” she told The Globe in a recent interview.

There were 2.8 million temporary residents in Canada as of the first quarter of 2024, according to data from Statistics Canada. They comprise 6.8 per cent of the total population, up from 3.5 per cent two years ago. Temporary residents include international students, people on temporary work permits and asylum claimants.

There is an immense disconnect between the government’s proposed permanent resident approvals and the number of temporary residents already in the country, notes John Carlaw, an assistant professor at Toronto Metropolitan University specializing in immigration and refugee policy.

Canada is aiming to admit 485,000 permanent residents in 2024, 500,000 in 2025 and another 500,000 in 2026. This year, Ottawa is planning to issue permanent residency to 110,770 applicants in the Express Entry pool, the most popular PR pathway for PGWP holders. Next year that number is 117,500.

“We have hundreds of thousands of people coming to Canada, many of them international students, with the expectation that they would obtain permanent residency,” Dr. Carlaw said.

“But the figures the government sets out for PR in their immigration levels plan does not recognize the extent of migration into Canada. We are not providing a clear pathway to permanent residence for many.”