International language students will not be exempt from study visa caps in Canada, as confirmed by Minister of Immigration Marc Miller during a conference with Languages Canada in 2024. Miller stated that the government is considering controlling the secondary school space and rejected the proposal by the organisation to exempt language students from the cap. Despite stakeholders’ arguments that these students live with Canadian families and do not come to Canada for work, Miller initially opposed the idea of capping international student numbers.
In 2023, there will be over one million international students in Canada holding a valid study permit; this represents an increase of 29% from the previous year. Most of the international leaders in Canada agreed to the fact that there is a need to do something about unsustainable rising international students. However, the language sector opposed it, saying that they do not contribute to the problem.
According to the Executive Director of Languages Canada, Gonzalo Peralta, the language segment of education is the only one that hasn’t seen a rise in unsustainable growth since 2019. The politicians, on the other hand, argued that the rising housing problem is one of the main reasons for the cap.
Additionally, contributing to this fact, most international language school students live with Canadian families, and over $200 million goes to these households to support their mortgages.
Provinces have now become the target of heavy criticism from Canadian politicians for their lack of scrutiny over ‘bad actors’ in private institutions, which has further led to a rise in the international student population. There was another widely held concern among Languages Canada that the Canadian government does not properly understand the language school’s unique characteristics.
Such fears were confirmed by Miller’s assertion that 45% of “your” applicants come from India, which is true of the wider education sector but not of language schools, whose Indian applicants are negligible.
