By Mata Press Service

As the Trudeau government begins to limit the issuance of study permits, Canada is witnessing an unprecedented surge in asylum claims from international students—many of which are suspected to be fraudulent.

In the first nine months of this year alone, nearly 14,000 international students submitted asylum applications, shattering previous records despite a significant reduction in the number of permits issued.

Immigration Minister Marc Miller has expressed concerns about the legitimacy of these claims, particularly given the dramatic spike among first-year students. Miller said that many students are being improperly advised to exploit the asylum system.

 "It is quite obvious someone that’s here, that’s been here a year or even more, claiming asylum where no conditions have changed in their home country – it doesn’t smell good, it doesn’t look good," Miller told The Globe and Mail. "There is advice being given for people here that would otherwise have to go home to claim asylum, and that is not the intention of the asylum system as we have it in Canada."

Critics argue that the rise in student asylum claims may be linked to the government’s tightened pathways to permanent residency, pushing some students to use asylum claims as a backdoor to remain in the country.

 Federal data supports this surge: Between January 1 and September 30 of this year, 13,660 asylum claims were submitted by international students—an increase from nearly 12,000 in 2023 and a dramatic jump from just 1,810 in 2018.

The surge in asylum claims primarily involves students from countries like India, Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) data.

Minister Miller has called on the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants, to investigate whether licensed immigration consultants are advising international students to make fraudulent asylum claims.

The spike in asylum claims comes as the Canadian government implements significant changes to its immigration policies, aiming to address challenges related to housing shortages, strained public services, and shifting public sentiment

This past October, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a substantial reduction in Canada's immigration targets.

The initial plan to admit 500,000 new permanent residents annually has been revised to 395,000 for the upcoming year, with further reductions to 380,000 in 2026 and 365,000 in 2027. This 21% decrease aims to balance labour market needs with the country's capacity to provide adequate infrastructure and services.

In a recently uploaded YouTube video, Trudeau acknowledged that the federal government could have acted more swiftly to tighten immigration programs, attributing the issue to "bad actors" exploiting the system.

Trudeau highlighted the necessity of increasing immigration following pandemic lockdowns to support the labor market, emphasizing that this approach helped Canada avoid a severe recession. However, he admitted that some "bad actors" misused these programs.

"Some saw that as a profit, to game the system. We saw way too many large corporations do this," Trudeau stated.

He also criticized "too many" colleges and universities for leveraging international student programs to "raise their bottom line," pointing out that international students pay much higher tuition.

Additionally, he noted that scammers preyed on "vulnerable immigrants" with fraudulent citizenship pathways.

Reflecting on the situation, Trudeau said, "Looking back, when the post-pandemic boom cooled and businesses no longer needed the additional labour help, as a federal team we could have acted quicker and turned off the taps faster."

Trudeau then discussed the new immigration strategy, which aims to reduce the number of permanent and temporary immigrants coming to Canada. This includes a phased decrease in new permanent residents over the next two years and stricter requirements for employers seeking temporary worker permits.

According to Trudeau, the objective of these reductions is to stabilize population growth while housing stocks catch up.

Once this balance is achieved, the government may consider gradually increasing immigration rates again.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre linked much of his criticism of the immigration system to Trudeau’s recent admissions.

"Now, he's basically denouncing his entire immigration policy and expecting us to believe that he can fix the problems that he caused," Poilievre said.

He added, "The bottom line is we have to fix our immigration, get back to the best system in the world, the one that brought my wife here as a refugee legally and lawfully, the one that brought so many people here to pursue the Canadian promise, and that's what I'm going to do as prime minister."

Poilievre has previously proposed tying immigration rates to housing availability while considering factors like healthcare and employment.

Yvonne Su the director of the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University said instead of going after desperate international students, the federal government should be investigating the educational institutions responsible for creating this environment and should be introducing stricter oversight.
“Let’s be clear: Many students applying for asylum aren’t doing so because it’s a backdoor into Canada. Many are being pushed into that position by institutions that have promised them a future and then left them to fend for themselves,” she wrote in Policy Options, the digital magazine of the Institute for Research on Public Policy.

“We need to start looking at this issue through a more nuanced lens – one that acknowledges the bad actors and doesn’t vilify the 98 percent of international students who did not apply for asylum,” she said.