International students aren’t responsible for Canada’s systemic problems

By: Yasmin Hassan, Staff Writer

This January, immigration minister Marc Miller announced Canada’s federal government will be introducing a cap on the intake of international students. His claim is that it will help offload “pressures on housing, health care, and other services.” SFU reports as of April 2024 to have 5,635 international undergraduate students (19.3%) and 1,897 international graduate students (36.7%). International students make up a large and valuable portion of our student body, and it’s unfair to blame them for issues beyond their control. 

The housing problem that exists in Canada is beyond the scope of international students. Economist Claire Fan notes that “even if one were to equate each permit to an individual and consider a potential decrease of 215,000 students annually — as per the cap — that would represent just 0.5% of the current Canadian population.” Fan says “it’s very negligible” to see material change from the cap with regard to inflation, consumer demand, and interest rates.

International students contribute significantly to Canada’s economy by spending money on tuition, living expenses, and other goods and services. Their tuition spending alone surpasses Canada’s exports of major industries like auto parts, lumber, or aircraft — totalling a whopping $21 billion annually. You don’t have to be an economics major to understand that international students are helping the economy and strengthening the labour force. Quite a few international students are also in STEM. If some of these students choose to stay and contribute to high-demand fields like healthcare and engineering, it would be especially important as Canada faces challenges of an aging population and shrinking workforce. About 40% of international undergraduate students stay in the country to work after completing their degree, and 1 in 4 healthcare workers in Canada are immigrants. Capping the intake of international students may have the opposite intended effect in the long run, as the number of essential healthcare workers would decrease.

The experience of most international students is nothing short of disappointing. A good friend of mine told me about his experience with finding housing as an international student and the conditions he had to live with for years. On top of paying more than a Canadian student would for tuition, the housing was unaffordable and cramped as he had to share with multiple other roommates. His experience is not the only one of its kind, as many other international students have to endure unforeseen circumstances and live in borderline squalor while paying often high rent. Landlords are getting away with providing unclean and unsafe living spaces for absurd prices, knowing that international students have few options. Immigrants cannot be blamed for a system they also suffer under. Just because international students are in a position to afford studying in a different country doesn’t mean they’re any less deserving of respect and equity. The caps will do nothing but create a false illusion of “improvement” and perpetuate negative stereotypes about immigrants.

The housing crisis in Canada has been worsening since the ‘80s, when the government started to claw back its social housing investments in favour of privatization. This resulted in fewer homes being constructed both in the private and public sector. On the topic of healthcare, the exhaustion of emergency departments and lack of family doctors should tell you something about long-lasting issues reaching their eventual breaking point. Immigrants and permanent residents alike are houseless, pay unreasonable amounts of rent, and are mistreated. These caps are the government trying to convince themselves that they’re solving a problem, when in reality they’re avoiding real reform. Economist Rebekah Young states that “we wouldn’t have needed a cap had there been better checks and balances in the system.” Structural issues have always been present, but international students just “exposed them and are now bearing the brunt of these issues.” Blaming immigrants for housing unaffordability distracts from some of its real culprits: corporate landlords and investors.  

If we care about the integrity of our public institutions like housing and healthcare, we must look beyond immigration. By shoving the blame onto others — taking the attention away from leaders who can make a change — we are putting a Band-Aid on a bursting pipe. This is coming from a government that’s gloated about multiculturalism and immigration, while saying otherwise through its actions. Western University’s president told Toronto Star that “the post-secondary system is bulging with offerings to entice students from around the world” but “the students they attract are not supported equally when they arrive.” Our hospitality is marketed as a paradise of people saying sorry and being friendly, but perhaps apologizing profusely won’t solve the problem of unaffordable housing and unfair treatment. Neither will these new immigration caps.