Federal policy changes mean thousands of international students risk deportation

International students continue to get a raw deal in Canada as thousands of people now face possible deportations at the end of the year with federal changes to work permit rules. 

This comes in the wake of other changes, including capping the working hours for international students to 24 per week and slashing the number of international student permits by 35 per cent — lower than in 2023. The changes have ignited protests amongst international students across the country.

It is a situation where, paradoxically, transparency and obfuscation are equally at play. Which angle is more insidious depends on how much of the truth you can stomach. From the point of transparency, the federal government has openly admitted that they relaxed entry for temporary foreign workers (TFWs) to fill in labour shortages after the end of COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and restrictions. 

Two years later, the situation has quickly changed so that the labour shortage has now become a surplus. However, the government has not been entirely honest — and they do not intend to be — neither in its current Liberal incarnation nor as its incredibly likely Conservative avatar. 

The exploitation of migrant labour — whether they be temporary, foreign, or international student workers — is a pro-corporate, bipartisan political machine. Its history traces all the way back to the use of cheap Chinese labourers in laying tracks for the Canadian Pacific Railway. 

However, the modern system is more focused on service industry roles where there is much in work and little in satisfactory pay. Knowing even half of the truth paints a cynical picture of Canadian multiculturalism as nothing but a job recruitment strategy as opposed to being a principled stance to social cohesion.

Then we get to the obfuscation — the lies that make the plight of international students and TFWs acceptable to the layman. I touched upon one of these deceits in an article on Indian students’ housing situations, but it deserves reiteration and expansion. 

Scapegoating international students, TFWs, and immigrants at-large for the ongoing housing supply/affordability crisis is a fashionable claim in spite of evidence that market speculation is truly to blame. 

The same goes for the “they took our jobs!” canard that has been repeated for centuries. In the face of crises, it is always the designated “others” — the immigrants, poor, homeless, and sexual/gender minorities — who are targeted, regardless of any actual participatory culpability in the systems that have little qualms with using their lives as disposable commodities. 

Hence, whenever life takes a turn for the worse, it is the robber-barons’ fault, that class opts to obfuscate. It is easier to target the vulnerable since they are easier to access and direct anger towards because it protects the wealthy from the justifiably angry masses.

International students, TFWs, migrants, refugees, and/or their descendants, no matter their origins, are not your enemy or competitor. It is a perception that those with social currency and power promote to keep the worst consequences of their actions from even grazing them. It does not always work out, but it is enough of a tried-and-true method that it keeps getting employed by the ultra-rich and mega-wealthy to shield their class interests. 

The working classes — domestic or foreign-born — should recognize this existing form of conflict. Just as the ruling class fears the working class, the working class should not give the ruling class any benefit of the doubt. Whatever they do, say, or promote should never be accepted at face value. Capping and preparing to deport international students signals that the fruits of their efforts have been reaped and that they are no longer needed anymore.