The number of foreign students claiming asylum in Canada has shot up over 15 times in just 5 years, a clear indication of abuse of the system to stay in the country.
According to numbers acquired by The Globe and Mail from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, asylum claims by international students have risen from 1,515 in 2018 to 25,465 in 2023.
At colleges specifically, asylum claims have risen at an even more dramatic rate, over 4,000% (i.e., over 40 times).
While some claims seem more legitimate, such as those from Haitian students (coming from a country that has been taken over by gangs), most claims have come from the huge surge of Indian students whose student permits are starting to expire.
The Trudeau government has been under increasing pressure as of late due to the surge in temporary residents, specifically temporary workers and international students, who now make up 7.5% of the Canadian population compared to 2% in 2017.
Recently, Trudeau admitted that this record-high immigration and rise in temporary residents are the main reasons that housing and rent prices have soared since 2019, adding that they’ve kept wages down.
By Trudeau’s own admission, “Over the past few years, we’ve seen a massive spike in temporary immigration, whether it’s temporary foreign workers or whether it’s international students in particular that have grown at a rate far beyond what Canada has been able to absorb.”
“That’s something that we need to get back under control… also, increasingly more and more businesses [are] relying on temporary foreign workers in a way that is driving down wages in some sectors.”
As many will now know, Canada reached a population of 41 million a few weeks ago—just 9 months after hitting 40 million. That’s one million people, most of whom are temporary economic immigrants (primarily from India and China), who were brought into Canada in the middle of one of the worst housing, rent, and cost of living crises in recent memory.
Now, it turns out that Canada’s easy-to-game asylum laws are allowing temporary foreign students to stay in Canada even longer, possibly leading to permanent resident status.
Unsurprisingly, Trudeau has yet to comment on this or propose any solutions.
