Canada exploiting Indian students as cheap labour: Report

New Delhi: Some Indian students in Canada are accusing the country of using them as a cheap source of labour and discarding them once they're no longer needed, a report by Bloomberg said on Tuesday.

Amid labour shortage and high unemployment rate, which fell to 5.2 per cent this September, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser announced a new temporary measure aimed at reducing severe labour shortages in Canada.

PM Justin Trudeau's government had introduced the permit extension move to over 5,00,000 international students already in Canada to potentially work more hours, and stay for 18 months after graduation to seek employment.

However, after more than a year, some of these permanent-resident hopefuls have been left without status to work or remain in the country, according to the report.

"I'm basically sitting at home and living off of my savings... Canada should appreciate foreign students more, not just use them as a form of cheap labour," Daniel D'Souza, an accountant and former student at Seneca College near Toronto, told Bloomberg.

With 1.83 lakh Indian students pursuing education at various levels in the country, Canada is the second most popular destination for Indians pursuing academic degrees abroad. 35% of the study permits in Canada have been availed by Indian students

452,000 study permit applications were confirmed between January 1 and August 31, 2022, compared to about 367,000 finalized in the same period in 2021 (January 1 to August 31, 2021), which represents an increase of about 23%. As of September 1, the number of study permit applications in IRCC’s processing inventory was about 151,000, 62% of which were currently within IRCC’s service standard of 60 days, as reported by the Free Press Journal.

Many graduates who were part of the 2021 program, had to leave their jobs when their work permits expired with no guarantee they'll gain permanent residency. Even if their applications are eventually successful, students face months in struggle with no job, income, or benefits of any kind, Bloomberg reported.

"When they needed us, they exploited us. But when we need their help or support, nobody shows up," Anshdeep Bindra, a former consultant at Ernst & Young in Toronto, told the media outlet.

Indian graduates, who hoped that the permit extension would give them more time to gain Canadian work experience, got mired in a backlog of applications that led to a 10-month shutdown of the system to allow the government to process them.

Once the system was activated, the students found themselves competing with pools of immigrants with much higher-than-normal scores, reducing their chances of gaining permanent residency, the report said.

International students contribute more than C$21 billion ($15.3 billion) annually to the Canadian economy, according to the government data.

Canada is a popular choice among students moving abroad due to its quality education, friendly visa and immigration rules, and better life prospects. Most Indian students are interested in remaining in Canada as permanent residents after completing their studies.

According to Statistics Canada, international students who get permanent residence tend to integrate quickly into the Canadian labour market due to their previous experience of living in the country on visas.

The data released by the Ministry of External Affairs, 60,258 Indian students chose Canada as their study destination in the first six months of 2022 

Before the pandemic, in 2019, 1,32,620 Indian students had chosen Canada. In 2020, after Covid-19 broke out, the number dipped to 43,624, before rising sharply to 1,02,688 in 2021, according to the MEA.

Inputs from the Free Press Journal