Navigating Canada's immigration and education nexus

[00:00:04] Karine Morin: Welcome to the Big Thinking Podcast, where we explore today’s biggest topics with Canada’s leading voices. I’m Karine Morin, and I am the President and CEO of the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. In this episode, we’re exploring a topic that has grabbed headlines across Canada over this past year – the cap on international students enrolled in our colleges and universities, and the ripple effects it’s having on education and immigration.

[00:00:32] Joining me today to examine the nuances of this policy is Lisa Brunner, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of British Columbia Centre for Migration Studies. Welcome Lisa Brunner, I am so delighted to be having this conversation with you.  

[00:00:58] Lisa Brunner: Yeah, thank you so much, and really it is a true pleasure and honor to be on this podcast.  

[00:01:03] Karine Morin: I wanted to start with asking you, how did you take an interest in studying these issues of immigration in higher education, in particular, in the Canadian context.

[00:01:14] Lisa Brunner: I started, I think with my master's degree, I was looking at Canada's government assisted refugee resettlement policies, working in geography with Jennifer Hyndman, and it was really interesting, but there were, you know, some questions that I came up in terms of, the reaction that people gave me when I said I was studying refugee resettlement policy.

[00:01:37] There was a lot of, I would say, almost savioristic kind of tendencies as someone who doesn't come from a refugee background, and the way I was perceived for doing that research. But I, at the time, was an international student from the United States, a lot of my friends were international students, especially from Iran. And the reaction to international students was very different, and it wasn't I guess on the research agenda, I would say.  

[00:02:01] So after my master's, I started working in the settlement sector in teaching people about moving to Canada and I got a job at Simon Fraser University working on a program for international graduate students and learning about how to be a teaching assistant in a higher education system in the Canadian context. And so I ended up becoming an international student advisor at the University of British Columbia, and I did that for 10 years and became a regulated Canadian immigration consultant along the way.  

[00:02:34] So I really see myself as a practitioner scholar who's, I think that doing the PhD came out of this dissonance. One, about the ethical complexities I felt in the higher education system working as an international student advisor and the policies that I saw around me, versus what I was learning from an academic perspective, I decided I really wanted to look at the institutional workings of a power structure that I was very much implicated in. So that's how I came to this topic.

[00:03:07] Karine Morin: That's very interesting, and I really appreciate that bringing of practitioners' perspective into academic research, which I think, helps make it even more, perhaps, solutions driven and certainly very much with regards to what our current issues and certainly international students in 2024 have received a lot of attention.

[00:03:28] But before we really turn to, this issue in this year, I wondered if you'd speak a little bit to, if we were to look back at a history of international students in Canada, what would you say had been happening until suddenly this new attention that has been paid to international students?

[00:03:47] Lisa Brunner: Yeah. I mean, honestly, we could go back several centuries and look at kind of the, you know, the history of, of colonialism, both like exploitation and settler colonialism. I think, recently, in the past couple decades, it was really the 1970s, early 1980s, when international students were first seen as undeserving of taxpayer support for the education that they were receiving.

[00:04:11] I mean, they were in education institutions before then, but that's the point when they started getting charged differential tuition fees, and it marked, what some people have described, as a move from aid to trade. So international students' access to higher education shifted from being seen as diplomacy or soft power or sometimes a humanitarian activity to an export industry to generate funds.

[00:04:35] And then in the late 80s and 90s, international student recruitment became a real priority for institutions giving either stagnating or declining funds. And then they also became seen at that time as potential economic immigrants. And there was this race for global talent that's kind of fueled by institutions and provinces, the federal government, recruiters, private health insurance companies, all these private sector actors as well, were all, you know, part of this, propulsion of recruitment of international students.

[00:05:08] So from, 2003 until 2023, the number of study permits grew from like 160,000 to over a million international students. So it was really a story of rapid escalation in the past 20 years. Now Canada has one of the highest proportions and the highest numbers of international students globally in its higher education system.

[00:05:34] Karine Morin: It's really valuable to, to sort of hear a little bit how that picture has been evolving, because I would have said that in recent decades, and you may have just spoken to that, it seems like there was a broad consensus that having international students attend the post-secondary institutions was going to be beneficial to us and to them.

[00:05:54] It was a very favorable, it seems like, outlook. And now you're sort of speaking to, shifts into, how society, but more importantly, how post-secondary institutions themselves are looking at this proposition of international students into our higher education. What more would you say about that nexus of immigrants coming in as perhaps international students or how international students relative to other immigrants come through higher education? And how that sector has been evolving from that perspective? I think you've really been looking at that nexus in some of your work.

[00:06:30] Lisa Brunner: Yes, I have. I mean, I think both Canada's immigration system and its higher education system have kind of similar challenges. I mean, positioned as challenges, we can debate whether they're actually challenges or not, but one would be demographic shifts in terms of both domestic enrollment in higher education and Canada's demographic growth.  

[00:06:50] So, immigration is really seen as a solution to, to both of those declining birth rates in Canada. There's also global competition and economic pressures and inflation. So, both of these systems are, are facing those similar struggles. On the immigration side, Canada, like many global north countries, is involved in this, competition to try to find the most easily integrated, quote unquote, economic immigrants.

[00:07:17] So how can Canada attract immigrants that by their definition, by like the government's definition, will contribute the most to the Canadian tax base for the longest period of time? So they're looking for young, relatively upper class, individuals who you know, will benefit Canadian society. And as a result, Canada has been dependent on multi step immigration, meaning that migrants come to Canada on a temporary basis as a student or a work permit holder, and then they compete in the labour market.

[00:07:52] And the system selects only those that have already succeeded in the labour market. And, you know, that was initially seen as solving a previous problem, which is that a lot of immigrants came to Canada as permanent residents, and then they couldn't find the jobs that they were educated for, that they had experience in.

[00:08:09] So this two-step process is seen as a), having better economic outcomes as a selection process and b), reducing that very painful experience that a lot of people go through. That's really how international students became seen as this ideal two-step immigrant category. On the higher ed system, we've talked about the declining or stagnant funding, domestic tuition caps, austerity measures, falling domestic enrollment.

[00:08:37] So really international students became this place that people look to because higher ed institutions increasingly rely on tuition as a funding mechanism - and international student tuition specifically. And also I would say on their academic labor, especially as graduate students, you know, we know in a lot of institutions, international students make up like the majority of doctoral students, for example, so they're performing a lot of that research and innovation kind of labor.

[00:09:05] So, as a result, higher education institutions are now playing new migration related roles. So, they're involved in the selection of potential future immigrants and their admission criteria, they're involved in a kind of integration role in the services they provide, or the years that students spend in those institutions. And my research is kind of pointing out the complexities and potential challenges of that role.

[00:09:33] Karine Morin: So I'll take you where you were thinking of maybe going because in some regards, we could say, well, that paints a fairly favorable picture. There seems to be solutions to problems that seems more positive. But you speak of there's a certain critique of how this system is now set. So what is of concern to those who find that our solution actually has unintended consequences or perhaps worse? So, why don't you go to that critique of our current system?

[00:10:06] Lisa Brunner: Yeah, sure. I think immigration is definitely positioned as a kind of triple win because students supposedly gain a desirable citizenship on the global market that they're looking for, higher ed institutions gain revenue and diversity, which they also use as a motivating factor in academic labor. And then these immigrant dependent countries gain these ideal immigrants, human capital, soft power that comes through this process and many benefits.  

[00:10:36] One that we've definitely seen is the structural dependency at multiple jurisdiction levels and sectors on international students. So, there's that kind of logistical dependency which has ripple effects in the higher ed sector. And I think immigration is so important to Canada that higher ed will always be kind of an afterthought after the immigration goals.  

[00:10:59] That's the way what we can kind of see, some people have described Minister Mark Miller, who's the Minister of Immigration and Refugee Citizenship Canada right now, as the Minister of Canadian Higher Education. That's one. The second I would say is from an ethical perspective, I think the whole idea of Canadian education being valuable is that relying on a kind of Western supremacy that dictates the desirability of Western education in the first place and Canada as a desirable place.

[00:11:27] So the only reason people would want to go through what can be an exploitative and difficult process in some cases, is because there's global inequities of power and that people are willing to, to go through that. Very quickly, I'll add, like, it's part of the neo-liberalization of both higher education and immigration governance, which kind of positions certain immigrants as ideal and others as not, and positions self-reliance as a condition of this idealization.

[00:11:58] It used to be that Canada would pay for newcomer settlement as a public value, which is quite different from the way it's positioned in the United States, for example, when that used as an argument for why Canada's immigration system was so successful, and the integration and settlement process was different from the U.S. But two step migration usually doesn't support the settlement process of international students from the government. That's then offloaded onto institutions like higher ed institutions or students themselves.  

[00:12:31] Karine Morin: So those are really interesting points, but I think the one that's captured media's attention, the public's attention is when we get back to some of the logistics and Mark Miller as Minister of Higher Education. So that brings us to what has happened in this past year, 2024, and how suddenly we've seen the imposition of caps on international students.

[00:12:54] And then more recently, we've seen their eligibility for work permits are being restricted. So why don't you talk us through a little bit, what has happened in 2024, how that seems to have been presented or explained.

[00:13:09] Lisa Brunner: Yeah, I mean, this has been a really fascinating shift to watch because it was quite dramatic. During COVID we saw - and up until - there's a kind of famous tweet by Minister Mendocino at the time that said “we want international students to come, and we want them to stay.” I think that was from 2021, very, very clear messaging across the board from many different public and private sector institutions and different levels of government, provincial and federal saying we want international students as immigrants.

[00:13:41] And that really shifted around the year 2022 and you see around the summer of 2023, tweaks in the messaging. So, we saw hints in the summer of 2023 that there was a shift in the way international students were being presented. We saw incremental kind of policy changes around the fall 2023 and December 2023 in particular, there were some changes in the amount of funds that international students have to provide when applying for their study permit applications.

[00:14:12] And then, yeah, in January 2024 was the cap, the big news about, international student applications. I mean, most people know that the number of study permit holders in Canada grew over time. But I don't know if people know how significant that growth was in 2022 and 2023.  

[00:14:33] Overall, Canada's population growth was the highest since 1957 and, you know, migration overall has grown, has driven Canada's, Population growth since 1999, but 2022 and 2023 were unique because the growth was driven for the first time by non-permanent residents or temporary residents. And in 2023, the majority of all non-permanent residents in Canada were current, former, or like accompanying partners of international students.

[00:15:01] So, it's, I think it's very clear to say that international students drove Canada's population growth in 2022 and 2023. Not exclusively, but it was a very big factor. And another thing that I don't think people really think about that much is the actual number of study permit applications that the government was receiving.

[00:15:25] Like some institutions had a very high refusal rate. So, you see that there was a high number of international students, but the number of applications the government actually received was - to their words - it was unmanageable, they couldn't, you know, they're trying to use artificial intelligence and, automated decision making to, to deal with that, but it's not, they're not there yet.

[00:15:50] They couldn't manage the volume, and the processing times were quite long, etc. So that's why we see the cap not on international students, but on international student study permit applications, because some institutions apparently had quite low bars for admission - many of them were colleges - and many of them were involved in public private partnership agreements with private institutions.

[00:16:18] Another thing that is up about public opinion, there's been studies, you know, from the late 1970s about that happen annually ask people if there's too much immigration in Canada, and the majority of people agreed up until the late 1990s.

[00:16:33] And the sentiment kind of increased during recessions, but from the early 2000s until 2023, Canada was really unique globally because it consistently had a positive public opinion of its immigration system. A lot of countries look to Canada and say, like, how can we be like you, like, we want people to support immigration because clearly governments rely on it.

[00:16:53] But that changed in 2023, public opinion polling shows a shift in the public's opinion. Canadians don't necessarily think immigration is the most important problem, they're most concerned with the economy, housing, and healthcare since COVID. But, they do mention immigration.  

[00:17:11] Karine Morin: Do you think that there are comparisons in terms of what, the immigration landscape is like in, in the U.S. and in Canada, and whether it's then unfortunate and unfair that our international students have bare the brunt of what are otherwise fairly different scenarios but a discourse that is really penetrating into a Canadian public. How do you look at that picture perhaps?

[00:17:35] Lisa Brunner: Yeah, I mean, Trump said last summer, I can't remember verbatim the quote, but I believe he said that he wanted to give every international student in the United States a green card. And he also aspires, he's publicly said he aspires to have an immigration system like Canada's because the U. S. immigration system is not as based on quote unquote “skill and economic immigration selection”.  

[00:18:01] So I think the rhetoric coming from the United States, I think it definitely impacts Canada and definitely international students are bearing the brunt unfairly. But I think the general Canadian public doesn't necessarily look at someone or, you know, distinguish between an international student or, a skilled worker, or a temporary foreign worker.

[00:18:27] Like I don't think there's an across the board discrimination of immigrants per se, but it's targeted at specific populations and that's extremely concerning because I mean for now, Canadians and public opinion polling are more concerned with the levels of immigration and immigration programming, not necessarily immigrants themselves like they're two different public opinion measures.

[00:18:49] But if that starts to change more than it already has, I think that would be really concerning. And I think all of us in Canada need to really think what was the dominant narrative that was used to justify international students. It was a kind of dehumanizing, objectifying narrative that said international students are valuable because they make economic contributions, they’re valuable to Canada because it's good for Canada.  

[00:19:18] That was, you know, across the board, people have really hammered that home, and it's clearly no longer convincing the public, because in that same public opinion polling, when you ask people who should be prioritized to come to Canada, international students are last.

[00:19:35] Like below, low waged temporary workers, below refugees. This is like was really surprising to me. But there is a lot of frustration on the public level about Canada's international education system overall.

[00:19:53] Karine Morin: So, it sounds like you're sort of speaking a little bit to - if not a direct consequence - nevertheless, how this cap has sort of, what effect it has had from a social perception of international students. How else do you see this cap playing out in the higher education sector? What would be the effect of the cap, do you think, at this point and perhaps going forward?

[00:20:21] Lisa Brunner: Yeah, I think that's like the million-dollar question. The thing is, it's too soon to tell what the numbers are going to look like, because at the end of the summer, there were like, I believe, around 90,000 less new study permits issued compared to 2023. But the thing is, there were new eligibility restrictions to the post-graduation work permit that were only announced in September after, you know, the cohort of that academic year came in, which have now been put in place since November 1st of this year.

[00:20:56] And the post grad work permit is really key to a lot of international students' motivation to come to Canada. So, I think it's going to take some time to understand the impact because that - I would think - might have a bigger impact on the cap itself. And it's not necessarily just the cap that's having the impact because from my understanding, most institutions didn't meet their cap.

[00:21:24] Like a lot of institutions were actually not successful in recruiting international students. So, it wasn't the cap, but it was maybe the impact on Canada's brand. The way it's being seen by international students. But I think we can safely assume that it's going to be uneven across the country and uneven across different sectors.

[00:21:43] Definitely the biggest impact is going to be for colleges because that's where the post grad work permit is being restricted. And it, the post grad work permits are being tied to students in specific programs like agriculture, healthcare, STEM, trade, transport, some of the areas where there's a market need for labor.  

[00:22:04] So, yeah, I think that international student tuition has really covered up that stagnant or declined funding, and the stagnant or declining demand for higher education by domestic students as well. So now there's kind of decisions to be made. I think based on what I described about the public opinion of immigration, I don't think there's going to be a necessarily a reversal of the cap anytime soon, I think the liberal government is really concerned obviously with the next election, they know that immigration is an issue right now for people.

[00:22:43] I think right now as a society, we really just have to think about what is the value of higher education and who should pay for it. Some institutions have already closed some, some of their campuses. I think like it will take another academic year again to really see how people are going to how institutions will react. I think higher education as a public good is really at risk.

[00:23:07] So it's sort of a crucial moment right now that it's not just impacting international students, like domestic students’ access to college, humanities and social science education, especially for working class Canadians, like it's really at risk right now I would say.

[00:23:24] Karine Morin: So, that opens up the door, maybe to ask, where are these discussions about the fundamental values of higher education taking place in? Are you seeing that if you were describing what has been sort of a dominant sort of explanation and rationale that there is something else coming forward with a different proposition as to what is the value of our higher education system, the value of having some international mobility within higher education, in all likelihood. Where do you think is a counter explanation coming about? Or is it still early for that to be organized and that we'd be hearing about it at this time?

[00:24:05] Lisa Brunner: I mean, I think that's a really good question. I can say in my practitioner circles, I feel like I haven't observed that many counter narratives, like people, I think what I'm saying is maybe common sense to a lot of people. They know that people generally know that higher ed is dependent on international students at this point, it's been covered in the media and people are really, that's, that's known. 

[00:24:27] But the solution to that is really difficult to say, like, at this point, my interpretation is that the federal government really has the upper hand because they hold the key to study permit approvals, and you don't see institutions saying, like, “Hey, let's really rethink our strategy about the reliance on international students.”

[00:24:47] Instead, you see institutions saying, okay, we're a college, how can we create a two-year program for international students? And then link with a four-year institution and make a partnership and then they can still qualify for the post grad work permit. Or how can we somehow link with secondary study permit flows, which are not capped?  

[00:25:09] And, you know, use that as a recruitment strategy, and you see the kind of cat and mouse game where the federal government is trying to figure out what the new policy workarounds are being suggested in the sector and then fix those policy workarounds.  

[00:25:26] But, I think reducing the number of temporary residents in Canada is a clear policy priority for the federal government right now, and international students are part of that attempted reduction.

[00:25:41] Karine Morin: It's interesting to see all forces at play here. Certainly, that jurisdictional federal intervention in what is otherwise clearly a provincial jurisdiction and sort of provincial government's little missing in action on the file it sounds like. There's something else that I know that you've looked into a little bit and I think this is an area that I did not know much about, but you refer to edu-tech companies, in a recent article that you wrote.

[00:26:10] And I'm just curious to hear more about how is this movement of recruitment, bringing in these international students, identifying them, facilitating their potential coming to Canada? Can you speak a little bit to how those entities came to be and what role they play and, whether there's something there that you think should receive more attention than it has perhaps until now.

[00:26:34] Lisa Brunner: Yeah, sure. I mean, I think some people have a kind of maybe Canadian exceptionalism view, that of course, international students want to come to Canada. It must be easy, like we're turning people away at the border, but actually it's, it's difficult in some ways to recruit international students to come to Canada.

[00:26:51] Like it's not that easy. International students, that demographic of internationally mobile people who can afford the high tuition in Canada, maybe lower than the U.S., for example, but still relatively high on a global scale. It's a limited class of, of people who can afford it and want to come to Canada.

[00:27:14] So the recruitment of international students has really been something that institutions put a lot of investment into, as well as the federal government and even in some cases provinces. And it's time intensive, and it's really difficult to regulate. You don't necessarily know what a recruiter that you might have paid who lives outside of Canada and isn't, overseen by any Canadian laws, for example, or, regulations, you don't know necessarily what they're saying or promising or, what commission they receive. So, this is an area that's gotten a lot more attention recently, and there's been policies in place, like to try to regulate this space.  

[00:27:56] And EdTech companies kind of stepped in with agent aggregators. So instead of an institution making an agreement with an individual recruiter, you instead sign an agreement with this kind of platform that then aggregates thousands of agents, subcontractors who recruit international students all get a piece.  

[00:28:20] So it's a very lucrative business, it's very innovative, I mean, it's using interesting technology to try to do that. But it's what allowed such a high volume of international student applications to even come to the forefront.

[00:28:37] And some of these agent aggregator companies are now starting to move into the like immigration assessment and advice roles. Like they can look at a student's data, their finances, their citizenship, their age, all these different factors, run it against the likelihood that that individual will get a study permit, and then let the institutions know by rank, like which students are best to admit.

[00:29:05] So it means that a public institution, let alone private, but let's say public institutions that have a specific mandate of like what their, what their students I think supposed to be, you know, doing in terms of access to education. This, kind of black box of automated decision making, you can't really know the algorithm behind it, because it's proprietary, it's a private company, is making some of those admission decisions for institutions.

[00:29:33] So I, it's not to say that discrimination based on international students or access to higher education didn't exist before this, but with the cap, I think that's a real risk that some of the students, like I've worked with some students from Afghanistan - specifically women in graduate programs - who can't access education at all in Afghanistan, like, so some of the students who might need access to education the most now there's just another barrier that may come into play.

[00:30:07] Karine Morin: So, rather than the whole system looking for those who would bring about academic achievement, and looking  at that prospect and that potential, you're pointing to a whole lot of other factors that, would take away from that potential and that ability, competency, willingness, readiness to come and take on the challenge of higher education in Canada, potentially to achieve some social economic mobility, but just with, with a conviction of wanting to acquire that level of skills and expertise, etc., etc.

[00:30:42] So all of this, incredibly insightful perspective you've brought forward, brings me to ask, what do you see as perhaps a role for the scholars like yourselves, but humanities and social sciences to bring forward to sort of expose and challenge and perhaps propose some solutions. What would you like to see happen going forward for a better situation, a decade or two from now, than the current trend that I think you've presented to us that it might be a bit preoccupying. What can we do to improve this?

[00:31:21] Lisa Brunner: I mean, I think there's two core issues, one on the higher ed side and one on the immigration side that really need to kind of unraveling maybe, and more attention on the higher ed side. I think so, so many of us are in higher ed institutions. We depend on them, we're part of them, but are we really fighting for public education in Canada?

[00:31:41] Like, do we really know what it would look like for these institutions to close and people not to have access? Like, as someone who grew up in the U.S. and has watched public education just be decimated in the United States, and like, I really value what's in Canada, that public education, and it's one of the reasons I came here to do my master's because I had funding as an international student to do research and I'm so grateful for that.

[00:32:11] That's one. And then I think on the immigration side, like, from my understanding, Canada's immigration consensus that immigration is good over the past couple decades is based on like four key narratives that immigration is good for the Canadian economy, immigration is well managed, diversity is positive or at least acceptable, and immigration is cost free for Canadians.

[00:32:36] Those are these four narratives that have been pushed to the public that people have generally agreed with and all four are now being questioned. Like, people are really questioning about whether immigration is cost free for Canadians. But, underlying all of those is a very deep, like, self-interest argument that immigration should benefit Canada only and that any kind of exploitation that happens along the way is acceptable.

[00:33:05] Maybe not any kind, but, you know, we now have a lot of international students and former international students in Canada who are expecting to immigrate, who were told to come and stay in 2021. So, they came and they're preparing to stay, and the immigration levels plan does not have enough space for them.

[00:33:26] And it assumes that they're going to leave Canada and go home, or go to a third country or wherever. And not all of them will. And I think, a), we need to be prepared to give those students legal support and advice and advocate for them and stand in solidarity with them, but I think we also have to think about like, what is the function of immigration?

[00:33:51] Is it only to take as much skill from the world as possible to Canada and benefit from it? I mean, most people maybe would say yes, but I think an ethical questioning of some of the key narratives of immigration and really think about what the role is like these are the kinds of questions I think we need to ask, and that's what I would say.

[00:34:17] Karine Morin: It sounds like you're making it even more complex than it already is, but you've just presented us with such a nuanced perspective of what this current landscape is. I think everybody would have recognized there probably aren't easy solutions, there have been patterns over decades that won't easily be reversed.

[00:34:36] And if, if they were starting to, show that there were issues, problems, those won't easily be fixed. But I, I thank you very much. And I, I think what will be interesting to watch is how those who have immigrated to Canada, how those voices might contribute to this sort of what is the future for future immigrants from the perspective of past immigrants who perhaps, had those beneficial experiences, would have wanted to, but didn't quite have those opportunities at the time.

[00:35:07] So I think there's a significant proportion of the Canadian population first-generation, second-generation immigrants, I hope will be available, willing to participate in an ongoing societal dialogue about higher education and immigration. Lisa Bruner, thank you so much, it's been a really wonderful conversation, and I certainly have learned a lot and I'm hoping that our audience will as well. Thank you.

[00:34:33] Lisa Brunner: Thank you for the opportunity.  

[00:34:42] Karine Morin: I thank our audience for listening to the Big Thinking Podcast. Also, a sincere thank you to my guest, Lisa Brunner, postdoctoral research fellow at the University of British Columbia. I also want to thank our friends and partners at the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, whose support helps make this podcast possible. Finally, thank you to CitedMedia for their support in producing the Big Thinking Podcast. A new episode is coming out soon, so be sure to follow us on your favorite podcast platform. À la prochaine!

This podcast had production support from CitedMedia, the academic podcasting company. For more, go to citedmedia.ca