
While on a visit to Winnipeg on February 22nd, the Hon. Marc Miller, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, went on the Barangay Canada vodcast to share about developments involving international students, backlogs of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), and the recent trend of immigrants leaving Canada.
The Minister initially acknowledged the opportunity to reach Filipino-Canadian audiences and noted the continued growth of its community. “It’s a million-plus community that is growing in Canada and really important to the future of this beautiful country,” Miller said. “It (the Philippines) is one of the top countries where we get some of the best and brightest […] to come here and study and perhaps go home and shine in the Philippines, or work here and perhaps have the ability to become a permanent resident or Canadian citizen,” he added.
The Minister elaborated on the announcements that he made in the last few weeks concerning the International Student Program.
“My principal concern […] is to make sure that we have integrity in the system, getting rid of fraud, but making sure we’re not doing it on the backs of these international students that are here really to learn and to get some of the best of Canada’s post-secondary education system,” he said.
Miller went on to explain that, “In the last few years, the volume of folks coming in, regardless of the source country has just been enormous and that has affected the quality of the system. This needs to be a quality pathway for some of the top talent to come into Canada, so some of the steps I made — putting a cap on the total amount and spreading it out amongst provinces that have a principal role in managing post-secondary institutions was key to this, but also making sure that it’s fair.”
The Minister expressed concern that the system is being abused by some bad actors and that the government must crack down on those elements. Asked about the doubling of the financial requirement for the International Student Program, he explained the rationale behind it.
“One of the steps I took in December […] was to make sure that those people coming to Canada have the financial requirements to live here and not suffer the dire consequences of not being able to afford housing, food, etcetera.” He went on to say that, “students are very vulnerable, whether they’re domestic or international, and we want to make sure that at the intake point when we accept people that we are making sure that they do have the money that they need.”
As the topic shifted to the inventories and backlogs listed on the IRCC website (link), the Minister discussed the situation and how they are taking measures to reduce the backlogs.
“…Coming out of COVID, there was a really significant delay as things were getting back up and running. A lot of stuff being done by hand which people couldn’t do from home.”
Miller assured that the timelines may not be perfect, but they continue to improve.
“And I think that’s important we keep striving for excellence within IRCC. We’re not there yet, but those lag times are closing and I think that’s quite positive. Obviously, for someone that’s waiting, it’s frustrating to see their application sometimes going over the time limit, but the vast majority of them do come under the time limit and there’s plenty of reasons why it sometimes goes over.”
The Minister also shared that, “…IRCC had not really transitioned properly to the 21st century and digitizing, putting things online, making things more automatic.” He clarified that the automation and digitization are ongoing and that they will fast-track the processing once completed.
“One of the challenges we’re facing is that Canada has seen an unprecedented volume of people wanting to get into the country. Canada is the top destination in the world for a lot of people. I don’t blame people for wanting to come here, but it does cause volume challenges so that we’ve hit our historic levels of people interested in coming to Canada in October […] and so that creates pressure on the system.”
The Minister assured that IRCC is exerting its best efforts under the circumstances and that he views the developments in the last twelve months as “quite positive.”
Asked to account for humanitarian entrants from Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan on IRCC’s webpage of inventories and backlogs, the Minister said their effect “isn’t a linear equation necessarily.”
“Some of the humanitarian measures that we have taken as a country — and I don’t think Canadians would forgive us if we didn’t take them — was to take a large number of people from Ukraine, Afghanistan and Syria in 2015. […] It did create pressure on the system, I think.”
He went on to explain that, “It isn’t entirely linear insofar as the fact that if you take in 100,000 people from a conflict, it doesn’t necessarily mean that all the other streams are affected and different streams have different processing times. A student may take less time or persons (who are) here temporarily may take less time to process than someone that is intending to be here permanently. But clearly, volume does impact the processing and the ability to do things within our stated processing time.”
The Minister was also asked to comment on a 2023 report by the Institute for Canadian Citizenship that shows that the rate of immigrants leaving Canada has been increasing slowly for decades and has surged in 2017 and 2019.
“That’s just the study that was done over 40 years. It deserves some nuance what these studies measure and we don’t control or calculate or have a fixed data point of people that have actually left Canada,” replied the Minister. “We do a bit of guessing insofar as we look at people that haven’t filed their taxes for the last two years and assume that they’ve left Canada. So it’s not a perfect traceable situation, but you can see trends through that,” he added.
Miller pointed out that economic immigrants can be highly mobile and use this mobility to align with their economic targets. “For example, people will say, well, they’ll come to Canada, maybe get $80,000, but they see that they can get $100,000 in the US, they then leave,” he explained.
“People do move around. We obviously want to offer the best experience for Canadians when they decide to choose Canada as their country, […] but we have to avoid sort of the back-end of things where (people) sometimes could get disappointed with what they expected and choose another destination, but often it’s for reasons that don’t have to do necessarily with the national identity or the experience in the country. They just see a better opportunity elsewhere.”
Before bidding farewell, the Minister shared a message for the general public and the Filipino-Canadian audience of the program. “We’re working for you. We obviously work for Canadians, and when it comes to the Filipino community with a million people […] this is something that I think is really near and dear to their hearts: good working conditions, the opportunity to live, thrive and prosper in what is your country, and the ability to make Canada a better country. So I wish you all the best, and as a minister, I work for the people and I have to hear it from you, whether it’s good, bad, or anywhere in between.”