Canada’s Immigration Minister Marc Miller has recently disclosed that the actual number of study permits available for international college and undergraduate students this year is approximately 292,000. This revelation comes after Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) imposed an overall intake cap on study permit applications, limiting them to around 360,000 approvals for the year.
The cap is aimed at addressing what IRCC perceives as “unsustainable growth” in Canada’s international student program by reducing the number of approved study permits by 35% over two years. Additionally, IRCC expressed its commitment to enhancing the system’s integrity.
It’s important to note that the immigration minister lacks the statutory authority to limit the number of approved visas; instead, they can only control the number of applications processed by IRCC. Comments made by the Minister during a recent meeting of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration (CIMM) underscored this limitation. He clarified, “I can only cap the applications and not the actual issuance of visas.”
Furthermore, the Minister’s instructions to set an application processing cap of 606,250 permits excluded certain categories such as primary and secondary school and master’s and doctorate level university programs. This translates to approximately 360,000 approved study permits in 2024, assuming an average approval rate of 60 percent.
However, recent reports suggest that IRCC aims to approve only 292,200 new college and undergraduate study permits, indicating a discrepancy in figures.
Interestingly, IRCC delegated the implementation of the study permit cap to provincial governments, charging them with the responsibility of issuing Provincial Attestation Letters (PALs) to eligible international students. These PALs signify to IRCC that the approved student is authorized under the province or territory their school is located in, thus counting towards the province’s study permit allocation.
Under this new system, study permit applicants are now required to present both a letter of acceptance (LOA) and a PAL to apply to IRCC for their study permit, whereas previously, only the former was necessary. The number of allocations given to a province or territory will be based on their respective populations.
