Canada Gets Tough on Foreign Students Amid Mounting Tensions With India
The Canadian government has recently taken a series of steps to cut the number of international students studying in Canada. This is believed to be related to the extremely hostile Indian government response to Canadian allegations that the Indian officials ordered assassinations of Sikh activists in Canada. There are now new reports that Ottawa has asked Indian students to resubmit their documents for review. Earlier, Canada made a decision to end the fast-track visa process, known as Student Direct Stream (SDS), for students coming from India, Pakistan and a few other developing countries. Meanwhile, US F-1 visas granted to Indian students fell 38% between January and September of 2024.
Sikh Activist Assassinations:
The United States and Canadian governments are alleging that Indian government agents plotted assassinations of Sikh dissidents on their soils. Their investigations paint a shocking picture of how recklessly Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government operates.
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| Prime Minister Narendra Modi (L) and Home Minister Amit Shah |
The criminal charges announced by Washington and Ottawa are backed by Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, the remaining three countries that make up the 5-nation intelligence sharing alliance known as the Five Eyes. Revelations made by the US Justice Department and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) indicate that the authorization for Sikh assassinations came directly from the top Indian government officials, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's right-hand man Amit Shah. International criminal gang leader Lawrence Bishnoi is listed among the people tasked with carrying out the murders. These allegations are based on intelligence gathered from multiple communication intercepts among Indian government officials in New Delhi and Indian diplomats posted in Canada.
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| Canadian Student Visa Approval Rates. Source: ApplyAbroad |
Canada's Student Direct Stream:
As of 2024, there are 427,000 Indian students studying in Canada, surpassing the 337,630 Indian students enrolled in the United States, according to media reports. The SDS was very popular in India, with nearly four in five Indian students applying for their Canadian study permit through the program.
Until recently, foreign students who applied for a Canadian study permit through the SDS saw a significant approval rate advantage over regular stream applicants in every emerging market. In 2022, India was the biggest beneficiary of SDS with 78% of applicants approved, followed by Pakistan 44%, Vietnam 22%, and China 7%.
Canada's decision to end SDS will hurt future student visa applicants from more than a dozen countries, including Pakistan.
Demand to Resubmit Documents:
Indian students in Canada are deeply concerned after receiving notices from Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) requesting the resubmission of critical documents, including study permits, visas, academic records, attendance, and part-time work details. Many of these students hold visas valid for up to two more years, causing fear.
International Student Visa Cap:
The Canadian government has also decided to reduce the number of student visas granted each year. The international student visa cap for 2025 and 2026 is 437,000, which is a 10% reduction from the 2024 target of 485,000. It has also increased the cost of living requirement for international students from C$10,000 to C$20,635 a year.
Indian F-1 Student Visas in US:
US F-1 visas granted to Indian students fell 38% between January and September of 2024. According to the US State Department, 64,008 F-1 visas were granted to Indian students, a significant drop from the 1,03,495 issued during the same period in 2023. This number is also reportedly lower than the 93,181 issued in 2022 and marginally higher than the 65,235 recorded in 2021, marking the lowest post-pandemic level, according to Indian media reports.
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Comments
A debate over legal immigration exploded during the Christmas holiday shows that the party isn't unified, even on its strongest issue with voters.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/12/27/musk-mtg-loomer-infighting-high-skill-immigration-00196083
An online debate over high-skilled immigration between Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy and MAGA evangelists reveals Donald Trump’s Republican Party is grappling with growing pains as it prepares to retake the White House.
Days after the powerful allies of Trump in Silicon Valley took to social media to argue for a greater number of high-skilled immigrants, with a side-swipe at American culture for emphasizing “mediocrity over excellence,” some members of the far-right said such policies would make America “look like India.”
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“The United States graduates over half a million STEM students per year. If there is an issue in the tech workforce, then we need to address it at the educational level, not import a problem away,” said Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) in an X post on Thursday.
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It’s the latest chapter in a controversy that spread after far-right activist Laura Loomer criticized Trump for naming Sriram Krishnan, an Indian-American technology entrepreneur and investor who has advocated for lifting country caps on green cards, as his senior policy adviser on artificial intelligence, calling him a “career leftist.”
Loomer wrote, “We are substituting a third world migrant invasion for a third world tech invasion,” and later followed up with, “‘High skilled immigrant’ doesn’t have running water or toilet paper.”
Musk hit back, writing on Christmas Day that a “permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent,” is the “fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley” that could be addressed through an increase of skilled-labor visas. Ramaswamy followed on Thursday with a post that blamed a culture that “venerates Cory from ‘Boy Meets World,’ or Zach & Slater over Screech in ‘Saved by the Bell,’ or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in ‘Family Matters’” — a favoring of popularity over smarts that “will not produce the best engineers.”
That earned a swift rejoinder from Nick Fuentes, a conservative firebrand who wrote, “I don’t know who needs to hear this but the latest push for H-1B visas actually has nothing to do with jocks and nerds or high school prom — it’s about whether we want 500 million indians to move here.”
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Meanwhile, Democrats are praising immigration as one of America’s powerful drivers of prosperity.
In a Washington Post interview, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who represents Silicon Valley, supported Krishnan and entrepreneurs in tech who have chosen to become American citizens.
He posted, “It is GREAT that talent around the world wants to come here, not to China, & that Sriram can rise to the highest levels. It’s called American exceptionalism.”
And it’s causing some other Democrats to cast the division between Republicans and the Trump movement at large as racist.
“The far-right backlash against Indian immigrants confirms what we in the Democratic Party have long known,” Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) said in a post on X. “That the far right is implacably hostile to all forms of non-European immigration regardless of legal status. It’s not about status. It’s about race. The far right prefers ‘purity’ over prosperity.”
A record 1.3 million Indian students pursued overseas education in 2024, drawn by better prospects and global exposure. While Canada, the US, and the UK remain …
Source: The Times of India
https://search.app/hYwNfe5zRwjr64jL7
Canada 427,000
US 337,630
UK 185,000
Australia 122,202
Germany 42,997
Ashok Swain:
Modi did everything to defeat Muizzu in the 2023 election in the Maldives by providing men & money but failed. Even RAW had a plan to remove President Muizzu after the election. The Washington Post reports Modi manipulating elections in foreign countries.
https://x.com/ashoswai/status/1873810065469432187?s=61&t=mgTxrmITUbpo9NntN5677Q
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A plot in paradise and India’s struggle for influence in Asia
Secret contacts between Indian agents and politicians in the Maldives over ousting its pro-China leader reflect the growing contest between Asia’s great powers.
By Gerry Shih and Siddharthya Roy
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/12/30/maldives-president-muizzu-india-china-influence/
In January, after Muizzu had won and taken office, an adviser to the Muizzu family said, a senior RAW intelligence officer at New Delhi’s embassy in Washington explored a plan to overthrow the president with two Indian intermediaries who had political and business contacts in the Maldives. One intermediary was Shirish Thorat, a former Indian police officer who has worked as a private military contractor and who advised Mohamed Nasheed when he was the Maldivian president on how to curb Islamist radicalization. The other was Savio Rodrigues, a publisher based in the Indian state of Goa who previously served as a spokesman for India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. The Muizzu family adviser provided The Post with surveillance records of phone calls and meetings held by the RAW official and Thorat, who now lives near Washington, but did not explain how the records were obtained. When contacted by The Post, Thorat and Rodrigues separately confirmed the existence of plans to remove Muizzu but declined to say whether they were working on the Indian government’s behalf. When asked about his meetings with an Indian intelligence officer, Thorat explained that he sometimes paid social visits to friends working at the embassy and said he was not surprised that he had been surveilled, “given my work.”
What the UK International Student 2022/23 data can tell us
https://monitor.icef.com/2024/08/uk-reports-record-foreign-enrolment-for-2022-23/
India (173,190 students) surpassed China (154,260) as the main sender of students to UK universities. China had been the #1 market since 2018/19. Indian students represented a quarter (26%) of all international students in the UK in 2022/23.
India (+37%), Nigeria (+39%), and Pakistan (50%) were by far the fastest-growing student source countries, year-over-year.
What the 2022/23 data can tell us
India (173,190 students) surpassed China (154,260) as the main sender of students to UK universities. China had been the #1 market since 2018/19. Indian students represented a quarter (26%) of all international students in the UK in 2022/23.
India (+37%), Nigeria (+39%), and Pakistan (50%) were by far the fastest-growing student source countries, year-over-year.
The top 10 non-EU sending markets were:
India (173,190, +37%)
China (154,260, +2%)
Nigeria (72,355, +39%)
Pakistan (34,690, +50%)
US (22,540, -2%)
Hong Kong (17,095, +3%)
Bangladesh (14,945, +18%)
Malaysia (13,005, +7%)
Saudi Arabia (9,045, +3%)
UAE (8,350, +3%)