Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) announced two changes on April 18 that will affect how international students pay for their educations. The first change will allow those students who have completed two semesters to work off-campus during the school year and full-time during the summer.
“I’m about to graduate,” says Abril Novoa. “So it came a little bit late.” Novoa came from Mexico to study political science at U of T. As an international student, she knows why the change is important. She paid about $12,000 a year in tuition.
“We know that the cost of education [for international students] has gone up tremendously in the past ten years,” said Adam Spence, Executive Director of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance. “Right now, on average, it costs about $11,200, and ranges in Ontario all the way up to $17,000-20,000 a year.”
Currently, international students can only take part-time jobs on campus. It can be hard to make ends meet. Novoa would have taken advantage of a chance to work off campus.
“Jobs on campus are not easy to get,” she says. Novoa found a job with the University Health Insurance Plan, but it didn’t offer as many hours as she wanted. “During the year I was working about ten to 15 hours a week.” She would have taken a job off campus, “anything like that would have been easier to find, for more hours,” but she wasn’t allowed to.
The second initiative announced is an extension of the work permit that international students can apply for after they graduate. Currently, if they find a job related to their degree, students can stay in Canada for a year after graduation. Under the new guidelines, the period would be two years outside of Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. But there is confusion over how and why the three cities are excluded.
“Initially, my understanding was that it is the employer’s location,” said Ben Yang, coordinator of the International Students’ Centre (ISC). “In other words, if a U of T [student] finds a job in a smaller community, then that’s okay. Now it’s turned out to be not only the employer’s location but where you study.” This would exclude students at U of T.
The CIC announcement says that this initiative will apply outside of the three cities, but does not specify exactly how. For the ISC, the distinction is important.
“We will continue to lobby the government to say ‘look, reconsider this’,” said Yang. Adding to the confusion is a lack of agreement over where Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal end.
Finally, it is not clear when either initiative will come into effect. The Ontario government has responded positively, but will have to sign an agreement with Ottawa. Yang had hoped that students would be able to work off-campus by mid-summer. But it may be more like the fall, or even as late as January.
The second part of the agreement, for international students who have graduated, is supposed to come into effect today. Though that seems unlikely, both changes will happen eventually. With that in mind, student groups are thinking about the next major issue for international students.
“Tuition [for international students] must also be regulated by the provincial government,” says Spence.
For her part, Novoa thinks international students should have access to more student aid.
“I’ve done the math before, and international students in Canada pay quite a bit of money into the education system,” she says. “That’s the way it works everywhere. But I think other problems are important, like having no access to scholarships, and no access to other sorts of funding.”
