Canada to further cut international student, foreign worker permits

Gauteng snow
Hijacked building in Cape Town
Fugitive fraud-accused Michael Lomas is back in SA.
Cultural and Creative Industries Federation of South Africa poster
Michael Lomas back in South Africa. 
File: Geordin Hill-Lewis, Cape Town Mayor. (RODGER BOSCH / AFP)
Fugitive fraud-accused Michael Lomas is back in SA.
OTTAWA – Canada announced it was slashing international student permits next year, and tightening foreign worker rules to further bring down the number of temporary residents in the country.
The move comes after several recent rounds of restrictions aimed at taming record immigration levels that pushed Canada’s population past 41 million earlier this year.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has pointed to the high immigration as straining the country’s housing sector, jobs market and social services.
“It is a privilege to come to Canada. It is not a right,” Immigration Minister Marc Miller told a news conference.
In 2025, Ottawa plans to issue 437,000 study permits to international students, down from 485,000 this year and more than 500,000 in 2023.
It is also putting new limits on work permits for spouses of some international students and foreign workers. And it will be stepping up checks before issuing travel visas to stem a spike in fraudulent or rejected asylum claims.
Ottawa has already said it would reduce the number of temporary residents to five percent of the population, down from 6.8 percent in April.