International students filed a record 20,245 asylum claims last year, with 2025 on track to surpass that number, according to federal immigration data obtained by Global News.
The claims are rising, even as Ottawa cuts the number of study permits it issues, with Prime Minister Mark Carney pledging like his predecessor Justin Trudeau to return Canadian immigration to “sustainable levels.”
The newly released figures also suggest that 2025 could see an even greater number of claims by foreign students. In the first three months of the year, international students filed 5,500 asylum claims, a 22 per cent increase from the same period last year.
The data from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada show the number of international students seeking asylum last year was nearly double the 2023 figures and six times higher than in 2019.
Immigration lawyers say the numbers will keep trending upwards, as the federal government restricts previously available pathways to permanent residence, and as the backlog for adjudicating cases continues to balloon.
“The government has closed a lot of doors for international students to apply for permanent residence through regular streams,” said Toronto-based immigration and refugee lawyer Chantal Desloges.
“As a result, it’s funneling people to look for other solutions.”
Pressure grows to ‘dial back’ levels
During his first news conference as prime minister, Carney repeated his pledge to cap the total number of temporary workers and international students to less than five per cent of the Canadian population by the end of 2027, down from seven per cent.
“This will help ease strains on housing, on public infrastructure and social services,” said Carney on May 2.
The prime minister is set to unveil his cabinet — and potentially a new immigration minister — on Tuesday.
Warren Creates, a certified immigration specialist and lawyer in Ottawa, says Carney, like Trudeau, is under a great deal of political pressure to “dial back” immigration levels.
“They realized they had to do something to slow it down, to reduce the numbers, even though there would be ill effects — ill effects on the people, their families, and their employers,” he told Global News.
“We do have a crisis in health care. We have another crisis in housing. Have refugees created that? No. Have they exacerbated it a bit? Probably.”
Last year, Ottawa slashed the number of international study permits by 40 per cent to around 360,000. It also limited eligible work hours for foreign students and tightened the rules around work permits available to their spouses.
Those changes were part of a series of measures announced to cool what the previous immigration minister, Marc Miller, described as an “overheated” system, and in a bid to crack down on so-called “diploma mills.”
“There are certain sectors of our economy that really have taken advantage of international students,” said Desloges.
“You have batches of students who have gone through the system, have a diploma that’s really not worth anything,” she said. “Now they’re either not eligible for work permits or even if they have worked for a little while, they’re still not going to be able to translate that into getting permanent residence in Canada.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for Immigration, Citizenship and Refugees Canada said that study permits are typically issued for the length of a study program — often spanning multiple years — suggesting that the effects of the government’s cuts to international student admissions have yet to take full effect.
“When considering the total number of study permits issued before measures were introduced to stabilize international student numbers, the proportion of permit holders claiming asylum remains small,” the statement reads.
Where were claims highest?
The post-secondary institutions with the highest number of international students filing asylum claims in 2024 were:
- Conestoga College: 720 claims
- Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology: 650 claims
- Université du Québec à Chicoutimi: 500 claims
- Niagara College Canada: 495 claims
- Collège Ellis – Trois-Rivières campus: 475 claims
Global News reached out to the institutions for comment.
The Université du Québec à Chicoutimi called the situation worrisome, but said it’s one it has no control over.
“We are not in a position to know the intentions of international students when they are admitted to the university. We select them on the basis of their academic record,” the university said in a statement in French.
Niagara College said it’s open to working with the federal government on supporting “Canada’s objectives under the refugee program” but adds Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada doesn’t notify the school when a claim is made.
Individuals seeking asylum in Canada must demonstrate that they face a well-founded fear of persecution if they were to be returned to their country of origin.
Each claim is assessed on its own merits, with acceptance rates varying significantly from one country of alleged persecution to another.
Claimants already face a lengthy wait for their case to be heard, with the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada working through a crushing backlog of more than 281,000 cases.
While there may be concerns about the integrity of the asylum system, Desloges says there are also legitimate claims being made by foreign students.
“Suppose someone, maybe six years ago, came to Canada as an international student from Ukraine. Right now, the situation is completely different,” she said.
“It doesn’t mean that it’s a fake claim, just because they came as an international student.”