International Students: Canada’s Convenient Scapegoat
Chantelle Caissie, Ph.D. Student
Faculty of Education, Memorial University of Newfoundland
Creative Writer, Poet, and Academic Researcher
I stood in line at my local coffee shop, waiting patiently to place my order. It was the end of January, and this particular morning felt colder than others. The Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) announced the Federal Government’s honourable plan to protect international students and stabilize population numbers by placing a cap on permit applications.
Honourable.
Protect.
Integrity.
In the spirit of fairness.
These words repeatedly played in my mind, sending a chill down my spine that a hot cup of coffee couldn’t warm. This introspective loop was suddenly disrupted by a racial offhand comment directed at the barista, “I asked for no cream! If you’re going to take our jobs, at least be good at them!”
Since the Government of Canada announced an intake cap on international student permit applications, concerns around safety and the regularity of racially motivated attacks against non-white international students have grown (Danso, 2024). Such an overt and deliberate act of discrimination, like the one experienced in my local coffee shop, is more likely to occur when the perpetrator believes that they can get away with it. Getting away with it reinforces the belief that racist actions — when met with little to no consequences — are justified. If they are justified, they become acceptable. If they are acceptable, it’s because permission has been granted.
Permission creates fertile ground for hate to grow.
If the barista was white, would this event have occurred? Probably not. In this particular case, because the barista was a young person of colour, it had been assumed that they were an international student. Non-white international students have become a racialized issue. When did a passport status become a person’s identity? News headlines such as “New Survey finds Canadians can’t cope with increasing numbers of international students” (MacRae, 2024) fuel an already one-sided narrative, giving Canadians permission to blame that “pesky international student” for accessing our food banks, overpopulating our housing affordability, and claiming asylum status in our country.
Yet, was it not just a few years ago that international students were the solution? Filling the gap in our labour shortage, offering social and cultural enrichment in our communities, and helping the growth of our economic future. How did international students become Canada’s greatest solution and then, overnight, become one of Canada’s biggest problems? It seems almost too convenient that as Canada’s population grows, increasing the concerns around housing and affordability, the finger of blame appears pointed at international students and newcomers, “scapegoating them for an affordability crisis that they, themselves, are suffering from” (Canadian Union of Public Employees, 2024, para. 4).
CTV’s News Atlantic Journalist, Avery MacRae (2024) reports that according to an online survey conducted from a sample of 1,500 adult Canadians from Toronto, Ontario, “58 percent of Canadians feel that there are too many international students studying in Canada” (para. 3). The survey respondents cannot cope, believing that there is a direct correlation between immigration and the housing crisis (MacRae, 2024).
While there is some truth to the fact that international students and newcomers have contributed to Canada’s population growth, to suggest that the national housing crisis — Canada’s greatest social and economic challenge — is solely due to immigration, is baffling. Correlating the housing crisis and immigration appears to be a rather calculated political move, taking the government and institutions alike “off the hook,” so to speak, for any of their wrongdoings. After all, who wants to admit they’ve been selfishly suckling the teat of the international cash cow?
Correlation, however, does not imply causation. An increase in international students or newcomers and the housing crisis are two events, or variables, that occur together, but not necessarily because of one another. This is a good example of how the logical fallacy of the causation flaw functions in politicized rhetoric: While a strong relationship certainly exists, the influence of extraneous factors like geopolitics, country of origin, generational wealth, corporate landlords, housing policy, etc., compromises the validity of the argument. This is troublesome. Especially because the provincial government not only sets the policy direction for housing but is also responsible for designating international student enrollment in post-secondary institutions. As international enrollment numbers increased, the provincial government continued to cut post-secondary funding, expecting institutions to do more with less. At the provincial level, there was little discussion about supporting Canada’s growing population and housing supply. Additionally, at the institutional level, services such as international offices were expected to provide support with minimal adjustment in departmental funding.
No investment in affordable housing + No investment in public education = Blame international students and newcomers.
Canada’s plan to cap study permits is not honourable. It lacks courage. The Federal government, as stated by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (2024), needs to “restore per-student funding and supply resources to assist with affordable housing for students, and address the actual root cause of the problems so programs can be maintained at universities across the province” (para. 9).
“International student” is not an identity; it’s a passport status. Blaming international students and targeting people of colour enables Canadians to unleash a one-sided narrative that positions temporary residents as the enemy, the ones who have caused distress. Once the Pandora’s box of racism is opened, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to close.
References
Danso, G. K. (2024, April 23). International student resentment brews but allowing fewer students in Canada isn’t the answer. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/international-student-resentment-brews-but-allowing-fewer-students-into-canada-isnt-the-answer-227025
MacRae, A. (2024, April 16). New survey finds Canadians can’t cope with increasing numbers of international students. CTV News Atlantic. https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/new-survey-finds-canadians-can-t-cope-with-increasing-numbers-of-international-students-1.6849265
The Canadian Union of Public Employees. (2024, January 23). Cuts to international student admissions miss the real problems causing the crisis for public universities in Ontario. https://cupe.ca/cuts-international-student-admissions-miss-real-problems-causing-crisis-public-universities-0
