Nearly 50,000 international students who were granted study permits to study in Canada were classified as “no-shows” at the institutions where they were expected to attend classes, according to government statistics from two months last spring.
Data obtained by The Globe and Mail indicates that these non-compliant students represented 6.9 percent of the total international student population recorded by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.
As of January 15, 2025, 5,873 Pakistani students were among the compliant students, meaning they enrolled in their Canadian schools, out of the total number of Pakistani students issued visas.
This gave Pakistan a compliance rate of 91.2%.
The immigration department mandates that universities and colleges report biannually on the enrollment status and class attendance of international students to ensure compliance with their study permits.
The International Student Compliance Regime, established in 2014, aims to identify fraudulent students and assist provinces in recognizing dubious educational institutions.
In March and April of 2024, institutions of higher education submitted reports to IRCC concerning students from 144 different nations. The ten countries with the highest incidence of “no-shows” exhibited a wide array of non-compliance rates during that spring season.
The rates included 2.2 percent for the Philippines, accounting for 688 students who did not attend; 6.4 percent for China, with 4,279 no-show students; 11.6 percent for Iran, which had 1,848 no-shows; and a significant 48.1 percent for Rwanda, representing 802 students.
Henry Lotin, a former federal economist and immigration specialist, suggested that one effective measure to reduce system abuse would be to mandate that international students pay their fees in advance prior to their arrival in Canada.
Among the total number of no-shows, nearly 20,000 were from India, which corresponds to 5.4 percent of the total Indian student population monitored by IRCC, indicating non-compliance with their student visas and failure to attend the designated educational institutions.
