Front Burner - International students in Canada face discrimination, exploitation

Episode Date: August 29, 2023

Since new Housing Minister Sean Fraser said Canada “ought to consider” a cap on international students last week, the impact of the program on the housing market has dominated the affordability debate. This year, the number of international students entering Canada is expected to be 900,000, almost triple the total from a decade ago. Some, including the Prime Minister, have cautioned against blaming students for housing problems. But as some students are forced to live in unsafe housing or fall victims to scams, housing experts are questioning whether it’s ethical to welcome this many students until Canada fixes its planning failures. Today, York University gender, sexuality and women's studies professor Tania Das Gupta tells us what she’s learned about the experience of international students through her research into Punjabi migrants, and explains how Canada relies on their tuition and labour. Looking for a transcript of the show? They’re available here daily: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Tamara Kandaker. Hi, I'm Tamara Kandaker. If I'm going to be honest, I'm always moments away from like a mental breakdown, just from the stress of wondering if I'm going to be homeless soon. Harshil Beskodi is an international student. He's from Mumbai, studying in Canada to become a data scientist. He's been at Georgian College in Barrie, Ontario for a year, but next month he's starting at George Brown. And that means finding housing near Toronto.

I ended up meeting a few realtors. They immediately tell me that there is no way that you can afford a house down here in downtown or anywhere near your campus. Since the residence George Brown directed Harshal to was out of his budget, he started trying to find apartments, condos and sublets. But for weeks, not a single landlord got back to him. I'm not saying that this is a case of racial profiling or anything. I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying people receive an email from me and they immediately know this is an immigrant. And it's almost as if they knew that I'm in a bad financial situation, which is not fair, honestly.

My email does not say it out loud that I'm in a bad financial situation. Harshil tried everything, looking on Kijiji and Facebook, searching with a housemate, even taking a realtor's advice to raise his budget and offer six months of rent up front, forcing him to ask his parents to dip into their savings. I've hated myself every time that I've asked for help from back home. But they've just been there. Like, they're extremely supportive. Even with all that, Harshal still hadn't been able to find a place just weeks from the start of school.

I'm super scared that I'm going to be homeless soon if I don't find a house. The number of international students Canada brings in has been skyrocketing. Immigration Minister Mark Miller says we're expecting 900,000 students this year, which is almost triple the number we were bringing in a decade ago. Last week, this increase was pushed to the center of the national housing debate when new housing minister Sean Fraser said we should consider whether to cap the number of international students as one way to relieve the pressure on the housing market. The international student program makes extraordinary economic and social contributions to Canada. It contributes tens of billions of dollars to our GDP annually. But what we've seen

recently is there's been such rapid growth, given that the program is typically uncapped, that certain communities are having difficulties managing with the population growth that it's attracted. Immigration Minister Miller has resisted the idea of a hard cap. But on Sunday, he did raise some serious concerns about the integrity of the system. What we've seen, as with any sort of lucrative economic proposition, this one from $20 to $30 billion, is that there are some people making a lot of money out of it, legitimately, some people gaming the system. Many international students have pushed back against what they see as students being blamed for the housing crisis, saying they're

also the victims of it. Today, I want to focus on their experience and the debate that's playing out right now about whether it makes sense to keep bringing more and more students in when they might not be guaranteed a safe and affordable life. I'm talking to Tanya Dasgupta. She's a York University professor who's been interviewing Punjabi students about the unacceptable conditions and exploitation they faced here. Hi, Tanya. Thank you so much for doing this. Hi, Tamara. It's my pleasure. So, Tanya, of the more than 800,000 international students in Canada last year, I wanted to focus on the roughly 40% of them that come from India. So some of those students have money and resources, but others come from very limited means and they struggle to afford tuition or even figure out how to apply. And so for those students who often come from rural areas, when they start trying to apply to Canadian schools, what kind of scams are they running

into before they even get here? Well, I think that they're running into scams almost at every stage. The first level would be their interaction with recruitment agents and immigration agents. So these agents are there to recruit them. Some of them are also affiliated with colleges and universities in Canada and in other countries. They would charge often very high fees. With the crush of people wanting to study abroad and the maze of education consultant companies in an industry this big, there are also sub-agent students, say, who use shady practices, faking documents, pushing students to the wrong schools,

telling students they owe more in tuition and fees only to pocket the rest. Depending on the backgrounds of these students, how much experience they've had in international travel, what is their level of fluency in English or French, and sometimes these fees are exorbitant. And in return, one is never sure what kind of services they're going to be getting. I also heard about the scam where students are getting fake acceptance letters. And how is that happening? That's right. So what happens is that they're given fake admission letters by their agents, but they

are not aware of it. They're admitted into Canada with those letters. admitted into Canada with those letters. But then after they land in Canada, they are informed via sometimes their family members that there are scams. So they will, in fact, have to reapply to colleges, in most cases, in order to remain in Canada. I got into contact with a consultant back in India.

Canada. I got into contact with a consultant back in India and then he applied for our visa application. Singh says he paid that immigration consultant more than $11,000 and received what turned out to be a fake acceptance letter to college. Canadian immigration officials eventually caught on and issued this exclusion order telling him to leave the country. Singh is fighting to stay but isn't allowed to work in the meantime. And this month we saw an issue with around 500 students who had received real admission offers from Northern, which is a public college that has a private-run campus in Ontario. And some of these students had quit their jobs, and they'd spent thousands of dollars on travel when the school suddenly revoked their offers. So

what happened there? Yeah, I mean, in this case, the colleges are saying that we have admitted more numbers than what we can actually accommodate, because we had assumed that some of you will not get your visas, or that some of you will somehow not arrive at our doorsteps. And so we have more admissions than we can accommodate. Therefore, we have to turn you down. Okay, so then let's talk about housing. So say everything goes well and students do have a spot to study at a school. The next thing that they have to sort out is finding a place to live in our very expensive markets. So what have you heard from students about the compromises that they're making in order to find housing? Well, I think that the bottom line are the finances.

They don't have a lot of cash in their hands. As you can imagine, they're paying three to five times the tuition that domestic students are paying. In addition, they have to bring with them $10,000 each student. So their monthly budget is very limited. Most of them can afford between $500 and $700 a month. The good housing that we have is not affordable. So basically, they have to look for rooming houses. They have to look for private homes and rooms that are being rented in it. So they go to Kijiji, they go to the temples, they go to various community centers, and they do go to the mainstream housing market. But as we now know, there's a lot of racism and sexism there. There's a lot of discrimination against temporary students or anybody who is in the country temporarily because of their credit rating.

They don't really have any credit rating at that point. They don't really have almost no references. So it's a landlord's market and they can really exercise their biases. So I've heard women being discriminated against because they're single women, students of different regional backgrounds in India. So they face, they have to deal with all those things, unfortunately. Yeah. And these rooming houses that you mentioned, which can sometimes be the only thing these students can afford, they can be really crowded, right? Like there was this one in Toronto this month that was reported to have 15 people

living in it. So what does that look like? What kinds of conditions are these students living in when they're in these rooming houses? It's extremely crowded. I have heard of basement quote-unquote apartments where there are six students living in three rooms in the basement. Many of them are not built to code. They don't have carbon monoxide alarms, fire alarms. carbon monoxide alarms, fire alarms. The maintenance is very poor and there's mold. And one student talked to me about bed bugs, that kind of infestation. And if things don't work, let's say the plumbing breaks down or something, many of them, I'm not saying 100% of them, but many of them are not very quick to repair those. And sometimes even if they do repair them, the students are charged to cover most of it. Of course, shared kitchen, shared

bathroom, which are often very tiny. I know of two cases, both of them on the East Coast, where there have been fires in the house. And in one case, I believe it was in Sydney, where a student was actually burnt and he died in the fire. So the consequences are very severe. It is a life and death issue. And of course, housing is very important for not only the health of the students, but also for them to be good students, you know, to perform well, to keep up with their studies. It's absolutely crucial. Yeah, of course. I saw this CTV report over the weekend, and the student was talking about how it's impossible to study in that kind of environment.

Sharma is often at the library. With so many roommates, it's the noise while trying to study he says is his biggest problem. Just first living is okay, but if you want to study there and if you want to focus, it's a terrible place. I'm wondering why these students are competing with the rest of the housing market for rentals anyway. How come more of them aren't living in on-campus residences? Because there aren't any, or I should qualify that. I mean, there are residences on campus,

but they're too expensive. It is a systemic issue in that the post-secondary sector have experienced so many funding cuts from the government over a decade now that they partnered up with private housing companies. And so they're building sometimes beautiful residences, but they're like condos and they're quite expensive. International students, and I think domestic students too, who are coming from poorer background, you know, first generation going to university and so on, they can't really afford these residences. I think the post-secondary sector also has to take some responsibility in that they haven't really built affordable, good student housing. There is good housing, but it is not affordable. What happens when students are evicted or they can't find a place that they can afford? I know

last month there were headlines about a student at Conestoga College in Kitchener who was living under a bridge, and that made the news. But is that kind of thing common? It is not happening, I would say, for every other student, but it does happen. I've heard of international students sleeping in their cars, being in shelters. I've heard of them being found sleeping in university buildings and college buildings. These kinds of cases are there. And we also know that some of this is a hidden form of homelessness, where they may be couch surfing, they may be, you know, sharing beds with their best friend in one of these crowded basement apartments. So it is of great concern,

actually. of great concern, actually. Mike Moffitt is an economist who was at the cabinet retreat advising the government on housing policy. It's not the responsibility of international students to ensure that there is enough housing in London, Ontario. This is a systemic failure, I would say, of both the federal and provincial governments and as well the higher education sector in which I work

to ensure that there's enough housing for both domestic and international students. And domestic and international students are the biggest victims of this, not the cause of it. I'll see you next time. through Angel Investment and Industry Connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income?

That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. So this all sounds really dire. And is word of this getting back to people in India? How is it that Canada is able to keep drawing more and more students here despite these kinds of conditions? organization that does work with international students. And they were saying that they have tried to send word back to India, but the people there, they don't want to hear these negative stories because they still want to take that chance. They want to take that risk, which might lead them to better financial situations, better academic situations. And also the Canadian government

and the post-secondary sector, they're spending a lot of resources in welcoming them, in recruiting them. You may be knowing that the government has like a two-step immigration pathway for international students. After they graduate from their programs, they can get a postgraduate work permit, which would allow them to work full time. And if they are able to fulfill a certain number of hours, then they are in a position to apply for permanent residency. And many of them do. Right. So why are these schools putting so much money into recruiting these students? Why do Canadian schools want international students so badly? Well, I think there are a number of reasons. One is that there have been funding cutbacks

beginning from the late 1990s, early 2000s. In the 1980s, let's say, the government was contributing up to 80% or 80 plus percent of the revenues to the post-secondary sector. So who has filled the gap? They have been mainly international students. So they have really been contributing billions of dollars every year to that revenue. And the other part of the equation here that I hadn't really considered is that international students are also a source of labor, right? So normally during the semester, they're only allowed to work 20 hours a week off campus, but when school's on break, they can work full time.

But right now, the government is running a pilot project until the end of this year, where most are allowed to work more than 20 hours as a way of helping with our labor shortage. So can you put that into context for me, especially since the pandemic lockdowns? How have we seen international students filling jobs? Yeah, that's a really interesting question. International students are actually also migrant workers, because just as you were suggesting, they need to work in order to maintain themselves here in Canada. They come with first years tuition. They come with that $10,000, which they have to use to buy a GIC most of the time. And so they get some money every

month, but that is not enough. So they have to find part-time jobs. And that is another challenge for them because they have to find jobs which can coexist with their study schedules. And so they basically get into jobs that have flexible shifts, night shifts. You'll find many of them working as security guards, for instance. instance, you'll find them working in fast food joints, sales, the retail sector, but the food and accommodation sector really has a big chunk of international students in there. Many of them work in factories. So really, our economy and particular sectors are very dependent on the labor of international students. And of course, most of the time they're paid minimum wages and they work very long hours and they're subjected to wage theft, all kinds of other irregularities. So we've just spent some time going through the various challenges international students are dealing with. They're being scammed before even getting here. They're struggling to find affordable housing. And then when they do, they're often living in horrendous conditions.

conditions. Meanwhile, last week, we heard from the housing minister, Fraser, that the liberals are considering a cap on students as a way of relieving some of the pressure on the housing market. There's different solutions that different people are pitching to help address this challenge, but I don't think anyone disagrees that we need to make sure that we're better aligning our housing, our health care, our industrial policy with our immigration policy. The Liberals, including the prime minister, have stressed that we shouldn't blame students, which is how this is being received by a lot of international students themselves and by advocates. But we're hearing all sorts of experts now saying, even if there isn't a cap, we need to rethink how many students we're bringing in. So how do you feel about the way that students have been discussed here? Yeah, I think that this is a very tricky thing. Students are being talked about as though they

are commodities. There's not much consultation with the international students themselves. there's not much consultation with the international students themselves. My concern is that we are linking immigration and immigrants to the housing crisis. And my feeling is that this reeks of racism. You know, just like in the past, we've heard of arguments where we've linked immigrants to various social problems like poverty, like unemployment, to disease, and these kinds of things. So there are two different issues, housing and immigration. And yes, migrants and immigrants are also suffering because of the housing crisis, but they're also being scapegoated for the housing costs that are inflated right now.

life. So what do you think then of the idea of a cap? Would it make sense to lower the number of students coming in until the government can plan better? I don't think I could support it at the moment, given this problematic discussion that's going on that I described before. I would rather put the emphasis on creating affordable housing and also regulating these scam artists and these scam private colleges that take advantage of students and so on. I think the government needs to wake up and regulate them and have more inspections of these institutions rather than to put caps on students. Because even if we put caps on students, those problems would continue. It doesn't mean that more housing, more affordable housing is being created. Okay, Tanya, thank you so much for this conversation. I really,

really appreciate it. Thank you very much. So before we go, I just want to thank my colleague, Vanessa Balintek, for her files on this and the interview you heard off the top. That's all for today. I'm Tamara Kandaker. Thank you so much for listening. And I will talk to you tomorrow.