Introduction
Canada, a country which has grown as preferred destination for education from the past 8-9 years. It is now a most sought-after country for higher education by Indian students. The quality of education provided here has always attracted large number of immigrants from all over the world and that is because of government’s immigrant friendly policies, post study employability and to top it with low cost of living make the country favorable for students.
Approximately 6,00,000 Indian students are currently studying in Canada as of Sept 2024. But with the recent announcement of Canadian government to end the most popular fast track student visa (SDS), with the aim of providing visas quicker than the normal period, it created quite a distress among the aspiring students who wanted to pursue their higher education in Canada. The government had given a cut off time been the SDS facility was open till 8th Nov 2PM IST.
Students who applied for visas before the cut off period will be given the SDS facility but the ones who applied visa after the cut off period will be going thru normal permit stream, which takes longer time than the usual SDS.
With the 45th Canadian Election which is to be held next year, Prime Minister Trudeau has proposed a number of changes regarding student visa guidelines. One of the notable changes is the govt. will now put a cap on students entering thru study permit to 4,37,000 for 2025, covering all types of education.
Other changes including tougher English language proficiency requirement and academic benchmarks and strict Post graduation work permit (PGWP). The government seems to focus on getting quality students to decrease unemployability rather than having lots of students who lacks proper skills for work.
Impact on Indian Students
With the end of Student Direct Stream (SDS), students may have to wait up to 10 weeks for their visas to get approved, depending on the number of application load.
As the government has put a cap on the number of applications and students acceptance, the competition will be much harder and the selection process will get tougher.
As per India Today’s data in 2023, 73% of students got selected through SDS scheme whereas with normal route only 10% applicants got selected, so the chances of getting selected thru normal permit decreases significantly.
Government also announced to slash down the number of immigrants to half so as to control inflation, high cost of living etc. Now the students who went to Canada after completing 12th will have almost no chance to stay in the country as they were hoping to get permanent residence and might have to return back to India.
Path For Securing Visas
Although SDS was easiest and the quickest way to get the visa but now as it’s discontinued, unfortunately the students have to go through the normal study permit route. With normal route the good thing is now applicants don’t have to pay 1 year of advance tuition fees which was the case in SDS and now only 6 months of tuition fees will suffice.
SDS used to have strict requirements such as providing of Guaranteed Investment Certificate (GIC) worth $20,635 which provided as a proof of funds, this was to show that they have enough funds to stay in Canada. This proved to be quite expensive for the students but now with the normal route no such criteria is there and the students just need to have enough funds to stay in the country.
For instance the required funds will be around 5 to 6 lakhs if went thru the normal route as compares to SDS which used to take around 4 times of the amount.
As visa officers prefer students who are serious about their educational goals, to increase the chances of getting selected the applicant needs to make sure that they have top notch academic profile and background, also having a valid English proficiency language score will help getting accepted.
Conclusion
With the discontinuation of famous fast track visa stream the students definitely are experiencing anxiety about the uncertainty. Now getting admission in universities will get tough and the applicants have to work much harder on their academic profiles to get selected. While some experts are saying that Canada has a history of changing policies as per their requirements and this might be a temporary decision to control the rising inflation and cost of living and the scheme might make its return once things get settled down.
Until then students have to go through the normal route, although getting visa thru normal permit is still faster than other country’s process still with the rise of uncertainty students should consider pursuing their education from other countries as well.