Canada imposes 24-hour work limit on international students

The Canadian government has agreed to let international students work 24 hours per week in the coming academic year, more than the pre-pandemic norm of 20 hours but fewer than its previous suggestion of about 30 hours.

The new federal limit also is well below the 40-hour allowance that the Trudeau administration allowed after the Covid outbreak of 2020 as a response to worker shortages.

The administration, in settling on the 24-hour level, reiterated its commitment to deterring non-academic uses of Canada’s student visa opportunities.

“First and foremost, people coming to Canada as students must be here to study, not work,” the nation’s minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship, Marc Miller, said in announcing the revised limit. “We will continue working to protect the integrity of our student programme.”

The decision is part of a series of Trudeau administration actions aimed at ending the explosive growth of international students in Canada, whose numbers have tripled over the past decade to around 900,000. That huge flow has provided Canada and its institutions a financial windfall, but it also has produced political pushback due to housing shortages and other social concerns.

In the most dramatic of those steps, the administration recently announced province-by-province caps on students from abroad, generally aimed at reducing their numbers by a third over two years.

Canada also has doubled the wealth requirement for incoming international students, added a step in the visa process that includes the student getting a letter of approval from the province where they plan to study, and taken steps toward certifying institutions based on their record of student support.

As for the limit on work hours, Trudeau officials said they looked at studies and the norms in other countries and saw sharp declines in academic performance among students working more than 28 hours a week. Also, an internal government assessment prepared back in 2020, and detailed by CBC News in February, had warned Trudeau administration officials against going beyond 20 hours a week, saying that it could distract international students from their classes and harm government programmes designed for temporary foreign workers.

More than 80 per cent of the international students in Canada currently work more than 20 hours a week, Mr Miller said. The government’s tougher new requirement that an international student must prove having saved at least C$20,635 (£12,024) more than their tuition costs also should help ensure that such students can afford their time in Canada, he said.

International students can work unlimited hours during their academic break periods, though the hours restrictions apply to those taking summer classes.

In December, when Mr Miller warned that the Trudeau administration was looking to reduce the 40-hour limit as pandemic conditions faded, he had suggested 30 hours as the likely new maximum.

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com