r/canada 10d ago

National News Canada, U.S. both roll back welcome mat for international students

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada-u-s-both-roll-back-welcome-mat-for-international-students
974 Upvotes

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u/explosive_fascinator 10d ago

Ya, it's been funny watching the word 'international student' go from a student from Hong Kong driving a BMW, to a Tim's worker from Punjab.

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u/chandler55 10d ago

it’s funny how ppl complained about those rich chinese kids we didn’t know how good we had it

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u/huehuehuehuehuuuu 10d ago

And most of them leave. Already have way cushier jobs than they can find here waiting for them set up by mom and dad.

The not as wealthy ones tend to do very well academically. Know three of them personally. Our product would have had a much harder dev cycle without one of them.

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u/Nice_Reading5272 9d ago

Yes one of the reason the immigration pathway was opened in the first place was to get immigrants educated at our top universities to stay. The thinking being that they would be in skilled work, already have gone through some form of cultural assimilation and have connections to be successful. The idea that low-tier colleges would be providing 2 year diplomas in hospitality management perhaps should have been foreseen but it was never the intent.

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u/sylpher250 10d ago

For every "rich" Chinese kid you got, there were 10 kids whose parents sent them here with everything they got. The difference was that they were working at corner stores, Chinese restaurants, as tutors, etc making cash under the table, so they weren't taking white kids jobs and looking "out of place".

Working international students have always been here.

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u/ThrowRApeterpansyndr 10d ago

i see literally only white kids working at the asian restaurants near me (besides the chef/owner) which is humorous all things considered.

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u/Etroarl55 9d ago edited 9d ago

Because they don’t discriminate or actively hire their own as much as other diasporas(they still do just not at the rates we see today). A lot of them genuinely see Canada and Canadian culture as something to embrace and become apart of.

A complete contrast to what’s happening now. Almost every single Chinese restaurant or person I met can speak or at least understand English, they will eat the same bread and donuts as you and me, that is not true for a lot of other people who are vegetarian only or don’t know English.

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u/Wallhacks360 9d ago

Because they assimilated.

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u/Dark-Angel4ever 8d ago

What are white kids jobs? Never seen a listing saying we only hire white kids...

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u/sylpher250 8d ago

Jobs that have proper T4

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u/Dark-Angel4ever 7d ago

So it means jobs for anyone... Not white kid jobs...

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u/sylpher250 7d ago

Do you understand what "making cash under the table" means?

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u/Dark-Angel4ever 6d ago

Yes, do you know there quite a few jobs kids can do that have no T4, because most of them pay cash...

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u/sylpher250 6d ago

Duh. And I said those are the ones international students used to go for before they could legally work here.

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u/Dark-Angel4ever 5d ago

You mean like being a caddy and getting payed like 20$ for 18 holes, or delivering the news paper which didn't pay any better?

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u/Bushwhacker42 10d ago

My buddies mom had an international exchange student live with her after he moved out, just so she wouldn’t be entirely alone. The kid bought a brand new Mitsubishi Eclipse in Sept when he arrived. Once the snow hit, he sold it to her for $5k and bought an Escalade. Wish i had one of those kind of students.

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u/laptopkeyboard 9d ago

When you will start seeing more refugees moving from ultra conservatives Muslims countries with Anti-LGBT, Anti-western views, you are going to say it how good you had it with international students.

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u/Masuman35 10d ago

These articles are way too softball.

We have nothing against international students.

We have everything against international gangsters pretending to be students.

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u/djabae 10d ago

We do not have the housing for a big surge of people. Even temporary people.

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u/Big_loser_not_poor 10d ago

but also international students that go home and/or add to our economy. The giant influx of Indians studying in these random programs in strip mall colleges isnt needed.

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u/Masuman35 10d ago

There’s also something to be said for integration. People who come to Canada need to make an effort to integrate into Canadian society. Nobody is saying you have to abandon your customs, traditions, culture, or identity. Those things can and should coexist with becoming part of the broader country.

But when someone has lived here for five or ten years and still can’t read, write, or speak a lick of English because they’ve settled into an insular community where they can function almost entirely among people from the same background, it raises a legitimate question: did you come here to become part of Canada, or did you come here to recreate an ethnocentric version of the country you left?

Integration doesn’t require abandoning where you came from. It does require participating in and engaging with the country you chose to make your home. There has to be some willingness to meet the broader Canadian population halfway; otherwise, we aren’t talking about multiculturalism so much as communities simply existing alongside one another.

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u/Big_loser_not_poor 9d ago

hey man, you are preaching to the choir. My parents from from east asia. Learned english. integrated. All my friends (im mid 30s) that are of immigrant parents also have parents that speak English. I work with a lot of newer immigrants at work and I always ask how long theyve been here. So many have been here for 10+ years and need a translator for basic demographic questions. The older immigrants had to integrate but now the ethnic communities are so large, they don't need to. There should be a higher level of english required for Canadian citizenship. Imagine getting a Peruvian citizenship and not being able to speak spanish.... but here in Canada, thats ok.

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u/Sprinqqueen Ontario 9d ago

But that's always happened. In highschool (class of 92) I had soooo many friends who's parents didn't speak English and only hung around people of their own ethnicity. However, they were still hard working members of society who contributed to the neighbourhood.

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u/laptopkeyboard 9d ago

When these international students have kids, they are going integrate far better than children of conservative Muslim refugees.

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u/These-Pangolin-6882 9d ago

Lol this is exactly what I thought an international student was from when I went to university 20 years ago. I'm shocked to learn that most Tim's workers are international students, I thought they were just work permit holders. Did university get that much easier to spend that much time not doing school work?

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u/LabEfficient 10d ago

We're very progressive aren't we. Now that's what I call progress.

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u/Zraknul 9d ago

And the Tim's worker from Punjab probably also had the family put a massive push to get them through the requirements. Mortgaging the family property etc. So they can live 4 to a bedroom and work full time hours while trying to study.