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I'm an immigrant and my immigrant friends and I were talking about exactly this just the other day. I'd like to add some context on why so few international students stay: they can't. Schools prey on this very fact. In international recruiting, these schools use the promise of thriving local industries and trot out graduates working locally as major draws to these expensive programs. Then once students are in Canada, many of these schools couldn't care less: they offer little or sometimes no housing support, no immigration advice (or in my case and many of my friends' cases: they give straight-up false immigration advice that can screw you over or even get you in trouble). There absolutely needs to be regulation and accountability for these predatory schools; I think a good starting point would be capping the number of visas they can apply for based on the number of housing units available (either on-campus or via local development subsidy and homestays). Tons of students come to Canada completely unprepared due to false promises made by these schools, and then get spit out into an egregiously inefficient and broken work visa system.\nMy immigrant friends and I are all highly skilled in our specific field. There are only a handful of people in the world (let alone in Canada) who can do what I do at the level I do it, so I would be incredibly difficult to replace if I left Canada. Despite that, and despite being Canadian-educated (Canadian resources invested in me that you'd want to keep in Canada), remaining in Canada has been a massive struggle for me and my friends. We individually spend hundreds and even thousands of dollars every year to apply for permits that have to be renewed annually, but take the government 6+ months to process. Because the government is so backed up, we have to apply for *extra* permits to bridge that gap (more money, and more work added to IRCC's already-long line of applications). I'm in limbo for the majority of the year where I can't switch employers, can't leave the country, etc. It's horrible. \nBut I have it better than most. Of the international students in my year, only I and one other student are still in Canada because the transition to work permits is so needlessly long and difficult. Even a graduate who does manage to get a work permit might have to sit unemployed for 6 months or more before that permit is active. How is a student supposed to survive without work for that long? In order for employers to even apply to sponsor a graduate, they often have to do a lengthy labor market impact assessment, and so these graduates are stuck in a holding pattern, and they're the lucky ones. Immigration is absolutely vital to Canada and I hate how quickly these stories turn to xenophobic rhetoric, but we have to make space in the conversation to take a look at how schools are exploiting students and policy loopholes, and why they're doing it, and address those problems. The current system isn't fair to anyone.