Thousands of former international students’ visas will expire soon. What happens next is murky

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Tens of thousands of international students who were granted postgraduate work permits will see their visas expire this year, casting doubt on their futures in Canada and leading economists to wonder if some will stay in the country as undocumented residents.

There were 31,610 people with valid postgraduate work permits in the country as of Sept. 30, and those visas will expire by Dec. 31, according to data from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) provided to The Globe and Mail.

Those numbers have recently come under scrutiny by economists and immigration experts because it’s unclear how many temporary residents remain in the country after their visas expire, adding to the undocumented population.

Ottawa has sought to rein in the number of temporary residents, which peaked at 7.6 per cent of the total population in October, 2024, after historically strong inflows of foreign workers and international students. The federal government aims to reduce that proportion to 5 per cent by the end of 2027, a year later than originally planned.

The most recent numbers show that temporary residents comprise 7.3 per cent of the total population – or three million people. However, those numbers do not account for people who are still in the country on expired permits as they attempt to figure out a different path to permanent residency.

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“How many expired visa-holders remain and are still residents of Canada? In previous research we estimated that number to be close to one million, with the overwhelming majority being expired temporary visa-holders who arrived in Canada legally, as long as a generation (or two) ago,” wrote CIBC deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal in an April report.

In a statement to The Globe, the federal Immigration Department said it did not have an estimate of the number of people in Canada on expired postgraduate work permits.

“Once someone receives a permit, they must abide by the condition of their permit, including the legal requirement to leave Canada at the end of the authorized period of stay,” the IRCC said in the e-mailed statement.

Last year, the Canada Border Services Agency deported approximately 18,000 people, but the agency does not publicly break that number down by type of study or work permit.

The latest IRCC data show that the number of expiring postgraduate work permits is down sharply from the same period last year, when approximately 70,000 were due to expire.

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It is hard to estimate how many international students left the country when their permits expired, obtained new jobs on different work permits, successfully transitioned to permanent residency or stayed without status.

IRCC data show that of roughly 115,000 postgraduate work permit holders whose visas expired in 2025, a mere 12 per cent either had their work permits extended or transitioned to other permits.

Those figures do not include people who transitioned to permanent residency. However, Statistics Canada data show that 12 per cent of people who became permanent residents in 2022 had previously held postgraduate work permits.

“It seems that most students are leaving, while some are trying other immigration applications like to transition to tourist visas, applying to extend work permits or for refugee status,” said Syed Hussan, executive director of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change. But he said that while some are remaining in Canada on expired permits, it was hard to say how many.

The reality for many students, according to Mr. Hussan, is that life in Canada has become virtually impossible, with “doors to permanent residency being slammed in their faces, the high cost of living, low wages and exploitation making options in other countries more viable.”

International students have become a fixture in the debate on Canada’s immigration policies because of the sheer number of study permits issued to foreign students in the past five years – a means of filling a glut of pandemic-era job vacancies.

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The international student count grew from roughly 350,000 in 2015 to more than one million by 2023. The number of postgraduate work permits – one- to three-year visas – climbed even more sharply over that period: from 33,615 to 240,200, an increase of more than 600 per cent.

But starting in 2024, Ottawa began to clamp down on immigration as Canadians increasingly tied it to various problems, such as home affordability. The government not only made it harder to obtain a permit to study in Canada, it also reduced its targeted intakes of permanent residents.

Some immigration experts have criticized the government for abruptly changing its policies, particularly because foreign students were sold on the prospect of obtaining permanent residency.

“Students who came in 2021, 2022 and 2023, in particular, were answering an explicit call from the government to come to Canada not just to study but to settle permanently,” said Lisa Brunner, a research associate at the Centre for Migration Studies at the University of British Columbia.

Last year, hundreds of international students and postgraduate work permit holders in Brampton, Ont., protested deportations and called for changes that would allow them to continue working in Canada.

Many had taken on vast amounts of debt to pay for international student fees, with the hope that they would eventually obtain permanent residency. Some are among the 31,610 who will see their visas expire in the coming weeks.