Immigration Minister Marc Miller said he expects nearly five million temporary residents with expiring visas to leave Canada next year.
Miller made the comments during a House of Commons citizenship and immigration committee meeting on Monday.
Conservative MP Tom Kmiec questioned the minister about the 4.9 million temporary visa holders whose visas and permits are expiring and how the government would know how many will leave the country.
Immigration arrivals office at Vancouver International Airport. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)
“There will be some visas that are temporary in nature that will not be renewed. Those people, when they undertook the oath to come here, will be expected to leave,” Miller responded.
Kmiec pressed further.
“Minister, I wasn’t asking whether they will leave or not. I’m asking you how you will ensure that a person whose visa is expired will leave. We know that just on study permits, there are 766,000 expiring by the end of December 2025. How will your department ensure that at the end of those study permits, those persons will leave?” he asked.
Miller said that he expects these permit holders to leave “voluntarily” and that the feds will be working with the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) to “investigate and prosecute those who violate immigration law.”
What about international students in Canada?
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Kmiec also asked Miller how many international students are predicted to leave Canada.
“Are you going to send CBSA to chase all of these 766,000 [students]?” said Kmiec.
The minister clarified that isn’t the only path forward for students with expiring study permits. Some students get renewals, while others can get post-graduate work permits, allowing them to stay in Canada longer.
“We do work with CBSA to monitor these things,” stated Miller.
He added that more international students are making asylum claims “with very little hope,” and the federal government will propose amendments to the immigration and asylum systems in the next few weeks.
Miller’s comments come after the federal government announced it would be slashing its immigration targets by at least 20% for next year.
Previously, the government’s permanent resident targets for the next two years stood at 500,000 per year. Now, the target for next year is set to 395,000 and will taper even further in 2026 (380,000) and 2027 (365,000).
The feds also plan to reduce temporary residents by 5% of the population by the end of 2026, adding that the population will “decrease over the next few years as significantly more temporary residents will transition to being permanent residents or leave Canada compared to new ones arriving.”
The government says Canada’s temporary resident population will decline by 445,901 in 2025 and 445,662 in 2026 compared to each previous year. A modest increase of 17,439 is expected in 2027.
With files from Isabelle Docto