Foreign students are a giant scam

[I am Groot]

There are some 800,000 foreign students in Canada now. A lot of them are fakes, here just to get the two year work experience that will lead to permanent residency status. Strip mall 'colleges' have sprung up to service the needs of those who have little real interest in education. Others are packing smaller universities and colleges to the extent half the student body is foreign. The majority of these are Indians, many arriving with fake papers claiming English fluency they do not possess. 

There are no limits on the number of visas the federal government will issue for foreign students. And the colleges and universities don't have to satisfy any arm of the provincial government that they have adequate facilities, let alone housing for these students. They don't care if they're abused, misused, lied to or cheated. They don't care if they're cheating themselves, both in their entry documents or in classes. 

What they ought to care about but don't is the impact this has on Canadian students crowded out of universities and colleges, or finding themselves in classrooms where half the other students are foreigners who don't speak the language very well and who cheat fairly openly while the universities and colleges look the other way.

 

https://thehub.ca/2023-07-06/as-record-numbers-of-foreign-students-come-to-canada-experts-urge-a-re-think-of-the-program/

[myata]

What here is not in a crisis or a sad, under par state? Who can't see the trend?

[PIK]

Big money.

[I am Groot]

27 minutes ago, PIK said:

Big money.

Big money so universities can have even more bloated administrations.

But the reality is also that we're getting all kinds of people into phony programs or programs they don't really care about as a back door to immigration where they would otherwise stand no chance of getting into Canada.

[I am Groot]

I'm copying a post I read on another forum which says a lot more about the situation than the story above.

Worked in customs and immigration for over a decade so I’ve had my fair share of dealing with hundreds if not thousands of these students over the years. As a Canadian born Indian myself, I’ll speak specifically about the students we’ve been getting from India.

In my experience dealing with them, a huge amount of them actually have no real interest at all in studies but rather come here under the guise of education just to try and get their PR and then bring over the rest of their families. Most possessed elementary level English literacy yet were here to study at the university/college level. Let’s not forget that it isn’t all that difficult to pay and get fake docs in India so safe to assume a lot of these students pay to get their ILETS and other school related docs.

We’re getting most of these students from one part of India. These are “students” that wouldn’t even be able to secure admission at proper universities in bigger Indian cities. The entire diploma mill loophole is a huge problem here. A lot of these students have no real desire to integrate, assimilate or adapt to Canadian culture. They also have no real career ambitions or goals. They come here with the sole purpose of getting their PR and that’s it. They come to places like Surrey, BC and Brampton, ON where there is already huge pre-existing population of South Asians. This makes them think they don’t have no change their ways at all or improve their English since majority of the people speak Punjabi.

This isn’t to say that all of them coming in are bad. I’ve dealt with some pretty good students too but the reality is at this point, the bad far outweigh the good. The bad ones also make themselves extremely visible with their garbage behaviour and a complete lack of social etiquette and respect. Even back in 2017 I knew this would be a disaster sooner or later. Just the sheer amount of them coming in on a daily basis really boggled my mind.

I’m sorry to say but this completely reckless approach will simply not end well. A lot of these students are also sold the fake Canadian dream but arrive here and have a real rude awakening. I’m personally friends with quite a few of them so I’ve been told the reality of this situation first hand by them. Most will end up working dead end jobs in the service and retail industry since most are doing bogus two year diplomas in things like hospitality and tourism. Also a big number of them actively getting involved in gangs/drugs and I was also told by a few friends how some of these international student girls were getting involved in prostitution… some out of sheer financial desperation and others willingly. I can go on and on into more details and specifics but I’ll leave at this for now.

I apologize for the lengthy comment and some of you may have seen similar comments like this from me on other similar posts. I think it’s really crucial to understand the importance of this issue. If this continues, places will literally become next to unliveable. There needs to be proper checks and balances in place because a lot of these students shouldn’t have been granted student visas to even begin with. The amount of loopholes in our immigration system that are readily available for people to exploit is just absolutely ridiculous. I have no hope that this government will do anything meaningful at all to fix this issue or put in preventative measures going forward.

Edit: Just wanted to clarify something further and add a little more context. I’m aware some people are afraid or hesitant to speak up about this issue as they think they’ll be called racists. There is absolutely nothing racist about voicing your concerns about issues that are directly impacting the quality of day to day life for you as Canadians. Also, I want to stress the point that not all of these students are bad. There are genuinely good people who are victims of their circumstances. The good ones tend to get clumped together with all the bad. People will assume I’m generalizing based on my own experiences. I’m basing my opinions obviously on my own experiences but also of those that I personally know (friends, family etc). And some of these friends are international students themselves who had voiced their opinions and concerns to me about their fellow peers. Lastly, I’m not anti-immigration but what I am against is this type of reckless and forced immigration where the focus seems to be solely on quantity while overlooking quality. A complete overlook of infrastructural needs, healthcare and overall cost of living. How many people could we possibly need to fill lower end minimum wage service industry and retail jobs? We need quality people that will fill experienced positions. Doctor shortages, nurse shortage, teacher shortage and the list goes on. I’m just very concerned at this point at the direction this country seems to be headed towards.

[Moonbox]

On 7/7/2023 at 10:27 AM, I am Groot said:

Big money so universities can have even more bloated administrations.

There really is a lot to be said about this.  It boggles my mind just how expensive university (worse in the US) and how they can't seem to function profitably (or even break-even) without needing to sell degrees to students who can barely even function in the classroom.  

When I was doing my BBA you needed at least a 87% highschool average just to get in, yet when we were assigned a group project you inevitably ended up with a mainland chinese student who could barely even speak english (and definitely couldn't write it).  Simply put, there was no way that these students could complete the curriculum with their communication skills in English, yet there they were at graduation.  

Let's not even get into how their parents buy them a house here to live in, that sits empty after they graduate.  

 

[August1991]

On 7/6/2023 at 4:24 PM, I am Groot said:

There are some 800,000 foreign students in Canada now.

...

The world has some 8 billion people. With a sustainable birth rate of 2%, that means 80 million new kids per year

Among the 80 million, we Canadians are very good at bringing these new-borns into cvilised society.

 

[ExFlyer]

On 7/6/2023 at 4:24 PM, I am Groot said:

There are some 800,000 foreign students in Canada now. A lot of them are fakes, here just to get the two year work experience that will lead to permanent residency status. Strip mall 'colleges' have sprung up to service the needs of those who have little real interest in education. Others are packing smaller universities and colleges to the extent half the student body is foreign. The majority of these are Indians, many arriving with fake papers claiming English fluency they do not possess. 

There are no limits on the number of visas the federal government will issue for foreign students. And the colleges and universities don't have to satisfy any arm of the provincial government that they have adequate facilities, let alone housing for these students. They don't care if they're abused, misused, lied to or cheated. They don't care if they're cheating themselves, both in their entry documents or in classes. 

What they ought to care about but don't is the impact this has on Canadian students crowded out of universities and colleges, or finding themselves in classrooms where half the other students are foreigners who don't speak the language very well and who cheat fairly openly while the universities and colleges look the other way.

 

https://thehub.ca/2023-07-06/as-record-numbers-of-foreign-students-come-to-canada-experts-urge-a-re-think-of-the-program/

You are assuming far too much.

Foreign student are getting in because they pay....quadruple and often way more to attend. Period.

"In 2022/2023, international undergraduate students will pay 429.0% more than Canadian students," from Stats Canada

There is no English fluency requirement.

Nor is there a housing requirement.

There is complaints for sure (even by Canadian students) but abuse, misuse, lied to, Cheated???  Conjecture without evidence.

Allow cheating?? Proof of that . Yes, there may be some foreign student cheaters but, there are Canadian student cheaters too.

Bottom line, this is not a Canadian government issue, it is a university/college issue as they see easy money.

 

 

[I am Groot]

31 minutes ago, ExFlyer said:

You are assuming far too much.

Foreign student are getting in because they pay....quadruple and often way more to attend. Period.

So. What? 

The reason they pay more is because unlike Canadian attendees their parents haven't spent a lifetime paying taxes into the system that pays the bulk of the costs of post-secondary institutions. 

31 minutes ago, ExFlyer said:

There is no English fluency requirement.

Nor is there a housing requirement.

There is complaints for sure (even by Canadian students) but abuse, misuse, lied to, Cheated???  Conjecture without evidence.

Did you go to college/university? Imagine going through courses where half the class is made up of people who have only a fractured understanding of the language. How do you imagine that effects the teachers time, not to mention classroom discussions, or being assigned group work with people you can barely understand. The purpose of these schools is to educate young Canadians. If that purpose is being impaired by hordes of foreigners then something needs to be done to reign that in.

31 minutes ago, ExFlyer said:

Allow cheating?? Proof of that . Yes, there may be some foreign student cheaters but, there are Canadian student cheaters too.

The allegations are the cheating by foreign students is ignored by these institutions. And how exactly would you expect 'proof' of that?

31 minutes ago, ExFlyer said:

Bottom line, this is not a Canadian government issue, it is a university/college issue as they see easy money.

The Canadian government controls the ingress of foreign students by issuing them visas. The provincial governments and the federal government need to do something to reign in these numbers, both to preserve the quality of the education young Canadians receive and to deal with the impact of hundreds of thousands of people wanting cheap accommodation the colleges aren't providing them.

7 hours ago, August1991 said:

The world has some 8 billion people. With a sustainable birth rate of 2%, that means 80 million new kids per year

Among the 80 million, we Canadians are very good at bringing these new-borns into cvilised society.

 

Statement of fact is absent of evidence.

[ExFlyer]

13 minutes ago, I am Groot said:

So. What? 

The reason they pay more is because unlike Canadian attendees their parents haven't spent a lifetime paying taxes into the system that pays the bulk of the costs of post-secondary institutions. 

Did you go to college/university? Imagine going through courses where half the class is made up of people who have only a fractured understanding of the language. How do you imagine that effects the teachers time, not to mention classroom discussions, or being assigned group work with people you can barely understand. The purpose of these schools is to educate young Canadians. If that purpose is being impaired by hordes of foreigners then something needs to be done to reign that in.

The allegations are the cheating by foreign students is ignored by these institutions. And how exactly would you expect 'proof' of that?

The Canadian government controls the ingress of foreign students by issuing them visas. The provincial governments and the federal government need to do something to reign in these numbers, both to preserve the quality of the education young Canadians receive and to deal with the impact of hundreds of thousands of people wanting cheap accommodation the colleges aren't providing them.

Statement of fact is absent of evidence.

I think that "Statement of fact is absent of evidence." is your issue.

You are making broad based accusations, assumptions and points without evidence, only emotion

[Moonbox]

1 hour ago, ExFlyer said:

There is no English fluency requirement.

Unless it's just math or computer programming.

1 hour ago, ExFlyer said:

There is complaints for sure (even by Canadian students) but abuse, misuse, lied to, Cheated???  Conjecture without evidence.

True, but I can speak to my experience in Waterloo, where probably 10-15% of my program was mainland Chinese students who could barely communicate in English.  There was no way they could fairly complete my program with their English skills.  

1 hour ago, ExFlyer said:

Bottom line, this is not a Canadian government issue, it is a university/college issue as they see easy money.

Yes, but then these are all publicly funded institutions, so the question of stakeholders should be made.  If tuition were going down on account of these foreign students paying 4x tuition, that would be one thing, but we're seeing the opposite, with more foreign students and tuition skyrocketing.  

Edited July 10, 2023 by Moonbox

[ExFlyer]

3 hours ago, Moonbox said:

Unless it's just math or computer programming.

True, but I can speak to my experience in Waterloo, where probably 10-15% of my program was mainland Chinese students who could barely communicate in English.  There was no way they could fairly complete my program with their English skills.  

Yes, but then these are all publicly funded institutions, so the question of stakeholders should be made.  If tuition were going down on account of these foreign students paying 4x tuition, that would be one thing, but we're seeing the opposite, with more foreign students and tuition skyrocketing.  

Look, all I am saying is that you are making unsubstantiated accusations.

Perhaps tuitions are being kept down because of the 4x tuition foreign student pay? I have a few universities and several colleges here where I live and they are always wanting to increase tuition but are not allowed to so, make foreign students pay.

You have a bone to pick and are making claims that are more emotional than factual. That's fine but understand, the universities and colleges set their own parameters and policies.

 

[impartialobserver]

When I was in grad school, we had a cohort of 19 students... 15 of which were foreigners. The 4 American males (of which I was one of them) were out of our league honestly. We struggled mightily. The foreigners mostly breezed through the daunting math involved in differential equations, linear algebra, and multivariate calculus. If I was the OP... I would have spun this reality into a narrative about how there are too many foreigners and we should do something about this. 

[CdnFox]

On 7/10/2023 at 6:24 AM, I am Groot said:

So. What? 

The reason they pay more is because unlike Canadian attendees their parents haven't spent a lifetime paying taxes into the system that pays the bulk of the costs of post-secondary institutions. 

I don't have stats handy but my understanding is that they actually pay more than the Canadian students even after taking into account the fact the gov't pays 85 percent of the fees more or less.

So foreign students actually do represent a profit for many of these institutions.  I remember when trudeau pissed off Saudi Arabia and they threatened not to allow their kids to go to school here it was a big deal because some of those universities rely heavily on those student's tuition to stay afloat.

[Moonbox]

On 7/10/2023 at 1:59 PM, ExFlyer said:

Look, all I am saying is that you are making unsubstantiated accusations.

All I'm telling you is my own personal experience.  

On 7/10/2023 at 1:59 PM, ExFlyer said:

Perhaps tuitions are being kept down because of the 4x tuition foreign student pay? I have a few universities and several colleges here where I live and they are always wanting to increase tuition but are not allowed to so, make foreign students pay.

No doubt the universities rely on foreign students for higher tuition, but I'd argue that the tuition cost increases have far exceeded inflation (and the proportional decrease in government vs private funding), so there's something more to this.  

On 7/10/2023 at 1:59 PM, ExFlyer said:

You have a bone to pick and are making claims that are more emotional than factual. That's fine but understand, the universities and colleges set their own parameters and policies.

I think you need to read the article that Groot posted, because you're missing the point.  The universities and colleges set their own parameters and policies, but as government-funded institutions, they are a matter for open public discourse, especially as it concerns the monetization of permanent residence.  

[I am Groot]

4 hours ago, CdnFox said:

I don't have stats handy but my understanding is that they actually pay more than the Canadian students even after taking into account the fact the gov't pays 85 percent of the fees more or less.

So foreign students actually do represent a profit for many of these institutions.  I remember when trudeau pissed off Saudi Arabia and they threatened not to allow their kids to go to school here it was a big deal because some of those universities rely heavily on those student's tuition to stay afloat.

And what have they used that money for? Not to improve the quality of education, that's for sure. Not to build more dorms to hold them. No, to hire more DEI people. Hordes of administrators to cater to everyone's sense of grievance, envy and resentment, and do all kinds of studies, hold hearings, draw up new regulations. Tuition and administration continue to grow apace with no end in sight for either.

[I am Groot]

On 7/10/2023 at 9:39 AM, ExFlyer said:

I think that "Statement of fact is absent of evidence." is your issue.

You are making broad based accusations, assumptions and points without evidence, only emotion

And pray tell what kind of evidence would suffice for you? No one is going to undertake a study of cheating of foreign students. No one is going to do a study to determine the impact on domestic students of all those foreign students. Any attempt would both threaten the lucrative income stream and immediately draw howls of 'racism'. So in the absence of official evidence we are left with individual statements, lots of them, none contradicted.

[I am Groot]

5 hours ago, impartialobserver said:

When I was in grad school, we had a cohort of 19 students... 15 of which were foreigners. The 4 American males (of which I was one of them) were out of our league honestly. We struggled mightily. The foreigners mostly breezed through the daunting math involved in differential equations, linear algebra, and multivariate calculus. If I was the OP... I would have spun this reality into a narrative about how there are too many foreigners and we should do something about this. 

Because you couldn't cut it in school and are in awe of some foreign students who did is not exactly evidence that nothing is amiss in this country, which by every report is flooded with foreign students, many of which lack the academic background and linguistic skills to do the work properly. 

[Nationalist]

FYI...

https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2019/08/chinese-international-students-lured-prostitution/

[ExFlyer]

1 minute ago, I am Groot said:

And pray tell what kind of evidence would suffice for you? No one is going to undertake a study of cheating of foreign students. No one is going to do a study to determine the impact on domestic students of all those foreign students. Any attempt would both threaten the lucrative income stream and immediately draw howls of 'racism'. So in the absence of official evidence we are left with individual statements, lots of them, none contradicted.

My point exactly.

What kind of evidence? Something substantial to back up the assertions.

So, there are no facts, just accusations and assumptions. You are saying foreign students are cheating.....? Only foreign students? Are your and the others statements racist just by exclaiming them?

1 minute ago, Nationalist said:

FYI...

https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2019/08/chinese-international-students-lured-prostitution/

What does that have to do with foreign students cheating?

[Aristides]

On 7/10/2023 at 5:46 AM, ExFlyer said:

You are assuming far too much.

Foreign student are getting in because they pay....quadruple and often way more to attend. Period.

"In 2022/2023, international undergraduate students will pay 429.0% more than Canadian students," from Stats Canada

There is no English fluency requirement.

Nor is there a housing requirement.

There is complaints for sure (even by Canadian students) but abuse, misuse, lied to, Cheated???  Conjecture without evidence.

Allow cheating?? Proof of that . Yes, there may be some foreign student cheaters but, there are Canadian student cheaters too.

Bottom line, this is not a Canadian government issue, it is a university/college issue as they see easy money.

 

 

My oldest grandson had an Indian roomie in 1st year engineering who was held back because his English wasn't good enough. My grandson switched schools in his second year so I don't know what happened to the guy.

[impartialobserver]

1 minute ago, I am Groot said:

Because you couldn't cut it in school and are in awe of some foreign students who did is not exactly evidence that nothing is amiss in this country, which by every report is flooded with foreign students, many of which lack the academic background and linguistic skills to do the work properly. 

Just because I struggled does not mean that I did not graduate.... swing and a miss for you. The foreigners in my case were more than up for the task. And they paid 3.5 times more than the instate student and got the same services. Seems like University of Nevada did pretty well. They got high achieving students (masters or phd in economics is not easy) and much needed revenues. 

[Nationalist]

2 minutes ago, ExFlyer said:

My point exactly.

What kind of evidence? Something substantial to back up the assertions.

So, there are no facts, just accusations and assumptions. You are saying foreign students are cheating.....? Only foreign students? Are your and the others statements racist just by exclaiming them?

What does that have to do with foreign students cheating?

Nothing really. I Googled "Chinese Exchange Students" and this was what I found.

I find it...sad.

[I am Groot]

4 minutes ago, ExFlyer said:

My point exactly.

What kind of evidence? Something substantial to back up the assertions.

So, there are no facts, just accusations and assumptions. You are saying foreign students are cheating.....? Only foreign students? Are your and the others statements racist just by exclaiming them?

The difference is that most of these students come from cultures where cheating is endemic. And they are accompanied by accusations that the admins turn their eyes away, not wanting to disturb the funding model.

[betsy]

On 7/7/2023 at 9:59 AM, PIK said:

Big money.

 

Not only that.  We have staffing issues like in healthcare.  I think, it's better that they get their education and training in Canada.  I don't mind that they end up migrating here.

 

 

But I do worry about the bogus students.   And those that spy or work   for China.

 

Edited July 12, 2023 by betsy