Canada ends fast track visas for foreign students amid diplomatic row with India

According to a notice from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) on Friday, SDS was launched in 2018 to “provide faster processing for eligible post-secondary students” and “eventually opened to legal residents” of 14 nations including India.

It said that “Canada’s goal is to strengthen program integrity, address student vulnerability, and give all students equal and fair access to the application process, as well as a positive academic experience’ to “meet this commitment” the SDS was scrapped on November 8.

SDS offered quicker processing times for study permits and had a high rate of approval of applicants.

Study permits applied for after the announcement will be processed under the regular stream.

Naresh Chavda, president of Globayan Immigration Corporation, the SDS stream was introduced in 2018 for students from India and China and then expanded, and provided a streamlined application process. “The evaluation was simplified if they met the language requirement and financial commitment needed, along with a letter of acceptance from a Canadian college or university,” he said.

Processing times were at a maximum of four weeks, half that taken for regular study permits and there was a nearly 95 per cent approval rate. Chavda said, ‘They have closed a special programme to attract students. There was no reason to close the programme so suddenly other than to reduce international students intake.”

“Eventually, the interest of students will be lesser in Canada and people may be diverted to other nations,” he added, about the potential impact of the decision.

On September 18, IRCC stated that the cap for issuing study permits for 2025 will be at 437,000, down from the target of 485,000 for this year. The “stabilizing” 2025 figure will also apply to 2026.

Canadian officials have warned that the results of the decisions taken will become evident later this year. That may be reflected in the data, as the figures for study permits issued between April and June this year dropped to 125020 from 148140 in 2023. For India, the decrease was from 70340 to 55940. But that number is still nearly double the total intake for 2015.

Canada has already started taking measures with regard to international students since late last year. On December 7, IRCC announced that for new study permit applications received on or after January 1 this year, a single applicant will “need to show they have CA$ 20,635 (approximately ₹12.7 lakh), as against CA$ 10,000 (about ₹6.14 lakh) earlier.

In October 2023, it was announced that starting December 2023, designated learning institutions or DLIs will be obligated to verify the acceptance letters of each applicant through the IRCC.