B.C. asks Trudeau to soften hit from foreign student crackdown
BNN Bloomberg
British Columbia is asking the Canadian government to spare schools that train people for key jobs such as trucking and health care from its crackdown on international student visas.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is curbing the number of foreign students allowed into the country amid rising public frustration about housing costs. But it should be careful not to squeeze out students who can fill jobs in sectors where there are labor shortages, BC Post-Secondary Education Minister Lisa Beare told reporters Friday.
Beare said she’s meeting with federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller “to continue the conversation about increasing B.C.’s allowance of letters of attestation for in-demand areas,” including trucking, early childhood education and health services.
The letters are sent by provincial governments to schools, which send them to foreign-student applicants as proof that their application has been accounted for under Canada’s student-visa limits.
