Canada Plans Pilot to Contact Expiring Student Visa Holders

OTTAWA Canada's Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada plans to launch a pilot program next month to contact international students whose visas are expiring, as part of broader efforts to improve tracking of entry and exit data for temporary visa holders.

Deputy Immigration Minister Ted Gallivan shared the details during an appearance before a House of Commons committee on May 4. He said the department is developing an indicator for visa holder profiles that would show whether individuals remain in the country. The initiative addresses longstanding gaps in monitoring, highlighted in a March auditor general's report that identified only a small number of potentially problematic student visas under active investigation.

Immigration Minister Lena Diab, also testifying before the committee, provided an update on a comprehensive review of student visas. Her department examined all 153,000 visas flagged as potentially noncompliant between 2023 and 2024. Of those, 64 percent were deemed valid, 22 percent belonged to individuals who had either departed Canada or overstayed their visas, and 14 percent were held by people who had applied for asylum.