Mr. Marc Miller, Canada’s Immigration Minister, recently confirmed that 292000 college & undergraduate students will get study permits in 2024.

This year, on January 22, IRCC announced an overall intake cap of about 360,000 students on study permit applications that it will approve this year. 

With this cap, IRCC intends to limit the unsustainable growth of international student programs in Canada. This is done by lowering the total number of authorized study permits by 35% during the two years.

In addition to this, the immigration department emphasized that it would also work to enhance the system’s integrity.

IRCC confirms 292000 College & Undergraduate Students will Get Permits

Recently, the IRCC department confirmed that in 2024, about 292000 college & undergraduate students will get study permits. It further clarifies that in the projection of 360,000 new study permits that have been approved for 2024, the cap-exempt study permits were considered.

Notably, the immigration minister has no statutory authority to reduce the number of authorized visas. Instead, they have control over the total number of applications processed by the IRCC.

The Minister said that they can only limit the applications and not the real allotments of visas. 

In addition, he added that the process involves estimating the number of visas that will be accepted and rejected, placing a cap on the number of applications processed, and then distributing the resulting visas across Canada depending on the population in each region.

Moreover, the Minister’s directives to impose a cap of 606,250 permits excluded primary and secondary school as well as Master’s and doctorate-level university programs. As per this, assuming a 60% approval rate, IRCC will approve around 360,000 study permits in 2024. 

However, per the Immigration Minister’s latest statement, IRCC will approve only 292,200 new college and undergraduate study permits.

Furthermore, at this moment, IRCC did not specify that this processing restriction included students who would not be affected by the cap. For instance, it did not specify the elementary and high school students as well as the Master’s students.

How Will IRCC Enforce this Study Permit Cap?

IRCC has delegated the general implementation of the study permit cap to the provincial governments. This implies that provincial governments are in charge of issuing a Provincial Attestation Letter (PAL) to international students who are qualified to study at a Designated Learning Institution (DLI) in their region. DLIs are the schools permitted to admit international students in Canada. 

PALs are the letters that help IRCC verify that the approved student is permitted in the province/territory where the school is located. This is used to estimate the study permit allocation to the specific province.

According to the ministerial instruction, the PALs are required to be drafted and signed by the provincial or territorial government. They must also include the applicant’s full name, date of birth, and address. 

As per the new announcement, the study permit applicants will now need two documents to apply to IRCC.

  • A letter of acceptance (LOA), and
  • A provincial attestation letter (PAL) 

Prior to the announcement, international students only needed a letter of acceptance (LOA). Notably, the number of allocations to a province or territory is based on its regional population.

Since the announcement, British Columbia and Alberta are the only two provinces that have declared their plan to deliver PALs.

As per both provinces, students will receive PALs from their DLIs. Once they satisfy all the eligibility requirements, this will apply to the provincial government. 

Per the federal government, all provincial governments must create and implement their individual systems to deliver PALs by March 31, 2024.