Canada has announced plans to slash international student permits and tighten foreign worker rules in 2025 to further reduce the number of temporary residents in the country.

The move comes after several recent rounds of restrictions aimed at taming record immigration levels that pushed Canada’s population past 41 million earlier this year.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has pointed to the high immigration as straining the country’s housing sector, jobs market and social services.

“It is a privilege to come to Canada. It is not a right,” Immigration Minister Marc Miller told a news conference on Wednesday, September 18, 2024.

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In 2025, Ottawa plans to issue 437,000 study permits to international students, down from 485,000 this year and more than 500,000 in 2023.

It is also putting new limits on work permits for spouses of some international students and foreign workers. And it will be stepping up checks before issuing travel visas to stem a spike in fraudulent or rejected asylum claims.

Ottawa has already said it would reduce the number of temporary residents to five per cent of the population, down from 6.8 per cent in April 2024, according to AFP.

The Star