More than 47,000 foreign students, representing 8% of the total international students in Canada, may have breached the terms of their visa and are currently in the country illegally.

Aiesha Zafar, Assistant Deputy Minister, Migration Integrity at IRCC, stated that 47,175 people who entered Canada as students are potentially “non-compliant,” which means they are not attending classes as required by their visa.

Zafar stated, “8% of the students that we asked for compliance information from were potentially non-compliant. We have not yet determined whether or not they are fully non-compliant. These are initial results that the institutions provide to us.”

Aiesha Zafar of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and

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