Solidarity With and Support for International Students
"From being blamed for the housing crisis to being banned from local food banks, international students have been making headlines recently," writes Elizabeth Berman of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) in the organization's online bulletin. "Once a small minority, international students -- and the high tuition they pay -- are now a driving force on some Canadian college and university campuses."
"It's not the educational value of international students, though, that's motivating governments and post-secondary institutions to recruit more and more of them," she notes, adding that the Legault government announced in October "that it would claw back about $17,000 of tuition from each international student."
"[E]xcept for students from France and Belgium, countries that have reciprocal agreements with Quebec, international tuition would rise dramatically in the province, hampering recruitment," Berman informs.
"In the face of challenges like public funding and affordable housing," she says "academic staff associations at colleges and universities may feel powerless to effect change. Working together with other unions and organizations, however, can create collective power."
In Quebec, "unions are working together through the Quebec Federation of University Professors (FQPPU), which strongly opposes the proposed tuition fee policy of the Legault government," Berman reports. As well, "[a]cademic staff associations and their members in the province are encouraged to sign an official petition calling on the government to cancel the tuition changes."
Sarom Rho, an organizer with the Migrant Workers Alliance for
Change, which includes Migrant Students United, says: "When one section of our society has fewer
rights, and is denied the same protections, it actually pushes
the floor down for everybody" and "[in] colleges and
universities, when international students are denied rights, it
hurts domestic students, it hurts faculty, it hurts the other
workers on campus, because I don't think any of us want a
financialized model of education."
Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, the Canadian Federation of Students, and CAUT worked together earlier this year to help stop the deportation of Indian students who were issued fraudulent acceptance letters by an unregulated education recruiter. Rho explained that "[t]o prevent other students from being tricked by unscrupulous recruiters, Migrant Workers Alliance for Change has proposed an International Students Recruiter Regulatory Regime, which they presented to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. The federal government introduced changes to the International Student Program in October to better protect genuine students from fraud."
Rho concludes: "Our solution is to call for a system where everybody has the same rights and protections, not only because this is fair, and we want to live in a fair society, but also it would increase our collective bargaining power to build the kind of public education system and society that we want."
This article was published in
Volume 53 Number 32 - December 2023
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2023/Articles/MS53328.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca