International student in Winnipeg moves to make ends meet after cap on work hours returns

Krupa Mashru is starting her fall semester while moving out of the apartment she could afford before the federal government reinstated a cap on working hours for international students.

“This is not something I thought I would have to worry about,” the University of Manitoba student said. “I just wanted to worry about school.”

The federal government lifted a 20-hour cap on the hours international students are allowed to work off-campus during the pandemic to address a labour shortage, but that waiver expired April 30, leaving students like Mashru to make major changes as they enter the new school year.

The cap will be increased to 24 hours per week later this fall, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada told CBC News, although Immigration Minister Marc Miller said last spring that the change would take effect in September. 

Mashru, an athletic therapy student from Kenya, worked 25 to 30 hours a week during the last school year.

The cap doesn’t apply during scheduled school breaks, so Mashru continued to work longer hours through the summer, but with classes starting this week, she has to go down to 20 hours a week.

“It’s a really big change,” she said. “Earlier I could work as much as I can. My expenses were also made that way.”

Even if Mashru works every minute she legally can, with up to 10 fewer work hours every week, she can no longer afford her current apartment, where rent will go up to close to $1,800 by the end of the month.

Cap changes stir confusion 

Mashru, who’s the international students’ representative for the University of Manitoba Students’ Union, said with no specific date for when the cap will go up to 24 hours, many believed the new regulations would come to effect at the start of the fall term.

Sofia Frolova, an international student from Ukraine who’s at Assiniboine College in Brandon, Man., was one of them.

Last year, the media and communications student juggled five courses a semester while working 26 to 30 hours a week as a sales associate at a retail store.

Frolova receives support from her family to cover her tuition expenses, but the war in Ukraine is affecting her parents’ ability to help her financially.

“You want to be successful in the courses to stay in college,” she said. “But as an international student, you also understand that you need to work to afford a living.”

Frolova still isn’t sure how the drop in work hours will impact her, but losing around six hours of work every week — almost one full shift — could translate into roughly $360 less coming into her bank account every month.

“It makes me feel anxious and stressed,” she said.

“You live with this feeling that you need to provide for yourself.… You need to work, but you just can’t, not because you do not have enough time, but just [because] you’re not allowed.”

WATCH | International students talk about return of cap on work hours:

Michelle Carbert, a spokesperson for the minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, told CBC News in a statement that the government reinstated the cap after examining the needs of international students.

Research suggests academic outcomes suffer the more a student works, she said.

“International students are here to focus on their studies and not to work full time,” Carbert said. “We want to set students up for success in Canada.”

At 24 hours per week, Canada’s planned off-campus cap is “more generous” than rules in other countries, such as the U.S., where international students can only work off-campus after their first year and in jobs that meet specific criteria, the statement said.

Tackle unemployment

The decision to reinstate the cap is only one in a string of measures put forward by the federal government to scale down competition for low-wage positions, a University of Toronto political science professor said. 

“The intention is to reduce some of the pressure on lower-wage workers already in Canada, many of whom are migrants, whose unemployment rate is quite high at the moment,” Phil Triadafilopoulos said.

Employers jumped at the opportunity to hire temporary foreign workers in low-skill jobs when the COVID-19 pandemic prompted the federal government to ease restrictions, he said.

But downticks in the economy have since put pressure on companies to cut costs to protect their profits, and some have slashed low-wage positions, he said.

“The intention now is to reduce competition so people who are unemployed find it easier to find work,” Triadafilopoulos said. “Whether these changes have that effect remains to be seen.”

Wasiimah Joomun, executive director of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, a not-for-profit organization representing post-secondary student associations across Canada, told CBC News that most students have said they should be able to make do working 24 hours a week. 

“We will know the true impact of the new cap once students start working under that limit,” she said.

International students will continue to be financially strained, regardless of the changes to the cap, as long as they are left to bear the brunt of the public underfunding of post-secondary institutions, Joomun said.

“If institutions are not getting enough money from the provinces, then they have to increase their fees, and international students are the ones who experience that,” she said.

“The hope for us is that with all these regulations being implemented, the federal government will also push the provinces to invest better in institutions, so they can reduce the cost for students.” 

Heightened stress, anxiety 

The demand for on-campus jobs — which are exempted from the 24-hour limit — has ticked up among international students ahead of the fall semester, said Tomiris Kaliyeva, president of the University of Winnipeg Students’ Association. 

The surge in the number of applications is a response to the sense of panic felt among international students looking for alternatives to make ends meet, she said.

“I understand the struggle, because I went through it firsthand,” said Kaliyeva, who was an international student.

“If you can’t afford your rent and put food on the table, then you would be more stressed, more anxious, and those mental health issues will spiral out, and how does that help you with academics?”

Rittika Thakur, a Sri Lankan student at Assiniboine College in Brandon, is worried she will not have enough money to eat properly.

The second-year student is working minimum wage to pay for her rent, bus fares and groceries, while saving to help her family cover the next tuition deposit. 

“We leave our families, we leave our country just to come to Canada and have a better life,” she said. “Right now, I don’t know what is going on.”