Visa Policy and International Student Migration: Evidence from Canada
Résumé
This paper examines how visa policy affects international student migration. Using
administrative data on community colleges in Canada, we evaluate a reform that introduced
a new visa stream - the Student Partners Program (SPP) - with shorter processing times
and higher approval rates for student visa applicants able to demonstrate that they have
the financial resources and language skills to succeed academically. Using a triple difference
estimator, we find that SPP increased student migration from treated countries by 33%
relative to what would have occurred without the reform, and that this effect materialized
only among students from origin countries suffering from low approval rates. Moreover,
we show that higher enrollment was driven in roughly equal proportions by an increase in
visa approval rates and the volume of visa applications, suggesting the policy helped reduce
statistical discrimination and increased the attractiveness of treated institutions. We also
leverage the SPP reform to investigate potential crowding-out effects. While inflows of
international students did not reduce the number of domestic students enrolled at Canadian
community colleges, the reform helped foreign enrollment outpace domestic enrollment by
crowding-in international students from countries that were not eligible to SPP.
Domaines
Economies et financesOrigine | Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s) |
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