A teacher struggling to find and keep work says he’s had to rely on receiving Employment Insurance (EI) benefits because of the changes to Canada’s international student cap.
Josh Zumstien says he has been teaching English as a second language (ESL) for more than 15 years; however, for months, he’s been out of work as the new visa rules put a strain on language schools across the country.
“I’m not really sure how much longer I can sustain this if my work situation does not improve,” he said.
In January, Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced that Canada will cap international student visas for two years. He said the temporary application cap is expected to result in approximately 364,000 approved international student study permits, a 35% decrease from 2023.
Weeks after Miller’s announcement, Zumstien said he lost his job.
“It’s just been too hard,” he said.
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In his 15 years teaching, the BC man has only taken a step back from his career twice—once to go back to school and the second after international travel restrictions were enforced due to COVID-19, which severely impacted the industry.
Once again, teachers like Zumstien have been left with limited options. He explained,”Since I started working in this industry in 2006, I pretty much never really struggled for work.”
However, since being laid off, “Whenever I go online, it’s truly like a graveyard out there when it comes to finding positions, especially full-time permanent positions in this industry.”
While there are part-time work options and lots of tutoring gigs for kids, Zumstien said, “It’s fine, but I consider myself an adult educator.”
“I truly am passionate about this little kind of niche of education, and I put my whole life’s work into it,” he explained.
Why language programs are important
Rachel Lindsey is the Director of Public Affairs at Languages Canada, a national language education association representing 200 accredited language programs in public and private institutions. She tells Daily Hive the international student cap has “certainly” impacted members and their English and French language programs.
She emphasizes the importance of language programs using data from the University of Ottawa, which found that international students who complete an English course are 12% more likely to graduate than an international student who does not. They are even 3.5% more likely to graduate than a domestic student who enters the university through Canadian high schools.
“Even if you just look at the value in terms of how students perform in the classroom — how well integrated they feel on their campus — here’s an immense value in language programs,” Lindsey says.
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“It’s only gotten worse this year”
Zumstien said he does suffer from depression and anxiety, and “it’s only gotten worse this year.”
“It’s tough feeling kind of useless at home, and it’s hard looking towards the future and not really knowing what’s going to happen and beating myself up for spending so much time in an unpredictable industry,” he said.
Thankfully, with medication and counselling, Zumstien said he is coping, but the mental challenges over the past few months have been far greater than the financial.
According to the father of two, his family has savings to fall back on. However, he admits he’s even considered leaving the industry he loves.
“Though it’s hard because … my resume is very much focused just on [ESL]. So yeah, it’s so hard. It’s definitely a hard situation right now.”
“Luckily,” he said, his wife can support the two of them for the time being.
“I should say we’re very lucky in some way… we don’t rely on my paycheque to support our family,” he explained. “That said, obviously, without another source of income coming in… we have had to pull back a bit on little extras.”
Recovery year no more
According to Lindsey, the ESL industry was hoping to continue recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, which made it especially difficult. Between 2020 and 2021, Language Canada’s members lost 60% of their students, revenues, and workforce.
Because these language learning programs rely on international students, Lindsey said that in 2020, they were the hardest-hit education segment by the pandemic.
Unfortunately for the industry, the recovery has not been linear. In 2022, the industry was “shackled by slow recovery in visa processing,” Lindsey said.
While there had been progress, in 2023, Languages Canada found that programs it represented were still only at about 80% of pre-pandemic levels, Lindsey told Daily Hive.
“So the sector is still not yet recovered to where it was before the pandemic,” she said, “And the latest IRCC [Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada] policy changes have certainly not helped.”
“It’s fair to say in 2023 if the sector was only at 80% of where it was pre-pandemic, then staffing levels will be commensurate with that student demand.”
According to Lindsey, the industry was especially impacted when the cap on study permits was announced. The IRCC put a halt on all processing of study permits and waited for provinces to determine what cap space would be allocated. Additionally, international students were asked to provide a provincial attestation with their study permit application immediately after the announcement.
“Some provinces were quite quick out of the gate, British Columbia being sort of a front runner… Quebec continued to use an existing system… so there wasn’t that much of a lag,” Lindsey said. “But in other provinces — I hate to sort of call some of them out — but in Alberta, it took [months] for the province to have a system in place for private language schools.”
So, in some cases, sector members could not welcome prospective students for months. “And so they just lost all of that business,” Lindsey added.
Languages Canada is still trying to understand the true impact of international student visa changes, but Lindsey said, “Across the board, whether it’s language schools, colleges or universities, Canada’s international student numbers are going to be way down in 2024, and the staffing demands of the Canadian institutions that welcome international students are directly linked.”