Around the world — to study in a basement: How a pandemic derailed Canada’s international students

During Manal Dimachk’s first six months in Canada, she rarely left her basement apartment.

The Lebanese woman, who grew up in Saudi Arabia, had come to this country to study and to start a new life. A globetrotter, she’d been around the world — to Ethiopia, France, Greece, Italy, Scotland, Spain, Syria, Turkey, the Congo, the U.K. and the U.S. — and was no stranger to starting over in new places.

But the pandemic complicated her decision to pursue a postgraduate degree with a Toronto university in ways she never could have imagined, leaving her isolated in a new country.

“I had the experience and expectations of what I was going to face when I moved to Canada,” says the 36-year-old, who started her two-year master’s program in “strategic foresight and innovation” at OCAD University last September. “But it was still very hard. I’m a sociable person.”

For international students such as Dimachk, the pandemic has taken a toll not only on their mental well-being, learning and their ability to settle into a new country, it’s also hurt their prospects of finding jobs they need to pay bills and, crucially, to qualify to stay in Canada permanently.

The majority of international students who come to Canada these days are from the Global South. An increasing number are from low- to middle-income families, according to a recent survey by Carleton University in Ottawa and St. Lawrence College, which also found that students were coming to Canada at younger ages.

Even in normal times, international students face tremendous challenges in fitting in, making friends, learning a foreign culture and overcoming a language barrier, let alone in dealing with the financial pressure from the hefty tuition fees, which are three to four times higher than those of their domestic peers.

Many — already working in restaurants, warehouses, gas stations and factories to support themselves while in school — are pursuing their education here with a plan to find a skilled and technical job that will ultimately earn them permanent residence before their non-renewable, time-limited postgraduate work permit expires.

However, due to their temporary status in the country, international students are often excluded from services and support afforded to permanent residents and Canadian citizens.

The pandemic amped up the pressures like never before.

“International students don’t have the inherited social capital like most Canadian students do. It puts them in a vulnerable position. Employers take advantage of them and landlords take advantage of them because they’re not aware of their rights,” said Sara Asalya, founder of the 5,000-member strong Newcomer Students’ Association.

“So there’re already challenges that pre-existed the pandemic: They’re always in limbo. The new virtual life has made it more difficult for them to secure a job, start a social network, connect with employers and to integrate and settle. If you’re Canadian, you don’t have to constantly worry about your permanent status.”

Whether they have just arrived in Canada, are in the middle of their studies or are on their way to qualify to become permanent residents, international students in different stages of their journey have all faced pandemic repercussions.

Long before COVID-19 hit, Dimachk had been looking for a postgraduate program to add to her undergraduate degree in architecture and her master’s degree in engineering management. When she received an offer from OCAD University, she says, she simply couldn’t pass up the opportunity despite the uncertainty of the pandemic.

As she planned for the move, she navigated the ever-changing travel restrictions and myriad public health and immigration rules around vaccination, quarantine and COVID tests.

As she was planning the trip, through the summer of 2021, there was a downward trend in cases in Canada, and she had hoped it would last. When she finally made it to Toronto, she was relieved.

Her first semester — and six months in Canada — was spent almost exclusively in her basement apartment in Scarborough except for a few outings initially when a friend showed her around the city and took her to see the Niagara Falls.

“Leaving everything behind and moving to another country is a huge challenge,” said Dimachk.

She met a handful of classmates briefly at the start of the school year — and a virtual brunch in January — when they had to go to the campus to pick up their student IDs before their courses began online.

Being away from her parents and siblings was one challenge but hunkering down in isolation with little human contact in a foreign country was harder still.

“I paid a lot of money for my tuition to study in my basement apartment” — her tuition along for each semester costs $11,000.

“As an international student, you can’t easily create a social network. It’s through human contact you get to know about the life and culture of your new home.”

Despite a significant drop in the number of study permits issued — from 250,498 in 2019 to just 79,236 in 2020 — Canada received 520,226 applications from people looking to study in this country in the first 11 months of last year.

Of that number, 305,633 applications were approved.

‘Social isolation and financial stress’

The stress of pursuing their immigration dreams amid pandemic chaos and uncertainty has taken a toll on international students in Canada on many fronts, according to the study by Carleton and St. Lawrence College.

“The major issues were social isolation and financial stress, which resulted in significant mental health problems,” said the report based on crowdsourced anonymous survey of almost 1,000 post-secondary international students in Canada and in-depth followup interviews with 25 respondents.

“There is some evidence of dissatisfaction with the online instruction necessitated by the pandemic, but the issues were less with the online instruction itself and more with the lack of in-person interaction with fellow students and instructors.”

Fifty-five per cent of the students were found to be at risk of a major depressive disorder while half were struggling with anxiety; managing their visa and immigration issues was also a key stressor, said the research by Carleton professors Anil Varughese and Saul Schwartz along with St. Lawrence College colleague Nisha Sheen.

“Interaction was particularly important for international students, as they expected to learn from it a range of skills (e.g., critical thinking skills, clarity of thought and expression, ways to seek and provide critical feedback) other than acquiring subject-matter expertise,” the study said.

Dimachk said she was initially happy with the virtual classes as she was used to virtually teaching architecture to university students in Lebanon during the pandemic. The online format also saved her the three-hour commute time back and forth to the OCAD waterfront campus while she was busy with little things, such as getting new IDs, opening a bank account and looking for a cellphone service provider.

But as time wore on, she quickly realized how the online format made learning more difficult for someone like her, whose first language is not English.

“When you are interacting with people in person in a class, you know what their body language is saying. It’s less formal and more personal than online. My program at OCAD focuses on critical thinking, analysis, storytelling and researching. You need to be able to practise with people and apply them,” said Dimachk.

“I’m learning the skills but I’m not applying them.”

Sometimes, even just trying to jump into an online discussion could be intimidating for someone unfamiliar with the culture and unsure of the social cues for engaging in a conversation.

“I didn’t even know how to address a professor. Shall I call him by his first name? Back home, that’d be an insult. Honestly, until now, I still don’t know how to address my professors,” Dimachk said with a chuckle.

“Even the way of teaching is very different here. In Lebanon, teachers just give all the information to students. Here, they treat each student as unique. They take into consideration what you have to say. The communication is not one-way. It’s a two-way interaction.”

She had a teaching-assistant job lined up before her arrival, but it fell through because she couldn’t get her SIN number in time. While trying to look for architecture-related jobs, she realized they all required Canadian experience or were full time positions, while immigration rules stipulated that she could work no more than 20 hours a week off campus.

She has some financial help from her family so she doesn’t have to do any job just to survive.

Others are not as fortunate. For these students and their families, Canadian education provides not only skills but also upward social mobility.

The perception that Canadian education is a sure-shot path to permanent residence has swelled the numbers of such families taking out large bank loans, mortgaging land and other possessions, to send their children to Canadian colleges for education, the Carleton and St. Lawrence College study said.

In fall 2018, Abu Hena Mostofa Kamal started in the undergraduate commerce program at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay with the financial support of his father’s employer, who took a hit from the economic downturn caused by the pandemic and had to stop paying for Kamal’s tuition.

The 21-year-old from Bangladesh couldn’t afford the $20,000-a-year tuition at the university anymore and had to immediately drop out, even though Ottawa soon eased the 20-hour employment restriction when Canada was struggling to fill essential jobs during the pandemic.

Friends and supporters started a crowdfundraising campaign hoping to raise enough money for him to switch to business-marketing program in Confederation College, which is located in the same city but would cost him a lot less money — just to maintain his status in Canada.

“I was working part time at Tim Hortons and restaurants here and there, but now I had to find my own way to pay for my tuition. It was a big (amount of) money for me to manage,” said Kamal. “It was so stressful.”

The money he made from extra shifts was not enough to allow him back to school.

Last spring, with his study permit fast expiring, Kamal was able to apply for permanent residence under a special pathway introduced in May for international graduates and migrant workers who have accumulated a minimum of 1,560 employment hours in designated essential jobs.

However, he had to quit his restaurant jobs in October when his study permit — and accompanying work permit — expired. Since then, he has relied on his own savings and been at the mercy of friends and supporters to survive because he’s out of status and doesn’t qualify for any government assistance or even health care.

Kamal’s application for what’s called a bridging work permit has been refused while he is waiting for his permanent residence application to come through.

“My health coverage stopped when I dropped out of school. I always worry about what happens if I get sick, if I get COVID,” said Kamal, who recently, with help of a community legal clinic, applied to restore his legal status in Canada, something he needs for his permanent residence.

“There isn’t a guaranteed pathway for international students to get permanent status in Canada. Anything can happen and you can fall through the cracks as what the pandemic has shown. Our families have made so many sacrifices and invested so much in our study here. We can’t go back emptyhanded.”

‘Trying to live day by day’

With her three teenage sons in tow, single mother Leila Takei, a dentist from Brazil for 25 years, started a two-year social service worker program at Sheridan College in Oakville in the fall of 2019 — all with the hope for a chance for permanent residence here to give her children a safer life and a better future.

The following March, the pandemic hit, and her classes were shifted online overnight.

She said she adjusted to virtual learning well, which allowed her to review her taped classes afterward and bring her out of her shell because she felt less intimidated to participate in classes in front of her camera.

“I had never been encouraged to raise my hand and ask questions because my classmates were in front of me. I wondered if they would understand what I was saying because of my accent and would laugh at me,” said the 52-year-old from Sao Paulo.

“When they moved to online setting, I felt safe. So I started participating in all classes.”

For her program, which cost her $37,000 in savings, Takei must complete a co-op placement, which she had banked on to help her build her professional network and get her foot into the sector — and ultimately her permanent residence.

However, due to COVID, the unpaid internship was shortened from a span of one year to one semester. Worse, the placement she had secured was no longer available because the Oakville community agency was locked down due to the pandemic.

Her faculty managed to find her a placement to run an online student wellness program to give her the exposure and experience she needed. She also knocked on the doors of different organizations and volunteered at six places, hoping that one of them would lead her to a paid job somewhere.

After Takei graduated last April, it took her about four months to land a job as a health ambassador at a community agency in Mississauga that was looking for someone to serve the Portuguese-speaking community.

Although it’s just a contract job that lasted until March, Takei was thrilled that it met the immigration’s occupational requirement and would count toward the 12 months of employment experience that she needs to be eligible for permanent residence.

With her life savings diminishing, Takei only has until July 2023 to qualify for permanent residence before her post-graduate work permit expires when she must leave the country. Her future — and her sons’ future — in Canada hinges on her securing an eligible job.

“I try not to think about it because otherwise, I would be crazy,” said Takei, whose triplet sons are now 19 but couldn’t continue in university because of their temporary status in the country.

“I am trying to live day by day. I came to Canada with a long term plan, but the pandemic just proves to me that I just have to live with what I have and try to do my best.”

‘Light at the end of the tunnel’

After a difficult holiday season that she could only spend by herself in her apartment, Dimachk was excited to start working as a teaching assistant in late January for a class of 130 undergraduate students, albeit online. Her own graduate classes have also been moved in person in mid-February.

“I’ve got to see all these people. I learn so much from interacting with the students I tutor. It’s been great. This is what I was looking for,” she said. “Yes, there’s light at the end of the tunnel.”

Correction — April 5, 2022 — This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Manal Dimachk’s surname.