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“But the designers of the foreign-student programs, and the Express Entry programs, never figured out, well, wait a minute, what if people do exactly what we want?” Kurland said.

Canada is going to get far too many permanent resident applicants from foreign students, Kurland said, with Lee adding that the trend among Mainland Chinese parents “is to eventually follow their children” to Canada “while investing in the local housing market and transferring their assets overseas.”

In the next six years, Kurland predicted, Canada will end up in a difficult situation, similar to those faced by Germany and the United States.

Germany has had to give amnesty to millions of Turkish workers who were supposed to have come to the country for only temporary work. And U.S. politicians are agonizing over what to do with roughly 800,000 people brought to the U.S. illegally as youngsters. They’re often called “Dreamers,” with some officials wanting to offer them permanent citizenship.

Lee believes Ottawa may solve the problem of too many over-qualified applicants by deciding to increase the number of skilled people it allows in as permanent residents. “I think the government will be flexible on this, depending on the job market. In B.C. there is a shortage of workers in every field. There’s especially a shortage for young workers who are bilingual.”

However, Kurland, who has frequently advised Ottawa on immigration issues, warns that, as a backlog of applications builds up in Canada, federal immigration officials will be flooded with a surge of requests from foreign students to stay permanently in the country on “compassionate” grounds.

Kurland wants to send a warning to parents around the world that they should be aware of “the long-term risk of immigration failure (among their foreign-student offspring). I wouldn’t be blowing the whistle on this problem without strong evidence, because so many people might be affected.”

dtodd@postmedia.com

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