LILLEY: Canada keeps rewarding those who stay after their visas expire
· Toronto Sun
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A recent tribunal ruling in Ontario saying illegal immigrants are entitled to welfare may look like a single case, but it could turn into four million cases. That’s how many temporary visas are expiring between last year and this year, and the Liberal government in Ottawa has no plan to ensure people leave.
Over the past several years, the Liberals ramped up the number of temporary foreign workers and foreign students given permission to enter Canada. With millions of visas set to expire, we know many of them won’t be going home, they will just stay here.
In fact, in the case that resulted in Ontario’s Social Benefits Tribunal ruling that illegal immigrants can get welfare, the man in question entered the country legally and never left.
The Ford government has smartly said they will change the regulations to ensure this doesn’t happen again. The adjudicator in the tribunal went out of their way to twist the language in the regulations to arrive at their decision.
“Our government will always be there to support people on hard times — but that doesn’t include people living in Canada illegally. If provincial regulations need to be changed to make that crystal clear, we’ll change them,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford posted on social media.
One case now, but potentially millions
This ruling out of Ontario is one ruling, but bad ideas don’t stay where they are born and with millions of people potentially following the path of not leaving, we could see more of this.
Sadly, it’s not just welfare payments where the taxpayer gets hosed for offering government services to people who pay no tax and have no legal status in Canada.
At least two universities, both in Toronto of course, have programs to allow students with “precarious immigration status” to pay domestic tuition rates instead of the much higher international rates. York University began their Sanctuary Scholar program in 2017, Toronto Metropolitan University — formerly Ryerson — followed shortly thereafter.
A basic arts degree at York costs just over $6,000 annually whereas international students pay about $40,000. Domestic tuition for an engineering degree will set you back just over $10,000 per year, but international students would pay $47,000.
Clearly, we are providing incentives for people to declare that they have “precarious immigration status” to save tens of thousands of dollars.
Incentives that encourage people to stay
We are also offering incentives for people who are not real refugees to declare asylum in Canada. Housing supports, a work permit, a health plan better than what Canadians receive from their government plan and more.
Is it any wonder that we have gone from 16,592 asylum claims in 2015 to 190,039 in 2024 and a current backlog of 294,989. Our asylum system has gone from being a safety valve for people fleeing war and persecution to a backdoor immigration stream.
In 2025, there were 107,802 new asylum applicants and just 50,067 people were accepted, a 46% acceptance rate.
Following a failed American path
Between decisions on welfare, Sanctuary Scholar programs, cities like Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal among others declaring themselves sanctuary cities, and the abuse of our system we are in danger of following the American path. In the United States, there is total confusion between legal and illegal immigration with opposition to the latter driving down support for the former.
We don’t want to go down that road, but it appears some are trying to drag us in that direction.
Canadians should unite behind a sensible, but scaled back, legal immigration system while rejecting the abuse of our system. Rejecting abuse includes saying no to welfare payments for people here illegally, not allowing schools to offer domestic tuition to those who don’t qualify, and ensuring that those who came here on temporary visas actually leave when their time is up.
There is strong support for all of these measures with the Canadian public, there sadly isn’t in Ottawa.