Canada – The new most preferred student destination

Canada, January 19: Canada is certainly the most favored destination for Indian students, as per the latest reports, with the number students having doubled in the recent past.

The reason for this significant increase in the number of students opting to migrate to Canada can be linked to the fact that the governments of other Western countries including US and Australia have introduced tighter immigration rules of students. 

Also, there have been fewer opportunities for immigrants to work abroad, especially in these countries. So, the number of Indian students choosing US and Australia has considerably gone down. On the other hand, UK seems to have gained in popularity as the number of students migrating in 2009 rose to 52,000, showing gains as compared to the figures of 29,000 students in the year 2008. 

New Zealand is also attracting greater number of Indian students. 

Indian students applying for Australian visa showed a decline of 46 percent in a span of four months from July till October 2009, the immigration department data reveals. This could be attributed to new strict immigration rules by the Australian immigration officials. While, the decrease in number of Indian students applying for US student visa by nearly 20-30 percent is due to comparatively less job opportunities. 

Till November 2009, a large number of Indian students have been thronging to UK on the basis of a student visa, especially after the norms of student visa were relaxed a bit. This opportunity was cashed in by various educational consultants who allured Indians to apply for UK student visa. 

But the UK government is considering plans to introduce English Language proficiency test as a condition before getting student visa. And once this gets approved, most probably in March 2010, it is likely to curb the growing numbers of students from India going to UK on student visa, at least by 30 to 40 percent.

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Harleen Kaur

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