Canada Is Letting a Generation of Graduates Slip Away

Nicolas is one of them. I first met Nicolas a few weeks ago to learn more about his journey.

He came to Canada from Chile in 2017 at 18, completed a five-year bachelor’s degree, built his adult life here, and has been working on a PGWP since 2022. On December 3, 2025, his permit expired. With no workable extension pathway, he boarded a flight back to Chile, leaving behind a Canadian career, a Canadian community, and a future he’d spent eight years building.

His story isn’t rare. It’s a snapshot of what the numbers now suggest Canada is about to repeat, at scale.

The Numbers

According to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) data provided to The Globe and Mail, 31,610 people holding valid PGWPs as of September 30, 2025, will see their permits expire by December 31, 2025.

This wave is smaller than last year’s, when roughly 70,000 PGWPs were due to expire during the same period, but it is still enormous.

And here’s what we know about what happens after. IRCC data show that in 2025 roughly 115,000 PGWP holders had their permits expire, and only about 12% managed to extend their status or switch to another permit. Some will transition to permanent residence, but these make up a small portion of overall PR numbers.

Nicolas: A Real Example of What Canada is Losing

Nicolas’s profile is exactly what Canada’s immigration system has historically been built to retain:

• a Canadian bachelor’s degree
• three years of skilled Canadian work experience
• CLB 11 in English
• a CRS score of 507
• a Canadian job paying $70K+, and contributing at least $15,000 a year in taxes

He didn’t fail to integrate. He invested over $150,000 to study in Canada, then spent eight formative years building a life here. He graduated, entered the workforce, and established himself in a reputable job. He did everything right.

And yet when his PGWP expired, there was no predictable path to permanent residence.

His employer was ready to pursue an LMIA-supported work permit to keep him, until they backed out at the last minute. That single shift erased his only viable path to stay.

The result is a policy outcome Canada can’t afford: losing a Canadian-trained graduate with advanced English proficiency and a proven ability to integrate and contribute.

His Backup Plan is a Lottery, not a Pathway

Unlike many in his position, Nicolas may still have one way back to Canada. He could try his luck through Chile’s IEC Working Holiday program, which offers a one-year open work permit. But that isn’t a reliable option, it’s a long shot.

For 2025, Chile’s Working Holiday quota was just 725 spots. Demand was so intense that the season closed with more than 9,000 candidates still waiting for an invitation. In other words, his “backup plan” depends on being randomly drawn from a massively oversubscribed pool.

And even if he is selected, one more year in Canada may not be enough to secure permanent residence under today’s rules.

So his choice is grimly strategic:

• Come back if invited, keep investing in the Canadian future he’s already built, but with no clear route to stay long-term, or
• Stay in Chile, build foreign work experience in case Canada values it later, while risking permanent separation from the life and career he established here.

Either way, the system pushes him into limbo. And it’s not because he lacks credentials or commitment, but because Canada’s “three- step” immigration has become uncertain enough that even ideal candidates are forced to gamble.

Why This Matters Beyond Individual Stories

When Canada loses people like Nicolas at scale, it’s not just a personal tragedy on repeat, it’s a policy failure with economic fallout.

International students have:

• paid tuition that subsidises Canada’s post-secondary system,
• filled labour shortages during the pandemic rebound, and paid taxes,
• and integrated into communities and workplaces.

And yes, some will argue that not every international student can, or should, get permanent residence. That’s true in principle. But Canada effectively invited this cohort with a clear implied deal: study here, work here, and you’ll have a fair shot at staying. That promise was sometimes spoken outright and often communicated through policy design and marketing.

It is exactly what fueled the surge of the international-student population, growing from roughly 350,000 in 2015 to over one million by 2023.

Into the Unknown

Right now, there’s no transparent public plan for:

• how many PGWP holders will realistically transition to PR,
• what happens to those who don’t,
• how Canada will measure who leaves versus who stays without status.

In the absence of clarity, the outcomes are predictable, even if the government won’t say them out loud. Some graduates will leave, disappointed or exhausted. Some will cling to temporary stopgaps, cycling through short-term permits as long as they can. And some will fall into undocumented limbo, not because they intended to, but because the system left them no stable way forward.

At Moving2Canada, we try to go beyond headlines and policy updates; we focus on the real people living the consequences of these decisions, and the gaps between what’s promised and what’s possible. If this story resonated with you, join the Moving2Canada community for more on-the-ground reporting, practical context, and human stories like Nicolas’s, delivered straight to your inbox.