Beyond Canada, The Roads Not Yet Taken

What Punjab’s Students and Skilled Aspirants Need to Know About the World That
Has Replaced Canada

By Jatinder Benipal, President — ALIEC

INDUSTRY ANALYSIS — FEATURE
ALIEC JOURNAL — July 2026

For twenty years, the arithmetic of ambition in Punjab followed a single, dependable
formula. A cousin in Brampton. A Post-Graduate Work Permit. A path to permanent
residency worn so smooth by those who had walked it before that few paused to ask
whether the ground might one day give way. This spring, in a small office in Mohali, a
young engineer with a 7.5 IELTS band asked her father the question an entire generation is
now asking: if Canada has closed, where do I go?
She is not alone in asking it, and the question deserves a better answer than nostalgia. What
has changed is not merely a policy in Ottawa. It is the map itself — quietly, comprehensively
redrawn — and families still navigating by the old one risk being left behind.
The numbers tell their own austere story. Indian student departures, which climbed to 9.08
lakh in 2023, fell to 7.7 lakh the following year and to 6.26 lakh in 2025 — a decline of 31
per cent in two years, according to Bureau of Immigration data placed before the Rajya
Sabha by the Ministry of Education in February 2026.
Few regions absorbed this contraction as fully as Punjab. As per Bureau of Immigration
data cited in Parliament by the Ministry of External Affairs Chandigarh recorded the
highest rate of student migration in the country — 10,150 departures per lakh residents
between January 2016 and February 2021. Punjab followed at 869 per lakh, ahead of Delhi,
Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala, and supplied a disproportionate share of the 4.27 lakh Indian
students once enrolled in Canadian institutions. So, when Canadian student visa
applications from India collapsed from roughly 20,900 in August 2023 to barely 4,500 two
years later — a contraction of nearly 80 per cent, per IRCC data reported by Reuters — it
was Punjab’s aspirants who bore the earliest and heaviest weight of it. By August 2025, the
rejection rate for Indian applicants had climbed to 74 per cent, higher than for any other
major source country.
The causes were as much political as structural. The diplomatic rupture between India and
Canada following the Nijjar allegations in September 2023 strained a relationship on which
an entire generation’s plans had quietly depended. What followed was a steady tightening:
hard ceilings on study permits, steeper proof-of-funds thresholds, narrower avenues for
post-study work, and a permanent residency pathway that grew harder to walk each year.
The United Kingdom and Australia moved in similar directions, closing off the other two
destinations that, with Canada, had once defined a Punjabi student’s imagination.

What has gone largely unremarked is this: the world did not close. It simply moved
elsewhere.
Germany’s Opportunity Card now allows qualified professionals to relocate without a job
offer and search for one over twelve months, with the EU Blue Card offering permanent
residency in as little as 21 months — at institutions charging a fraction of Canadian tuition.
Ireland offers English-medium degrees, a genuine post-study work visa, and a graduate
market anchored by the European headquarters of Google, Meta, and Apple. The UAE
offers tax-free earnings, a five-year Green Visa requiring no employer sponsorship, and a
proximity to Punjab — four hours from Amritsar — no Western nation can rival. Australia’s
Skills in Demand visa now processes specialist applications in a median of seven working
days. New Zealand’s Green List grants direct residency to healthcare workers, engineers,
and IT professionals from the moment they land.
None of this is a consolation prize for what Canada once offered. For many students, it is
considerably better: faster, more affordable, and in several cases a swifter route to
permanent residency than Canada managed even in its most generous years.
What this moment demands of Punjab’s families is not merely a change of destination but a
change of method. The old habit — choosing a country because a relative lives there,
applying, and hoping — no longer serves anyone well. The Study-Work-PR pathway built
around Canada’s PGWP will not return in the form that made it so seductive, and those still
pursuing it chase a route that has narrowed almost to disappearance. The students who
prosper over the coming decade will be those who choose their destination on its actual
merits — its points system, its genuine demand for their skills, its true cost of living against
realistic starting salaries — rather than assumptions inherited from a cousin’s WhatsApp
message.
This, properly understood, is a story of encouragement rather than loss. Punjab’s appetite
to see its children study, work, and build lives beyond its borders has not diminished in a
single household. Only the map has changed. Germany, Ireland, the UAE, Australia, and
New Zealand are not fallback destinations — for many aspirants, they are now the wiser
first choice. Those who grasp this shift early, and choose their path with the rigour once
reserved for choosing a university, will find the coming decade opens more doors than the
one behind it closed.
The reckoning, for those willing to read the new map, is not a warning. It is
an invitation.

The writer is President, Association of Licensed Immigration and Education Consultants (ALIEC). Views expressed are personal.
Mohali, Punjab | www.aliec.org | June 2026
SOURCES CITED IN THIS ARTICLE

National departure figures (2022–2025) and the 31% decline: Bureau of Immigration, Ministry of Home Affairs, data tabled by
the Ministry of Education in the Rajya Sabha, February 2026.
Chandigarh/Punjab per-capita student migration figures (10,150 and 869 per lakh) and comparison with Delhi, Andhra Pradesh
and Kerala: Bureau of Immigration data cited in Parliament by the Ministry of External Affairs, 2021.
The 4.27 lakh Canada-enrolment figure: Ministry of External Affairs data tabled in Parliament, reported by The Indian Express
(July 2025) and cross-verified against Rajya Sabha proceedings (August 2024).
Canadian student visa application volumes (Aug 2023–Aug 2025) and the 74% rejection rate: Immigration, Refugees and
Citizenship Canada (IRCC) data, reported by Reuters and carried by Business Today, Gulf News and The Tribune, November
2025.
Germany EU Blue Card timeline: Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF). Australia Skills in Demand
processing time: Australian Department of Home Affairs published service standard.