RED DEER — Premier Danielle Smith says that international students who have not obtained permanent residency need to leave Canada after their visa expires, while emphasizing the need for more economic immigration allotments in Alberta. "Our view is that if you come here as an international student and your visa expires and you don't have permanent residency, you need to go home," said Smith on Wednesday at a joint press conference with Prime Minister Mark Carney. Her comments came in response to a question about international students from Portage College holding a hunger strike and protesting after learning they will not be granted the ability to stay in Canada after graduating, despite claiming that they were led to believe that they would. "I think perhaps Portage, maybe overstated the pathway to permanent residency," Smith said. .The premier added that the situation somewhat underlines the insufficient number of economic immigrants allotted to Alberta under federal regulations. "At the moment, we only have 6,400 spots," Smith said. "I think we've got 40,000 people who have sought permanent residency from us, and so that's I think we need a bit of a better balance.""Quebec is able to choose about 45,000 of their permanent residents through a different program, and so if you're looking at the scale, we think that we need to be able to have more autonomy to do that." Smith has been on a path pushing for Alberta to have greater control over immigration for months, emphasizing the need for Canada to refocus its attention on economic immigrants who can add to Alberta's economy, rather than temporary residents or asylum seekers. .Her quest took a turn in February when she announced that Albertans will be voting in referendum in October, where Smith will seek a mandate for her government to pursue more provincial control over immigration. "That would allow us to address some of the pressures that we're hearing about in the news," Smith said. "And also make sure that those who go through those programs with the hope of getting permanent residency, as long as we can identify a pathway where there's a job that is one that cannot be filled by an Alberta worker, then I think that we can work with the federal government to find more opportunities for us to make those choices." .The Western Standard asked Carney about Alberta's immigration referendum on Wednesday, and he said his government has already begun correcting Canada's immigration problems, and added that they are already working with provinces to give them more input. "We still need a few more years of restraint," said Carney. "There's a good argument for that, but we need to discuss that." "And then, at the same time, to talk about as economic migrants come in, 'Well, what skills should they have, and do the provinces have a better perspective on what those skills would be, and how do we engineer a system for that?' That was the spirit of the discussion, and we're very open to that discussion."
