Migrant Students

International students get sold a promise and handed a bill. We pay two, three, sometimes four times the tuition of domestic students for the same seats, we are locked out of most scholarships, grants, and loans, and then we are told to be grateful for the chance. Differential fees are not a funding tool. They are a message: you are not one of us, you are here to pay. Universities balance their budgets on migrant students while governments cut public funding, and we are the ones made to cover the difference.

We don't accept the idea that education is a product, that students are customers, or that some customers should pay more for where they were born.

We call for:

• An end to differential tuition. Same education, same fees. Where you were born is not a surcharge.
• Free, accessible post secondary education for everyone, regardless of status, and an end to tuition as a barrier to learning at all.
• Equal access to scholarships, grants, bursaries, and loans for migrant students, who are shut out of the support that makes studying survivable.
• An end to the trap where losing status, dropping a course, or hitting a rough patch can cost a student their healthcare, their work, or their right to stay.

Migrant students are not a market. We are workers, your neighbours, and members of this community, and we have marched on this before, alongside domestic students who know a two tier tuition system is nobody's win. We will march on it again. Their fight is our fight. Education is a right.