OAKVILLE, ON, Dec. 27, 2025 /CNW/ - As families gather across Canada this holiday season in warmth, safety, and anticipation of a new year, over 130 top-performing postgraduate students from Gaza remain stranded, left to navigate war, starvation, and displacement while Canada delays their study permits without justification.

For more than 18 months, these students—admitted to competitive, funded research programs at Canadian universities—have waited in limbo. Despite being admitted to conduct research in areas such as artificial intelligence, environmental sciences and engineering fields that are needed for Canadian economic growth, their files remain stalled, their futures on hold, and their lives at risk. While Canadians reflect on a season of compassion and renewal, these students have been abandoned by Canada.

Instead of welcoming these students with the urgency and support Canada has shown to others in global crises, the Government of Canada has erected bureaucratic barriers and enforced policies that discriminate against Palestinian students.

For the past year, rather than resolving this urgent humanitarian issue, Minister of Immigration Lena Metlege Diab has shifted blame across departments. Meanwhile, applicants from Gaza have been killed, injured, starved, displaced, and have even lost their hard-earned university admission offers. All because their files were unjustifiably stalled.

Minister Metlege Diab has refused to use the authority available under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to temporarily exempt students in Gaza from biometric requirements—a measure used in the past for Ukrainian or Afghan applicants, including students. She has also excluded them from IRCC's expedited 14-day student visa processing stream announced in November. Instead, her office insists these students must "wait their turn"—even though their turn never seems to come.

At the same time, the Ministry of Public Safety continues to subject Palestinian applicants to extensive security screenings, without clear timelines, transparency, or justification, resulting in discriminatory and indefinite delays.

While Canada stalls, countries across Europe including France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and others have successfully evacuated and resettled Palestinian students in less than two weeks of receiving their university admission letters. These countries acted quickly to uphold humanitarian principles and protect the right to education.

Palestinian Students and Scholars at Risk (PSSAR) calls on the Prime Minister's Office to take direct responsibility for the leadership failure across Immigration, Public Safety, and Foreign Affairs. The discriminatory treatment, delay, and neglect of these students violate Canada's commitment to international humanitarian and human rights obligations.

In a season meant to celebrate new beginnings, Canada is extinguishing the dreams of students who believed education could offer them a future.

We Urge the Prime Minister to:

1. Launch an immediate investigation into systemic bias in the processing of applications from Gaza;
2. Direct IRCC to temporarily exempt Gaza-based students from biometric requirements given the impossibility of completing them under siege;
3. Immediately issue study permits for all Gaza students with valid Canadian university offers;
4. Establish an evacuation pathway for these students to reach safety and begin their studies;
5. Immediately issue study permits for Palestinian students who have completed their biometrics and have valid Canadian university offers.

Let this not be the legacy Canada carries into 2026. Let these students begin the new year with the same hope we wish for all our children.

About Palestinian Students and Scholars at Risk (PSSAR) Network
PSSAR Network is an independent, Canadian-based non-profit dedicated to helping Palestinian students and scholars access graduate education and research opportunities abroad, especially in the face of barriers, occupation, and systemic academic disruption.

SOURCE PSSAR