Hard to Survive in Beautiful Vancouver

As we all know what minimum wage is, it is actually the lowest wage a company is legally allowed to pay its employees. The lowest wage permitted by law is greatly needed to make a life easier. Nowadays, everything is gone up regularly which requires a change in the minimum wage as well. Hence, international students are one of the reasons, the minimum wage should be increased because of high cost of living, higher tuition fees and labor exploitation. Accordingly, with the increase in the cost of school, living and high costs of goods and services, international students are not able to afford the high expenditures of the expensive city of Vancouver.

Besides this, students choose different ways to accomplish their responsibilities to approach their goal illegally.

First and foremost, the cost of living has been increased drastically. It is difficult to depend on the lowest pay permitted by law in the city of Vancouver. Due to high expansion in living costs, individuals are not living their decent lives because of exceptionally costlier Vancouver.

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According to a new report from LowestRates.ca, “The cost of living for a millennial (18 to 34) is going to total a whopping $2795.64 per month in 2018” (“Report”). This information reveals that it is very challenging for international students to tackle the high costs of Vancouver. It requires a huge amount of money to get better standard of living in Vancouver. According to Ronald Adams, “A parent working full time at minimum wage will simply not even earn enough income to cover basic needs like food, clothing and shelter” (614).

It depicts that if it is extremely hard for the full-time employees then how it functions for worldwide understudies in view of high living expenses of Vancouver even understudies are working low maintenance. Therefore, global understudies are attempting to offset being understudies with long work hours on their occupations, which many need to endure given the high costs of convenience in Vancouver. Thus, difficult to remain on the lowest pay permitted by law as a global understudy alone in Vancouver to oversee fundamental needs.

Moreover, transportation expenditures and expensive plans of cellphones matters being an international student. According to the report of Yasmin Aboelsaud, it is described that transportation expenses are $93 per month and it can be low at any rate for those individuals who use transit from one point to then onto the next point in the city’s center (“Report”). For instance, people who are living in Yaletown. In addition, transportation payments should be discounted for the international students as they can save money for their other monetary purposes every month. Another factor is phone, which costs at least $75 per month for 2GB data while the 2015 CRTC-Commissioned Wall report said, “An unlimited talk-and-text cellphone plan with 5GB of data costs an average of $107.50 in Canada” (“Report”). These plans are way too expensive for every individual who is struggling to survive in the beautiful city of Vancouver. As a result, high living costs including housing, transportation and phone plans are way much higher in Vancouver while depending on minimum wage.

Secondly, international students are facing obstacles due to rise in tuition fees. Educational cost charges in Canada ascended by a normal of 3.3 percent for student residential understudies and 6.3 percent for global students in 2018/19 (“Report”). According to the Statistics Canada report, “The average tuition fees for international students in 2019/19 are CA $27159 per year while the Canadian citizen studying in Canada can expect to pay an average of CA $6838 per year” (“Report”). These insights demonstrate multiple times more educational cost charges for a universal understudy than a native. Therefore, international students are “skipping classes to work longer hours” to pay their educational cost expenses (Todd). That is the reason, understudies offer need to more than concentrates even they work to pay their scholastic expenses for their investigations. Moreover, in the report of Douglas Todd, Balraj Kahlon, of Guru Nanak’s Free Kitchen, a Surrey organization said, “Some Indians students are alleged to be working more than 12 hours a day, when their Canadian study permit is supposed to limit them to 20 hours a week.” It proves that understudies are working increasingly more unlawfully by infringing upon the laws of a migration strategy to meet their objectives towards educational cost charges. As a result, many of the international students are living under financial stress due to higher tuition fees than citizens.

Thirdly, international students are facing obstacles as they suffered from labor exploitation. Students start working under the table jobs, known as ‘cash jobs’ as an alternative way to meet their expenses. But of course, it’s illegal because international students are breaking the immigration laws which may has bad repercussions. From the article of Vancouver Sun, Barj Dhahan, owner of the Sandhurst Group of companies described, “Some of the 500,000 international students in Canada ‘working illegally under the table to make ends meet’ and are usually paid in cash” (Todd). This data shows that students are under financial stress and they are insecure about their jobs but still work because everything is gone up. There is a lot of exploitation because cash jobs have insecurity, sometimes employers don’t pay on time and sometimes they don’t pay at all.

Moreover, students have stress to managing on their own to pay their extremely high expenses of tuition fees. In this way, students are struggling and doing illicit activities but they end up with exploitation. Shinder Purewal, a Kwantlen polytechnic university political scientist and a former citizenship court judge said, “Although newcomers on student visas are limited to working 20 hours a week, end up “working more than full time to cover costs,” simply because Canadian employers don’t pay them minimum wage” (Todd). The reason behind working on cash are high expenses which students cannot afford lonely but they are exploited by some dubious employers. So, students are working more than the hours they are permitted to cover their academic costs.