Dozens of Chinese graduate students are accusing Ottawa of discrimination because their study permit applications have been left in limbo for months, preventing them from beginning their advanced degrees at Canadian universities.

"It's already [done] very serious damage to my life," Yixin Cheng, a 27-year-old would-be PhD student in computer science at UBC, told CBC News from Hangzhao, China.

Cheng is one of a group of 25 students who have filed a case in Federal Court against Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), alleging their files have been unfairly stalled in the security screening phase. All of them have been accepted into graduate-level programs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) at universities including UBC, McGill and the University of Wa

See Full Page