@anonuser1234 and @twoinanddone as I mentioned above it’s primarily in response to the housing crisis. Immigration and temporary foreign resident numbers have skyrocketed of late and it’s adding extra pressure on housing and infrastructure. This is an attempt to reign in some of those numbers. It’s also aimed reducing abuses in the system. There is a subsection of the international student population, primarily from India and China, who come without any real intention of education but are instead exploiting the system as a backdoor immigration pathway and are basically temporary foreign workers, not students. They enrol in low quality 1 year PG Cert programs offered by 3rd party private providers licenced by the public colleges. They pay exorbitant tuition rates to get certificates or diplomas that are of dubious quality and some don’t even show up and are basically just there for the ability to work up to 40 hours a week. Most of the time they’re working in minimum wage jobs and are frequently exploited by employers and local landlords. This is an attempt to shut down those abuses and to ensure that international students are actually there to be students and not temporary foreign workers.
It’s definitely not about “keeping Americans out” and will probably have minimal impact on undergraduate university admissions. It also does not apply to graduate programs.