Through higher education-migration ('edugration') systems, many immigrant-dependent countries have become structurally reliant on the retention of post-secondary international students as a source of the so-called global talent. This emerging area of research focuses primarily on the "potential" economic contributions international students may perform post-graduation. However, the labour international students perform "during" their studies--both within the broader labour market and, more specifically, the higher education sector--is relatively absent in the academic and public discourse, despite its growing significance. Drawing on the theoretical underpinnings of the modern/colonial global imaginary and the ways in which this imaginary frames international students as 'cash, competition, or charity' in the Global North (Stein & Andreotti, "Higher Education," 72, 225 239, 2016), we call for a renewed understanding of governments' engagement with--and higher education's complicity in--the framing of international students as workers. Utilizing collaborative autoethnography (CAE) as a method of inquiry, we explore ways the 'cash, competition, or charity' framing impacts international graduate students' experiences in the Canadian post-secondary context. We suggest an update to Stein and Andreotti's framing by adding 'labour' as a fourth dominant trope framing international students in Canada and, increasingly, across the Global North.