Short on time? Here are the highlights:
- Canadian government announces it will adopt a case-by-case approach to investigating the circumstances of Indian students who entered Canada on the basis of fake Letters of Admission (LOAs)
- Most students did not even know their LOAs were forged by an unscrupulous person posing as an agent
- Student protests played a role in the government’s decision to freeze the deportation orders of students who had entered with fake LOAs
In March, the Canadian investigative TV show The Fifth Estate broke the story that dozens of Indian students in Canada had suddenly been informed by Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) that they were facing a deportation order. The reason? The Letters of Acceptance (LOAs) the students had used to obtain a Canadian study permit were discovered to be forged. But CBSA realised the documents had been forged in some cases years after the students had arrived in Canada; most affected students (the majority who came from the northern Indian state of Punjab) entered Canada in 2018 or 2019.
By the time the fraud was detected, many of the students had completed degrees, obtained work permits, and gained work experience. In some cases it was only when students applied for permanent residency that CBSA informed them that they had used fake LOAs and would now face deportation. Such deportations usually include a ban on re-entering Canada for five years.
Estimates of how many students have been affected vary; initially the number was thought to be as high as 700, but it now seems closer to 100. Whatever the exact number, we do know that as of mid-June, close to 60 students had been issued with deportation notices and eight had already been forced to return home.
CIC News explains:
“LOAs are issued by Canadian Designated Learning Institutions (DLIs) that are accredited by the government to welcome international students. With an LOA in hand, prospective international students can submit study permit applications to IRCC to be able to move to Canada. The reports indicate the LOAs were forged by an unscrupulous immigration consultant in India who charged the students a fee to help them study in Canada and has since disappeared. The students claim they were unaware of the consultant’s fraudulent behaviour.”
Why deport victims of fraud?
In a cruel twist, there was (until last week) no protocol in place to prevent the deportation of students who claim they had no idea that their documents were fake.
A student protest took shape, with affected students camping outside CBSA offices for days to make the case that they were victims rather than perpetrators of fraud and that it would be cruel to deport them. Lovepreet Singh, interviewed by CBC News a week before he was due to be deported, said, “[My family] sacrificed their whole life savings to sponsor my education here and after five, six years … I’m facing deportation. My dream is shattered.” (Mr Singh is, as of this writing, still in Canada while his case is assessed.)
Lovepreet Singh camped for 12 days outside a CBSA office outside Toronto. Source: CBC News
Ramanjot Brar, who came to Canada from Punjab, India, in 2018, spoke with the Globe and Mail about her experience. After completing a tourism degree at St. Lawrence College in 2020, she applied for and was successful in obtaining a work permit. But when she applied for permanent residency, CBSA told her that her acceptance letter was fake. She has paid thousands of dollars to an immigration lawyer she hired to help her fight her deportation order. Ms Brar said:
“They issued the visa, they gave us work permits and after five years they realised that our document was fake. Why didn’t they check when we landed here at Pearson Airport?”
Government pauses the deportations
On 14 June, Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) Minister Sean Fraser announced a freeze on the deportations and the creation of a task force that will review each of the students’ cases individually. No students are currently being deported.
Mr Fraser said, “I want to make it clear that international students who are not found to be involved in fraud will not face deportation.”
He explained:
“The Immigration Refugee Protection Act offers me discretionary authority which I believe should be exercised in the present context. Therefore, if the facts of an individual case are clear that an international student came to Canada with a genuine intent to study, and without knowledge of the use of fraudulent documentation, I have provided instructions for officers to issue a Temporary Resident Permit to that individual. This will ensure that these well-intentioned students and graduates can remain in Canada and ensure that they are not subject to the 5-year ban from re-entering Canada that normally follows in cases of misrepresentation. While this process runs its course, preliminary Temporary Resident Permits will be issued if they are required in order to prevent an imminent deportation for anyone under review.”
Mr Fraser emphasised, “The Government of Canada’s focus is on identifying those who are responsible for the fraudulent activity and not on penalising those who may have been affected by fraud.”
He said that while the case-by-case process would help to protect genuine, unknowing students from being deported, it would also would likely result in some students being sent home: “Those who were complicit in a fraudulent scheme will be held accountable for their actions and will bear the full consequences of Canadian law.” Non-genuine students (e.g., those who entered Canada as “students” and then went straight into employment rather than studies) will also face a penalty.
Expect more scrutiny of applications, says minister
Mr Fraser advised all prospective international students applying to study in Canada to “continue to ensure that, before applying for a study permit, they do their research, have an acceptance letter from a DLI, and refer to the official website to get information about our programmes. If you believe you have been deceived by an unscrupulous consultant, we urge you to come forward and report fraud.”
And he had a special warning for unethical agents, or bad actors posing as agents: “IRCC officials will be working with educational institutions, known as Designated Learning Institutions, to better detect and combat fraud. We are taking every opportunity to crack down on dishonest and fraudulent consultants who seek to abuse Canada’s immigration system and take advantage of those seeking to visit, work, study or settle in Canada.”
A systemic problem
Kareem El-Assal, director of policy at CanadaVisa, “a resource provided by Cohen Immigration Law for migrants,” told the Globe and Mail that mistakes made by the Canadian immigration department (IRCC) have contributed to the mess created by the fake LOAs.
Mr El-Assal says, “Based on the reports, it’s very clear that IRCC dropped the ball … they should have been aware of the fraudulent nature of the letters of admissions.” Though Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada receives hundreds of thousands of applications a year, he said, “the verification process should be more thorough.”
Immigration lawyer Manraj Sindhu (a former international student herself) also spoke to the Globe. Mr Sindhu had worked on the deportation case of Karamjeet Kaur, a student who had been defrauded by a consultant back in India. He said, “Ms. Kaur’s case, like many others, included her parents in rural India mortgaging their land and spending their life savings on their daughter’s education in Canada.” Mr Sindhu’s quote encapsulates the unfairness of the situation for families like Ms Kaur’s:
“They studied here, they worked here. They did everything that was expected from them, and then all of a sudden, they were told to go back to what? They have given their whole life, all their money.”
Punjabi applicants should take special care
University World News reports that it isn’t only in Canada that there are issues with applications from the Punjab state of India:
“The states of Punjab and Haryana have been under scrutiny in recent months after some Australian institutions suspended recruitment from these states following a rise in visa refusals. Most of the students facing deportation in Canada come from Punjab.
The Punjab state government has appealed to parents of prospective students to check the details of the colleges and the record of the admission and travel agents before sending their children for studies abroad.
Punjab NRI (non-resident Indians) Affairs Minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal urged India’s Home Minister Amit Shah to cooperate with the Punjab government to punish travel agents who are found to have duped students.”
A massive surge in international students
Canada has been absorbing new international students at a record rate – especially from India. Overall, international enrolments jumped by 31% year-over-year in 2022 – a huge increase – but growth from India was even more dramatic: 47%. Indian students now account for nearly four out of every ten foreign students in Canada.
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