Canada Student visa fraud: The Canadian Border Service Agency have currently narrowed down their suspect list of fraud cases where students entered the country taking unfair advantage of the system to 300, sharply bringing it down from 2,000 cases as were reported earlier.
On 23 June, Reuters had reported that Canadian authorities had taken into custody, one Brijesg Mishra, an immigration agent from Jalandhar. On 24 July, the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) has laid charges against Brijesh Mishra for his involvement in defrauding 700 Indian students.
Indian students in Canada were facing mass deportation after the frauds came to limelight. Several students along with India’s foreign ministry had requested Canadian authorities to reconsider deporting the students and re-evaluate their credibility and eligibility for studying in Canada.
The Canadian authorities agreed to not deport the Indian students who were defrauded by several immigration agencies.
A Times of India report cited a letter from Canadian public safety minister Marco E L Mendicino, for the latest update on number of students who might still face the axe of Canadian authorities. The report said that some students had written to the minister on 8 June concerned about their visa status in Canada, following which the minister updated on the numbers.
“In 2018, CBSA was investigating organised crime groups and became aware of issues with students not attending school and becoming involved in criminality and gangs. This led to new lines of enquiry which ultimately, based on tips received from the public in 2020, led us to identify over 2,000 cases where fraudulent documents may have been used to obtain a student visa. In collaboration with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), we reviewed those cases and we narrowed them down to approximately 300 cases of concern,” the ToI report quoted the letter.
As per official data, there were more than 800,000 foreign students with active visas in Canada in 2022, including some 320,000 from India.
Earlier in 2023, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported that several students from India had been served deportation papers for using forged documents to enter Canada in an alleged immigration scheme.
As per the report, the acceptance letters appeared to have been written by universities but the Canada Border Services Agency informed the students the documents were fake and warned them that they could face deportation.
“Our government is taking action against those who are responsible for fraud, while protecting those who’ve come here to pursue their studies,” Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino said in a statement.
In June, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser announced a freeze on the planned deportation of dozens of students who entered the country using fraudulent university letters.
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Updated: 07 Aug 2023, 07:00 PM IST