There has been criticism that Canada is taking in way too many students from India, over 50 percent of all foreign students, creating chaos, violence in cities like Brampton which has the largest concentration of Indian students in Canada. This is leading to a whole host of social problems like crime, sexual exploitation of female Indian students, religious conflicts and other unwanted negative behavior. There have been calls to clamp down on such a large intake of students from students from a single country as there should not be more than 25-30 percent maximum intake from one country and Canada has applied this to China which used to be the single largest supplier of students and now ranks much down. 

By PD Raj – Senior Writer DESIBUZZCanada 

With News Files

TORONTO – There has been criticism that Canada is taking in way too many students from India, over 50 percent of all foreign students, creating chaos, violence in cities like Brampton which has the largest concentration of Indian students in Canada. This is leading to a whole host of social problems like crime, sexual exploitation of female Indian students, religious conflicts and other unwanted negative behavior. 

There have been calls to clamp down on such a large intake of students from students from a single country as there should not be more than 25-30 percent maximum intake from one country and Canada has applied this to China which used to be the single largest supplier of students and now ranks much down. 

It is well known that Indian students are simply using the study visa to get immigration into Canada, an easier way to immigrate rather than the old way of coming in through other means and then filing a refugee or immigration claim.

But this education immigration is filled with fraud and experts say that such a big fraud was a result of a large number of Indian student applicants to Canada.

Now the Canadian authorities are cracking down on this fraud and have sent more than 700 deportation letters to Indian students in Canada after the authorities found their ‘admission offer letters’ to educational institutions to be fake. They received the deportation letters from the Canadian Border Security Agency (CBSA) recently.

According to media reports, these 700 students had applied for study visas via Education Migration Services (located in Jalandhar) headed by Brijesh Mishra, who had charged more than Rs 16 lakh per student for all expenses, including admission fee to premier institute Humber College but excluding the air tickets and security deposits.

These students had gone to Canada on a study basis in 2018-19 .  The fraud came to light when these students applied for permanent residency (PR) in Canada for which the ‘admission offer letters’ came under scrutiny, that is, the CBSA examined the documents based on which the visas were issued to the students and found the ‘admission offer letters’ to be fake.

Experts said most of these students had already completed their studies, got work permits and gained work experience as well. It’s only when they applied for PR, they landed in trouble.

A Jalandhar-based consultant, who has been sending students to Canada for the past 10 years, told The Indian Express that in such frauds multiple factors are involved – from getting forged offer letters of colleges to providing forged fee payment receipts to students for seeking visas as visas are issued only after depositing the fee to the colleges, reported The Indian Express.

“In this case most of the students were provided the offer letters of such colleges where they did not study eventually after landing in Canada. They were either shifted to other colleges or asked to wait for the next semester, that is, not in the semester which was shown in the documents at the time of applying for visas,” an established consultant from Kapurthala said, adding that there is a huge rush of Indian students to Canada and such desperation of students is being capitalised by some fraudulent agents by conniving with a Canada-based private college.

A Jalandhar-based student, who is among these 700 students, on the condition of anonymity told The Indian Express that she has completed her diploma in computer science from a public college in Canada because at the time of seeking visa, she was given the offer letter of a private college but she insisted for getting admission to the public (government) college and for that her fee was returned by the agent and he facilitated her to get admission in the new college. She said the consultant told her that she can change her college after reaching Canada.

She said that there are several such cases wherein students change their college on reaching Canada after paying some commission to the agent.

Several students said that their fee was returned to them by the said agent because of which they took admission to some other colleges but they did not update the Canadian government about it. And returning the fee (by agent) made things less suspicious about the agent.

Another consultant told The Indian Express that in this case the role of those colleges which had issued the ‘admission offer letters’ must be scrutinised, that is, whether they (colleges) had actually issued them or were they forged by the agent. He also said that the involvement of such colleges cannot be ruled out as students are mostly unaware of such things.

Earlier also a few colleges in Montreal were blacklisted by the Quebec government due to high rate of admission of international students there, and students who took admission to these colleges were advised by Indian High Commission to file a complaint with the ministry of higher education, the government of Quebec. These students were then given a negative review but now they are being considered empathetically by the Canadian High Commission, said a consultant. Reports said that the students’ only option is to challenge the deportation notices in court, where proceedings could last around four years, reported The Indian Express.

With Files from The Indian Express