India's smuggling claims against Canadian colleges reveal 'exploitative' immigration system, experts say

An investigation by Indian authorities that accused dozens of Canadian colleges and universities of being linked to a scheme to smuggle students across the Canada-US border reveals the “shocking” extent to which loopholes in the immigration system can be exploited, some experts say.

“If the allegations are true, it reveals shocking gaps in our integrity protocols. … It's deeply, deeply troubling and troubling,” Calgary-based immigration lawyer Raj Sharma told the CBC News Network, suggesting the allegations are “wide-ranging.” Measuring Human Trafficking.”

India's Enforcement Directorate said in a news release on Tuesday that it found evidence of two “entities” in Mumbai involved in human trafficking after investigating Indian links to the Patel family, who died in January 2022 while trying to cross the border from Manitoba. Minnesota during cold weather.

The Enforcement Directorate found in its investigation that around 25,000 students were referred by one institution, over 10,000 students were sent by another institution to various colleges outside India every year.

According to the Enforcement Directorate, arrangements will be made for Indian nationals to enroll in Canadian colleges and universities and apply for student visas.

But once the Indian nationals arrived in Canada, instead of enrolling in college, they illegally crossed the border from Canada to the US and the fees charged by Canadian schools were returned to the individual's account, the Enforcement Directorate said.

The investigation also found that about 112 Canada-based colleges had contracts with one organization and more than 150 with another, the Enforcement Directorate said.

The allegations have not been proven in court and India has not identified the Canadian colleges allegedly involved.

RCMP reached India

RCMP spokesperson Camille Boilly-Lavoie told CBC News in an email that it has reached out to India through international police liaison officers to get more information about the investigation.

Colleges and Institutes Canada, Canada's national advocacy organization for post-secondary education network, said it had no details on the nature of the colleges allegedly involved in the Indian allegations.

The study permit application and approval process is managed entirely by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the student applicant and the post-secondary institution, said Dena Smokem, spokeswoman for Ontario's Ministry of Colleges and Universities.

“The Ministry of Colleges and Universities has no role in this process,” Smokem told CBC News in an email. “As our government has done repeatedly, we continue to call on the federal government to implement more stringent border control measures to protect Ontario, our institutions and all of Canada.”

In an email to CBC News, IRCC said it has focused on strengthening the integrity of the international student program since 2023.

It imposed a cap on enrollment levels in schools (DLIs) approved by the provincial or territorial government to host international students.

IRCC said it would require DLIs to verify all letters of acceptance, present consequences for institutions that fail to participate in student compliance exercises, and raise minimum financial requirements for study permit applicants.

Experts say the immigration system lacks oversight

But former Canada Border Services Agency officer Kelly Sundberg, a professor of criminology at Mount Royal University, said the system has no oversight and is being “exploited” by international criminals.

“This kind of fraud that games our immigration system has actually been going on for a long time,” he said, adding that the amount potentially involved is “staggering.”

The U.S. has been using biometric technologies like facial recognition and fingerprinting in immigration processing for more than a decade and has eliminated identity fraud in its programs, Sundberg lamented.

But Canada doesn't have the staff or technology to effectively screen documents or people, he said.

Sundberg said he would be “absolutely shocked” to learn that there are colleges or universities that are actively and knowingly involved in this alleged criminal enterprise.

“But I'm not surprised that we see people coordinated to take advantage of our broader system in Canada, the United States and abroad,” he said.

Ken Zaifman, a Winnipeg immigration lawyer, says that from his experience, the responsibility for oversight should lie with educational institutions.

“And that didn't happen. They depended on international students to fund their programs,” he said.

Colleges and educational institutions should have known there was such a problem recruiting international students, Zaifman said, but instead chose to continue hiring agents outside of Canada to recruit students who had no control over what they were doing.

“The numbers were too significant and no one wanted to do anything about it,” he said.

“Some universities were a little more diligent, but not all. They were hiring agents and they were attracting students, and it never occurred to them that these student movements weren't real.”

'Fly-by-night' schools

But Robert Huish, an associate professor at Dalhousie University in the Department of International Development Studies, says he believes many of the schools involved in the alleged scheme may be “fly-by-night” private colleges.

“Some of these private colleges that facilitate this business aren't really colleges at all. They're an abandoned office with an old copy of Microsoft Word, and that's the entire curriculum,” he said.

“The big emphasis here is not the legitimate colleges and legitimate universities across the country, but these overnight things that open up at gas stations.”