India’s trafficking claims against Canadian colleges reveal ‘exploited’ immigration system, experts say

An investigation by Indian officials that claims dozens of Canadian colleges and universities may be linked to a scheme to illegally transporting students across the Canada-US border reveals the “staggering” extent to which loopholes in the immigration system can be exploited, some experts say.

“If the allegations are true, it exposes shocking gaps in our integrity protocols … It’s deeply, deeply troubling and problematic,” Raj Sharma, a Calgary-based immigration lawyer, told CBC News Network, adding that the allegations suggest “widespread – large-scale people smuggling”.

India’s Enforcement Directorate said in a news release on Tuesday that it had found evidence of human trafficking involving two “entities” in Mumbai after investigating India’s link with the Patel familywho froze to death in January 2022 while trying to cross the border from Manitoba into Minnesota in freezing weather.

The Enforcement Directorate said its investigation found that around 25,000 students were referred by one legal entity and over 10,000 students were referred by another legal entity to various colleges outside India every year.

Arrangements will be made for Indian nationals to be admitted to Canadian colleges and universities and apply for student visas, according to the enforcement directorate.

But after the Indian nationals reached Canada, instead of joining the college, they illegally crossed the border from Canada to the US and the fee received by the Canadian schools was transferred back to the individuals’ account, the enforcement directorate said.

The investigation also revealed that about 112 colleges based in Canada entered into an agreement with one legal entity and more than 150 with another legal entity, the enforcement directorate said.

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

The RCMP contacted India

Camille Boily-Lavoie, a spokeswoman for the RCMP, said in an email to CBC News that it had contacted India through the international police liaison officers to seek additional information about the investigations.

Colleges and Institutes Canada, a national advocacy organization for the Canadian Post-Secondary Education Network, said it did not have details on the nature of the colleges reportedly involved in the Indian allegations.

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

“The Department of Colleges and Universities has no role in this process,” Smockum said in an email to CBC News. “As our government has repeatedly done, we continue to call on the federal government to introduce stronger border control measures to protect Ontario, our institutions and all of Canada.”

In an email to CBC News, IRCC said that from 2023 focuses on strengthening the integrity of the program for international students.

It says it has put a cap on enrollment levels at designated learning institutions (DLIs) — schools approved by a provincial or territorial government to accept international students.

IRCC says it has also required DLIs to check all acceptance letters, introduced consequences for those institutions that do not participate in student compliance exercises and increased minimum financial requirements for study permit applicants.

Immigration system lacks oversight, expert says

But Kelly Sundberg, a former Canada Border Agency officer who is a professor of criminology at Mount Royal University, said the system lacks oversight and is being “exploited” by transnational criminals.

“This type of fraud, of gaming our immigration system, has actually been going on for quite some time,” he said, noting that the number of people potentially involved “is staggering.”

The US has used biometric technologies such as facial recognition and fingerprinting in immigration processing for more than a decade and has nearly eliminated identification fraud in its program, Sundberg lamented.

But Canada does not have the staff or technology to effectively screen documents or individuals, he said.

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

“But I’m not at all surprised that we’re seeing people both in Canada, the United States and abroad who have coordinated to take advantage of our wide-open system,” he said.

Ken Seifman, a Winnipeg-based immigration lawyer, says in his experience, the responsibility for oversight should lie with educational institutions.

“And it didn’t happen. They were addicted to international students to fund their programs,” he said.

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

“The numbers were so significant and nobody really wanted to do anything about it,” he said.

“Some universities were a little more diligent, but not all. They were recruiting agents and recruiting students, and it never occurred to them that maybe these students’ movements weren’t genuine.”

Fly-by-night schools.

But Robert Hewish, an associate professor at Dalhousie University in the Department of International Development Studies, says he believes many of the schools involved in this alleged scheme may be primarily private “overnight” colleges.

“Some of these private colleges that were facilitating this trade are not really colleges. They’re an abandoned office that has an outdated copy of Microsoft Word and that’s the entire curriculum,” he said.

“The big focus here is not so much the legitimate colleges and legitimate universities across the country, but these everyday things that are opening up above the gas stations.”