700 Indian students studying in Canada risk being deported due to fake “admission letters”

Guwahati: The Canadian Border Security Agency (CBSA) recently sent deportation letters to over 700 Indian students in Canada after discovering that their purported “admission offer letters” to Canadian universities were fraudulent.

According to many media reports, these students had registered for study visas through the company “Education Migration Services” in Jalandhar, Punjab, which is run by Brijesh Mishra. According to reports, Mishra charged each student more than Rs 16 lakh for all costs other than airfare and security deposits. The cost of the charge includes tuition at prestigious Humber College.

The students travelled to Canada in 2018–19 in order to study there. The “admission offer letters” came under examination, though, when these students sought for permanent residency (PR) in Canada, which exposed the significant deception. The paperwork used to issue the student visas were false, the CBSA discovered after an inspection.

Those with knowledge of the situation claim that these students had already finished their education there, obtained work authorizations, and accrued job experience. But, when they applied for PR, the issue materialised. They claimed that the reason there were so many people applying to Canada is because this fraud is one of its type and has only recently surfaced in Canada.

The Indian Express cited a Jalandhar-based consultant who has been sending students to Canada for the past ten years as saying that there were numerous components to the fraud, from getting forged college offer letters to giving students forged fee payment receipts for visas as they are only issued after paying the fee to the colleges.

An established consultant from Kapurthala said, “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.”

According to the consultant, there is a significant rush among Indian students to study in Canada, and some dishonest brokers take advantage of this desperation by working with private universities there.

One of the victims of this scam, a student from Jaladhar, claimed that she received her diploma in computer science from a private college in Canada because, despite her insistence on admission to a public (government) college, she was given the offer letter of a private college when she applied for a visa. Her money for that was also reimbursed by the agent, who also helped her get accepted into the new college. She was also informed by the consultant that once she arrived in Canada, she would be free to switch colleges.

She added that it happens frequently for students to switch colleges after arriving in Canada and after giving the agency a commission. Several students said that the agent in question had returned their payment, which caused them to enrol at a different college without informing the Canadian government. They claimed that by returning the fee, the situation appeared less suspicious.

The Indian Express cited another analyst as adding that in this situation, the colleges’ roles must also be scrutinised to determine whether they had genuinely issued the admission letters or whether they had been forged by the agency. Additionally, he stated that given that most students are unaware of such things, it should not be ruled out that these colleges may be involved.

It should be mentioned that the Quebec government previously placed a few Montreal universities on a blacklist due to their high rate of international student admittance. The Indian High Commission urged the students who had applied to these colleges to lodge a complaint with the Quebec government’s minister of higher education. The Canadian High Commission now regards these pupils sympathetically after previously giving them unfavourable ratings, according to a consultant. According to reports, these students’ only remaining option is to file a lawsuit challenging the deportation letters, a process that might take up to four years.

According to Kuldeep Singh Chahal, the police commissioner for Jalandhar, no such complaint has been brought to his attention as of yet.

The victimised students said that the agent used cunning tactics to avoid signing any applications themselves and instead persuaded them to do so, turning them become self-applicants. As a result, it is now challenging to demonstrate the agent’s participation in the deception. As a result, it is equally challenging to demonstrate these students’ innocence.