Toronto: Nearly 20,000 Indian students didn’t attend Canadian institutions in March-April 2024, raising compliance concerns amid human trafficking allegations.
Toronto: Nearly 20,000 international students from India didn’t turn up at the Canadian institutions they were enrolled during the months of March and April last year, according to a compliance report of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada or IRCC.
These details were featured in the report in the outlet Globe and Mail on Wednesday.
Of the total 49,676 students, 6.9 per cent were no shows at their designated learning institutions or DLIs, according to the report, based on IRCC data, which itself was predicated on information collected from colleges and universities.
As far as India in concerned, 91.1 per cent of the total or 327646 were compliant, while another 19582 or 5.4 per cent were not. In addition, information on 12553 of them was not reported by the institutions.
The non-compliance rates for students from India, therefore, was below the average in the report.
It was far higher for a clutch of students from some African nations. The non-compliance figures for Burundi, Rwanda and Chad stood at 49 per cent, 48.1 per cent and 44.6 per cent, respectively.
Immigration analyst Darshan Maharaja said he could “guarantee” the numbers in the “no-show demographic” were “vastly higher” than that reported.
But in a series of posts on X, Dikshit Soni, principal consultant at SAAB Immigration Services, indicated the reading of the data ought to be more nuanced. “Students arrived in Canada, often realizing too late that their institution didn’t make them eligible for a PGWP (post graduate work permit). This left them scrambling to switch schools, often without properly updating IRCC,” he stated.
The no shows were inflated by “gaps” in policy, which were addressed in November 2024 as IRCC stipulated that students would have to secure a new permit before changing institutions, he said. However, he added, “Was the system abused? Oh yes, BIG TIME. But not just students. Some students did misuse the system – switching schools without proper updates, failing to enroll, or working without studying. Some colleges also exploited the system for enrollments.”
The report follows allegations from India’s Enforcement Directorate of an immigration racket. In a statement on December 24, it alleged officers from its Ahmedabad office “conducted search operations” on December 10 and December 19 at eight locations in Mumbai, Nagpur, Gandhinagar and Vadodara as part of the ongoing probe in the case of Bhavesh Ashok Bhai Patel and others” with the purpose of “for hatching a well-planned conspiracy, to send the victims/persons to USA through Canada via illegal channel thereby committing the offence of human trafficking.”
It also alleged Canadian institutions had colluded in the operations, as it said, “It is further revealed that around 112 colleges based in Canada have entered into agreement with one entity and more than 150 with another entity. Their involvement in the instant case is under investigation.”
In December, a spokesperson for IRCC said, in an email, “Indian nationals were the largest cohort of illegal entries into the US, and that number has also decreased significantly thanks to our quick action.
“As soon as we learned of this abuse of our system, including the impact to our shared border with the US, we took action. Our swift actions have resulted in an 84% decrease in illegal crossings into the US from Canadian permit/visa holders since June 2024. They have also resulted in 61% more refusals for countries in which we have been noting the highest levels of abuse,” he added.
“Addressing irregular migration is a priority for Canada. Canada also works collaboratively with the US and international partners on issues of visa integrity, border management and safe and orderly migration,” the IRCC spokesperson said.
IRCC has seen an increase in exploitation of its temporary resident visas, including students. “What was once a low-risk temporary resident program is now being assessed as higher-risk given changes to the global migration context, including the growing number of conflicts and crises, increased abuse and fraud, and increased organized smuggling,” the spokesperson added.
US President-elect Donald Trump has threatened if Ottawa does not curb the flow of illegal immigrants into America, his Administration will impose a 25 per cent tariff on imports from Canada, making action in that regard a priority for Canada.
The ED investigation was precipitated by the death of four members of the Patel family in Manitoba on January 19, 2022, as they waited to be transported into America in several winter conditions.
The 2022 case that is the focus of the Enforcement Directorate’s investigation is a tragedy—the type of which both India and Canada are committed to preventing from happening again,” a Global Affairs Canada spokesperson noted, in an email to the Hindustan Times earlier this month.
Two persons familiar with the discussions with Ottawa said India raised its concerns over the human smuggling matter multiple times since the tragedy in Manitoba.
Source: https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/20000-indian-students-skipped-canadian-colleges-last-year-ircc-101737016911855.html
