He’s accused of defrauding international students. His visa was cancelled. How did this Indian education agent get into Canada?

2023/06/29 Leave a comment

Good question:

As some of the people he’s accused of defrauding faced potential deportation from Canada in March, an Indian education agent was living under the radar in British Columbia, the Star has learned.

Brijesh Mishra was sharing a rental house with five other people in Surrey, B.C., as authorities in India and in Canada tried to hunt him down over his alleged role in a scam involving fake Canadian college admission letters.

Even after his visitor visa had been cancelled for alleged “ghost-consulting,” Mishra managed to enter this country last October, crossing the U.S. border without being detected.

It was while trying to cross the U.S. border yet again this month that Mishra was finally arrested. Two days later, he found himself pleading for his release, and offering to fly himself home.

“I have a card from India, the credit card and debit card from which I was supporting myself,” he told an immigration tribunal, as he argued for his release.

“If I need more money, my wife send it to me with my cards. That is the thing I use,” said the father of a two-and-a-half-year-old in explaining how he had supported himself since first entering this country on Oct. 17 from south of the border without a visa.

A group of international students, said to be in the hundreds, have been flagged for possible deportation, accused of misrepresentation in their study permit applications.

They say they were unaware the college admission letters given to them were doctored, and say they only became aware after they had finished their courses and applied for postgraduate work permits, only to be flagged by border officials. Some cases were flagged during the students’ permanent residence application process.

Mishra has now been charged for offering immigration advice without a licence and with counselling a person to directly or indirectly misrepresent or withhold information from authorities

According to his detention review hearing, Mishra was issued a visa in 2019 but it was cancelled by the Canadian mission in Delhi “due to possible involvement in fraudulent activities involving ghost consultants,” before an alert was put out on him in February 2021.

Only licensed lawyers and consultants registered with the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants can legally offer immigration advice and services at a fee. Those who don’t have those qualifications are called “ghost consultants.”

Mishra was able to enter Canada at the Douglas port of entry at the Washington state border in October. It is unclear why Mishra had been in the U.S. CBSA declined to comment on how Mishra was able to enter Canada without a valid visa, citing the ongoing investigation involving him.

Based on his previous visa application records, authorities emailed him twice after had been in Canada, informing him of his “inadmissibility due to organized criminality” but did not receive a reply.

Border officials began a search for Mishra on April 27 and visited an address in Surrey. After a futile effort to locate him, Canada Border Services Agency issued a warrant for his arrest on May 4.

He was arrested on June 14 when he tried to re-enter Canada via the U.S. land border.

At his detention review two days later, the government alleged Mishra has been involved in “wide-scale immigration fraud” in relation to his roles with Easy Way Immigration and Education and Migration Services Australia.

It said his two co-directors of the company have been arrested and denied bail in India, and argued against Mishra’s release for fear he would not appear for his admissibility hearing or removal.

“He has demonstrated the ability to be quite mobile within Canada as well as to remain undetected by immigration authorities who were actively looking for him,” said Margaret Neville, counsel for the government.

“He has been mobile even throughout where he was staying in the Lower Mainland and … it would be very easy for Mr. Mishra to go underground and remain undetected again.”

Neville accused Mishra of not being forthcoming with CBSA about his arrest history in India when he was intercepted this month and asked about a police investigation in India into a company he was involved in between 2010 and 2013. He initially denied there was a police investigation.

“Have you ever had — like, you never had any other court matter?” the border agent asked.

“No,” Mishra replied.

He also initially denied he knew the lawyer who was supposed to have represented him on that matter, before admitting it was his wife who hired the lawyer and indicating he was aware of the “ongoing issues” in India and the allegations against him.

“Do you read the news at all?” the CBSA officer asked.

“TikTok sometimes. Student deportation in the news, I was never involved,” Mishra responded without being prompted. “This is a fake accusation. It’s fake news.”

In pleading for the man’s release, Mishra’s lawyer said there’s no court record before the tribunal to support the May 2013 arrest of his client. The lawyer said Mishra could not have been in India then because he was working in Australia as shown in the entry and exit stamps in his passports.

Regarding the allegations of Mishra’s involvement in organized criminal activity, his lawyer said the government’s only evidence came from a news report, where it was suggested the man was wanted by local police relating to charges involving several different crimes.

“He is being charged does not mean that Mr. Mishra has been involved in criminal activity himself, that he could have been — all his conduct could have been properly issuing documents, arranging papers for applications with no misrepresentation at all,” the tribunal was told.

“The activity could have been carried out solely by the individual who has already been arrested or the other person that the Indian authorities are purportedly seeking related to this alleged criminality.”

Mishra said he had not seen his young child in India since he came to Canada in October and that their only communication had been through What’sApp video calls, which are not allowed in the detention centre.

He also told the tribunal he would like to be removed from Canada as soon as possible and asked if he could just buy his own flight to leave the country.

After assessing the evidence and submissions, the tribunal upheld Mishra’s detention until the next review on June 23, the same day when he was charged.

Two weeks ago, the group of Indian international students were granted reprieve by Immigration Minister Sean Fraser, who agreed to stop their pending deportations until a task force investigates each case to determine if they were innocent or complicit in gaming Canada’s immigration system.

Source: He’s accused of defrauding international students. His visa was cancelled. How did this Indian education agent get into Canada?

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Exploitation of international students a consequence of using sector as economic driver, says advocate

2023/06/28 Leave a comment

Indeed:

Advocates for international students say an ongoing federal investigation into hundreds of fraudulent college acceptance letters is a symptom of larger problems that emerged as federal and provincial governments pushed to turn international education into an economic driver and an alternate pipeline for new immigrants in recent years.

News reports emerged in March that hundreds of Indian international students were facing deportation from Canada after submitting immigration applications that included fake post-secondary acceptance letters. Many had already been studying and working in Canada for several years, and had applied for permanent residency or for postgraduate work permits.

The students and their advocates have said they were the victims of fraud by immigration or education consultants, and Immigration Minister Sean Fraser (Central Nova, N.S.) promised on June 14 to use his discretion to freeze the deportations as federal authorities continued their investigation.

Balraj Kahlon, a public policy professional in British Columbia who co-founded the non-profit organization One Voice Canada, told The Hill Times that education agents taking advantage of international students is “not a new problem.” He described this as one of the knock-on effects of “privatizing a traditionally public service like education.”

One Voice Canada looks to support vulnerable international students. Kahlon released a report in January 2021 about the challenges they face. He said Canadians may not realize how “completely reliant” many Indian international students are on these agents.

“Especially with these colleges, you’re recruiting people right out of high school,” he said, from rural parts of India where students can’t look to family or friends for advice on the post-secondary landscape in Canada. That means the agents “are pretty much their sole source of information,” he said. “They’re also under the assumption that all colleges would be good in Canada. This is a Western country, a G7 country.”

International students must provide letters of acceptance from recognized Canadian post-secondary institutions when applying for student permits, but federal authorities are investigating applications that seemed to game the system through the use of fake letters.

The Canada Border Services Agency laid charges last week against an India-based education and immigration consultant who was detained when trying to enter Canada. CBSA spokesperson Maria Ladouceur said in a June 26 email to The Hill Times that Brijesh Mishra was arrested on June 23 “for his involvement in providing fake Canadian college admission letters to numerous students from Punjab and other states.”

Ladouceur added that Mishra faces five major charges under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, and would have a bail hearing on June 26. Christiane Fox, deputy minister for immigration, told a House committee on June 14 that her department had denied 976 immigration applications generated by one consultant, but the June 26 email did not specify if this was connected to Mishra.

CBC News reported on March 31 that authorities in India had arrested one of Mishra’s associates, a travel agent, for forging student visas.

Immigration minister troubled by stories that suggest exploitation of international students

Fraser told the House Citizenship and Immigration Committee on June 14 that the international student program contributes more than $22-billion annually to Canada’s economy, and that Canada has a responsibility to be honest with these students and “set them up for success.”

He said “the vast majority” of designated learning institutions are “good actors,” but that he has heard many stories that trouble him and suggest “that there are international students being exploited in this country.”

He described hearing about international students being enrolled in programs “that may have 1,000 students but with room in the facility for a few dozen students,” “brand new institutions” with inadequate mental health and housing supports, and students “being promised a pathway to permanent residency that does not exist for them.”

Fraser said he was committed to addressing these concerns, but added that the federal government will have to work with provincial and international partners on issues that are beyond its jurisdiction. He said it was up to the provinces to identify trusted educational institutions and hold them accountable, and that Canada will have to negotiate with other countries to regulate the activities of immigration and education consultants that operate outside Canada.

The federal immigration department published an evaluation of the international student program in 2015 covering the period from 2009 to 2013. This evaluation identified concerns about fraud and misuse of the program, including questions about non-genuine students and non-genuine educational institutes.

Advocates and researchers have previously described a landscape in which the creation of a pathway to permanent residency for international students in specific programs is drawing in applicants in growing numbers, accelerated by post-secondary institutions that rely on this influx of revenue to replace declining provincial funding.

Kahlon spoke to CBC News in March about international students’ efforts to seek redress from private colleges in B.C. for what he called unethical business practices. He told The Hill Times on June 22 about the close relationships that private colleges in Canada have with agents in India who act as recruiters for specific institutions. “The incentive is to maximize the number, because they get a commission for every student they recruit,” he said.

The emphasis on immigration over education, said Kahlon, means “a lot of these students are being funneled into worthless diploma programs” that don’t lead to good jobs in Canada, and make it difficult to meet family expectations that they will then sponsor and support other family members who are looking to immigrate.

“For a lot of these private colleges, I would say, education is just a front. They’re basically making money by moving people across the border,” added Kahlon.

He pointed out that there have also been similar problems over the years with recruitment agencies in India taking advantage of migrant workers looking for opportunities abroad, fed by demand for labour in Europe and the Middle East.

“You’re seeing the same problem now, it’s just happening in the context of education,” said Kahlon.

Fraser mentioned in his testimony at the House Immigration Committee that he would use his discretionary authority to prevent students from being deported until the department completes its fact-finding process.

Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) told The Hill Times in a June 26 email that the department is “actively pursuing a solution for international students who are facing uncertainty due to having been admitted to Canada with fraudulent college admission letters.”

IRCC spokesperson Sofica Lukianenko added that the federal government’s focus is on “identifying those who are responsible for the fraudulent activity and not on penalizing those who may have been victims of fraud.”

The IRCC statement said the department and the CBSA have formed a task force to review files “on a case-by-case basis,” but did not say if there could be further charges laid against other education agents.

Source: Exploitation of international students a consequence of using sector as economic driver, says advocate

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International students face tougher job prospects than domestic peers, B.C. research suggests

2023/06/27 Leave a comment

First reported in New Canadian Media, a more detailed account of the study and reasonable recommendations:

A survey of more than a thousand international students in British Columbia has found the vast majority see their student visas as a pathway to Canadian residency and citizenship, but instead, find limited employment opportunities and little government support to reach their dream.

The three-year project, led by Jenny Francis, a geography faculty member at Langara College in Vancouver, found that while postsecondary institutions like hers heavily recruit international students because of the hefty tuition fees they pay, there is little attention paid to whether they are suited to moving on to fulfilling Canadian careers in their field. Instead, the students end up working in low-paying jobs, facing high living costs and struggling to excel in their studies.

The current system is working well for employers, middle- and upper-income Canadians, postsecondary institutions and the federal government, according to Dr. Francis. “How do we make it work better for international students?” she asked, in a document that includes her main findings.

The number of international students admitted to Canadian postsecondary institutions has soared in recent years, partly as a response to stagnating government funding. International tuition fees are typically four times higher than those for Canadian students.

Statistics Canada reported last year that colleges across Canada saw an increase in international students of 154 per cent between 2015-2016 and 2019-2020. The increase was lower at universities: 39.6 per cent. In Dr. Francis’s study, the majority of respondents – 52 per cent – came from South Asia, the top source of international students to Canada since 2017.

Dr. Francis said she wanted to learn from international students what their experiences were. As part of her study, her team sent a 60-question survey to 7,000 students attending Langara College as well as the College of New Caledonia in Prince George, B.C., with 1,282 students agreeing to participate. The full study results will be published later this year, but Dr. Francis shared her preliminary findings with The Globe and Mail.

The research found the vast majority of those students intend to stay in Canada.

However, Statistics Canada figures show only 30 per cent of those with bachelors’ degrees became permanent residents within 10 years of obtaining their first study permit. The rates were slightly higher for those with master’s degrees at 50 per cent, and doctoral degrees at 60 per cent.

She said that nobody with whom she has shared the Statistics Canada information has ever heard of these numbers. ”Not instructors, not students. Everybody is surprised,” Dr. Francis said in an interview.

Among the provinces, British Columbia has by far the lowest rate of international students transitioning to permanent residency, both five years and 10 years after their first study permits.

“I do feel students are sold a dream,” Dr. Francis said.

Part of the problem is that Canada only expects between 30 and 50 per cent of them to stay, depending on their level of education. But a far higher percentage of students expect they will, she said.

“So there’s a mismatch. Almost all students intend to stay.”

Dr. Francis’s study mirrors findings from Sandra Schinnerl, a post-doctoral fellow at UBC’s Centre for Migration Studies. Her research showed around 60 per cent of international students desire to stay in Canada after graduation, but that the average economic outcomes of these graduates are below that of their domestic peers.

She said the number of international students who make it through the process to stay in Canada permanently hasn’t changed between 2001 and 2022. That transition rate has been stable at about 30 per cent.

“And so has the message changed?” she asked, questioning whether immigration consultants and postsecondary institutions have oversold the Canadian experience.

“Nothing’s really changed from a policy perspective. But you are having an increasing number of very disappointed international students.”

Dr. Francis’s findings show approximately 80 per cent of the survey respondents were working and had one job. Most were earning minimum wage with just under 10 per cent earning more than $20 an hour. Much of their earnings went toward housing.

The federal government lifted the 20-hours-a-week work limit for international students last year, but the move prompted concerns from some instructors, Dr. Francis’s findings show.

“The problem is that many students work full-time or more and as a result they miss class, arrive late or tired, fall asleep in class, can’t concentrate,” Dr. Francis said. “Some students are not really students – they are hopeful immigrants who are using study as their path to PR,” referring to permanent residency.

Her study suggests many students struggle to find a job either in their field or in the region where they are living. At the same time, she said students reported fraud and exploitation by employers.

For example, Dr. Francis said respondents who had completed a two-year diploma program and who had obtained a postgraduate work permit needed a managerial position to qualify for permanent residence status. But management work for someone at that level, sometimes without solid English language skills, is frequently out of reach.

Survey respondents said employers would put them in those positions and pay them accordingly, but the student would be required to refund that money back to the employer. In the end, they earned less than minimum wage, she said.

Immigration lawyer Prabhpreet Sangha, who participated in Dr. Francis’s project, said she’s seen cases where students are misguided and misled: They are told they can work without being aware they are violating the conditions of their permit if they do not study. Sometimes they are advised to apply for refugee status if things go off the rail at school or work, which is very wrong, she added.

“They’re lied to a lot, and they’ll pay the wrong money for the wrong thing,” said Ms. Sangha.

Harmanpreet Kaur had paid $11,000 for five courses she’s taking in her last semester at Langara. She and her friend Rajbir Kaur, both from India, are studying and working full-time.

Besides her own earnings, Harmanpreet also receives financial support from her brother. “If a student is alone here – no support from their family – then it’s so hard to survive,” she said.

Rajbir said balancing work and study isn’t easy. It means there’s no leisure time, no weekends, no vacations.

Both of them, now working at food courts, said their current working experience won’t help them acquire permanent resident status, unless they are promoted to a managerial or supervisory role.

“I was dreaming that life is so easy over here. But when I arrived here, life’s being difficult, totally different,” said Harmanpreet.

Given that the intentions of a large proportion of international students is to stay in Canada, Dr. Francis and Dr. Schinnerl believe that higher education institutions should help them navigate the job environment in this country.

Dr. Francis is also calling for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to give those with postgraduate work permits access to settlement services, such as language training. Additionally, she is recommending the province create a regionalization strategy to better match labour market needs with programs of study and provide greater oversight of employment relationships.

At the college level, Dr. Francis said schools should be more selective in the students they recruit, including ensuring they are academically prepared to succeed at postsecondary studies and, later, in the Canadian labour market.

In response to questions from The Globe, the department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship said it is undertaking a review of the International Student Program with the aim of offering students better protection against unethical recruitment.

The goal is to modernize the program in order to better select and retain students who meet Canada’s economic and socio-cultural goals. These include targets for francophone and regional immigration, a statement from the department said.

A spokesman for B.C.’s Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills said the minister, Selina Robinson, was unavailable for an interview. The ministry said it is in communication with Ottawa on matters involving international students.

Mark Dawson, manager of public affairs at Langara, said the college’s international student services team has grown significantly in recent years, and that all international students have access to the school’s co-op and career centre, which offers opportunities to explore jobs, provides current labour market information, and connects students to career pathways.

UBC spokesperson Matthew Ramsey said the university is aware of the employment challenges facing international students and is in the process of launching pilot programs focusing on career supports for international students as well as information about applying for permanent residency. He said a new program at UBC’s Okanagan campus is designed to address navigating the job market and gaining Canadian work experience.

The idea “is to respond directly to student survey feedback and the research related to barriers they face,” he said.

Source: International students face tougher job prospects than domestic peers, B.C. research suggests

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Chinese, Vietnamese students caught up in college-admission scam, Ottawa says

2023/06/20 Leave a comment

Some useful data:

Students from China and Vietnam have been caught up in an immigration scam affecting Indian students involving fake acceptance letters to Canadian colleges, the federal immigration department told MPs.

Immigration Minister Sean Fraser told the Commons committee on citizenship and immigration that eight Indian students ensnared in the fraud have already been deported. But they could return to Canada “if they demonstrate that their intention to come to Canada was genuine and that they were not complicit in fraud.”

Mr. Fraser this week granted a reprieve from deportation to students who were unknowingly involved in the scam. They will be granted temporary residency permits while a task force investigates their cases to see if they were innocently duped or complicit in the immigration fraud.

The task force will look into the cases of 57 Indian students with bogus admission letters to Canadian colleges and universities who have been issued with removal orders, and 25 are going through the deportation process, deputy minister Christiane Fox told MPs on the immigration committee last Wednesday.

Ten Indian students found to have fake admission letters to colleges have left Canada voluntarily.

Ottawa launched a probe into 2,000 suspicious cases involving students from India, China and Vietnam earlier this year. It found that around 1,485 had been issued bogus documents to come to Canada by immigration consultants abroad, she said.

Although 85 per cent of the students affected by scams were from India, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada had also uncovered evidence of fraud affecting Chinese and Vietnamese students.

Ms. Fox said 976 of the students had been refused entry to Canada after their letters of acceptance from colleges were found to be fake, while 448 had their applications to come to Canada approved.

The deputy minister told the committee of MPs that around 300 of these students would have their cases individually investigated by the new task force. Others of the 448 who had their applications approved have been found to have been linked to “criminality.”

In the Commons last Friday, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said the students had been “defrauded by shady consultants who gave them fake admission letters.” He said the newcomers should be given work permits while they wait for their applications for permanent residence to be processed.

Also on Friday, Conservative MPs called for overseas immigration consultants who duped the students to be blacklisted and all their files, including those in the past, to be reviewed.

“Every consultant or agent who scammed these international students should have the files they worked on reviewed to protect the victims and proactively inform them,” said Tom Kmiec, Conservative immigration critic. “Any consultant or agent who committed fraud should be barred and their names should be logged with IRCC to prevent future fraud.”

Saskatoon Conservative Brad Redekopp, who also sits on the immigration committee, urged the federal government to immediately start checking the files of overseas consultants found to have issued bogus documents. He told The Globe and Mail it was a problem that, while Canadian immigration consultants had to register and were subject to standards, overseas consultants did not face similar checks.

Ms. Fox said the department was already looking into the files of consultants found to have issued fake letters of acceptance to Canadian universities.

Mr. Fraser said the department had found that multiple consultants had been involved in the scam involving fake admission letters as part of study permit applications. He said the government was conducting hundreds of investigations to “bust fraudsters.”

In 2018, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada introduced a new program to verify letters of acceptance to colleges, he said. But he added the department deals with hundreds thousands of applications a year and it would be hard to manually verify every admission letter. He hoped that new efforts to clamp down on overseas scams could be aided by technology, but it also required the co-operation of foreign authorities.

He said he understood the situation was extremely distressing for students facing deportation, after being duped by “bad actors,” and their well-being was paramount.

The task force will look at whether they finished their studies or started work in Canada soon after they arrived.

Source: Chinese, Vietnamese students caught up in college-admission scam, Ottawa says

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Ottawa pausing deportations of international students affected by acceptance letter scam

2023/06/16 Leave a comment

Not really a surprise. Hard to see, however, given current pressures on IRCC that it will be able to review each case specifically. CIMM is starting a study on exploitation of Indian students but unlikely that will examine the complicity of governments and education institutions in a system that almost incentivizes such exploitation:

The federal government says it’s hitting pause on planned deportations of international students who may have been caught up in a foreign acceptance letter scam.

The announcement from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) comes after dozens of international students received deportation orders which accuse them of using forged post-secondary school acceptance documents to get into Canada.

Immigration Minister Sean Fraser warned that “potentially a few hundred people” could find themselves affected by the scam and removal orders.

Source: Ottawa pausing deportations of international students affected by acceptance letter scam

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Globe Editorial – Immigration: Canada’s economy can’t rely on temporary workers and study permits forever

2023/06/09 Leave a comment

The Globe continues its shift towards being more critical of Canadian immigration policies and distancing itself from Century Initiative and other large scale immigration advoccates:

Canada has big, enduring demographic challenges ahead. So why are we trying to paper them over with ever-larger temporary band-aids?

…

Source: Immigration: Canada’s economy can’t rely on temporary workers and study permits forever

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‘The students are victims’: Stop deporting Indian students caught in fake admission letter scandal, parliamentary committee urges CBSA

2023/06/08 Leave a comment

An alternative approach, given the corruption among recruiting agencies and the complicity of governments and educational institutions, would be to deport them as a high profile example to highlight risks.

A more serious alternative would be for to undertake a fundamental review of our international student policies with a focus on ensuring that their focus is on quality education, not just funding, and their contribution to increasing per capita GDP and productivity should they apply for permanent residency.

But unlikely to happen given the various interests behind international student recruitment and enrolment and am sceptical that the planned hearings will amount to much:

A parliamentary committee is calling on the Canada Border Services Agency to immediately stop deporting a group of Indian international students who have been deemed inadmissible after using fake college admission letters to enter the country.

On Wednesday, the all-party immigration committee voted unanimously to ask the border agency to waive inadmissibility of the affected students and to provide them with an alternative pathway to permanent residence on humanitarian grounds or through a “regularization” program.

“These students, I’ve met with many of them, now are just in such a terrible state. They’ve lost money and they are stuck in a terrible situation. And some of them have deportation orders. Others have pending meetings with CBSA,” said MP Jenny Kwan, the NDP immigration critic, who tabled the motions.

“So as a first step, this is absolutely essential and necessary. The students are victims of fraud and should not be penalized.”

The international students, a group estimated to be in the hundreds, claim they were duped by unscrupulous education consultants in India and were unaware that the admission letters given to them were doctored. The students only became aware of the issue, they say, when the issue was flagged by border agents after the students had finished their courses and applied for postgraduate work permits. Some cases were flagged during the students’ permanent residence application process.

The committee does not have the power to halt deportations. Its gesture Wednesday is largely a symbolic one.

The students all share similar stories: being told upon arrival in Canada that the program they’d been enrolled in was no longer available and advised to delay their studies or go to another school; some receiving their postgraduate work permits and trying to pursue permanent residence, only to find out there was a problem with their original documentation.

On Wednesday, the committee also passed Kwan’s motion to issue a news release to condemn the actions of these fraudulent “ghost consultants” and to ask Immigration Minister Sean Fraser, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino and their staff to appear before the committee to provide a briefing on the situation.

Members of the committee also voted to undertake a study over two meetings into the targeted exploitation scheme faced by the Punjabi international students.

The study is set to examine:

  • How this situation was allowed to happen;
  • Why fraudulent documents were not detected until years later, when the students began to apply for permanent status;
  • The significant harm experienced by students, including financial loss and distress;
  • Measures necessary to help the students have their deportation stayed, inadmissibility on the basis of misrepresentation waived, and provide a pathway to permanent status; and
  • How to prevent similar situations from occurring in the future.

“I’ve spoken with the students, and they were very frustrated that no actions were happening at this committee. And I think they’ll be very pleased to see that things are happening now,” said Brad Redekopp, the Conservative MP for Saskatoon West.

Liberal MP Shafqat Ali agreed.

“We need to have empathy for those students and we should not exploit the situation and play politics on this issue of those innocent students,” said the MP for Brampton centre, where many of the affected students now reside. “They have gone through and are going through a lot.”

During the meeting Wednesday, the committee also approved the amendments to Bill S-245 to amend the Citizenship Act to allow Canadians to pass citizenship birthrights to their foreign-born children if they can pass a connection test to establish the family ties to Canada.

Source: ‘The students are victims’: Stop deporting Indian students caught in fake admission letter scandal, parliamentary committee urges CBSA

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Chris Selley: There’s a treatment for Quebec’s  linguistic paranoia, but Ottawa is thwarting it

2023/06/06 Leave a comment

Of note (and given the recent StatsCan report, Unemployment and job vacancies by education, 2016 to 2022, highlighting the disconnect between immigration policy, which favours university-educated immigrants, and immigrant employment, which favours lower-skilled immigrants, not as effective as presented):

Considering every federal party essentially believes in giving Quebec whatever it wants, and considering the Quebec government’s concern over the French language surviving under the federal Liberals’ increased immigration targets, a recent report from the Institut du Québec (IDQ) paints a frustrating picture of a longstanding grievance between the provincial and federal capitals.

The Coalition Avenir Québec government wants more foreign students, especially francophones — it’s spending millions on various overseas-recruitment programs, and encouraging foreign graduates to stay in the province — but the federal immigration department is in many cases unwilling to grant them visas. “Nearly half of foreign students accepted by a Quebec university and (who satisfy) Quebec’s conditions are still refused a student visa by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC),” IDQ director-general Emna Braham and chief economist Daye Diallo report.

The refusal rate for applications from African nations — a major source of francophone students — is a whopping 72 per cent, compared to a 19-per-cent refusal rate for Asians and 11 per cent for Europeans. For no good apparent reason, the refusal rate is lower across the board for Ontario-bound foreign students — fully 20 points lower than Quebec’s for African applicants.

IRCC explained to the IDQ its reasoning: It’s afraid the foreigners won’t leave after they graduate.

But … Quebec doesn’t want them to leave, and the rest of Canada shouldn’t want that either. A prosperous, confident and confidently francophone Quebec is something we all want, and given the province’s lacklustre birthrate and unique skepticism of bilingualism, francophone immigration might be the only way that’s likely to happen.

“There is a real need to clarify the objectives and to put in place procedures that will ensure that the right hand talks to the left hand,” the IDQ’s Braham told The Canadian Press. Too right: The CAQ government and the IRCC are essentially playing different sports on the same pitch. A ministerial directive to the IRCC bureaucracy could be as simple as, “for heaven’s sake stop rejecting so many Africans.”

Alas, the IRCC bureaucracy is not well known for taking orders. It’s not well known for much except saying “no” to people in the most Kafkaesque ways imaginable. And it should come as no surprise that African applicants to Quebec — and therefore francophone applicants — are taking it on the chin. IRCC is internationally notorious for denying visas to tenured professors from African nations wishing to attend conferences in Canada. Why would it be any less suspicious of their students?

Still, it’s exasperating to see Ottawa block an avenue toward real progress in Quebec — a route out of the anti-religious and linguistic paranoias that have come to dominate nationalist politics over the past 15 years. Those paranoias have combined to create a sort of demographic gridlock: The CAQ government wants all future immigrants to speak French before they arrive, for example, but there are only so many francophones who want to emigrate to Quebec, and many of them are very religious. Many, though certainly not all, are Muslims. Few will want to jettison their faith and culture en route to Canada like an oversized bottle of shampoo.

That will always rankle the miserable arch-paranoiacs who currently drive this agenda — the ultra-nationalist voices who dominate Quebec City talk radio and the Quebecor newspapers’ comment pages. “They want immigrants and their children to think and dream in French. And even that isn’t enough,” Quebec journalist Christopher Curtis tweeted very eloquently this week. “They want them to make a show of loyalty, to remove their hijabs and turbans, to hate Trudeau like they do, to feel antipathy towards Ottawa the way they do.”

Sidelining those paranoiacs is a generational project that, polls suggest, Quebec’s younger generations will embrace. (It’s certainly not just immigrants that annoy the nationalist miserabilists. They also can’t stand the way most young white Quebecers speak French, or the way they vote, and to the great extent the youth aspire to bilingualism, the way they dream.) Accepting more young francophone immigrants — as many as possible — can only help.

It’s already happening, despite IRCC. “A growing number of foreign students settle in Quebec once they have obtained their degree,” Braham and Diallo note. “The number of post-graduation work permit holders tripled between 2015 and 2022. … The number of new permanent residents who graduated from a Canadian institution also tripled. … And these new permanent residents are integrating into the labour market better than before, the result (in part) of prior experience on Quebec soil.”

Good news. But in the meantime, other things are happening. Profoundly stupid things.

On Thursday, Montreal and other Quebec municipalities posted new rules prescribed by Bill 96, the pointless anti-Anglo crackdown law that only a couple of Quebec Liberal MPs could find the gonads to oppose.

In order legally to browse your garbage-pickup calendar or adult-swimming schedule in the language of Wolfe, you must now tacitly attest to being an “individual with whom (the municipality) communicated solely in English prior to May 13, 2021”; or a person “declared eligible” by the Ministry of Education to attend public school in English — excluding “children of foreign nationals living temporarily in Quebec,” naturally; or an Indigenous person; or an immigrant, but only one having arrived within the previous six months.

You know what won’t help Quebec move on from this unfortunate paranoid period? That laughingstock idiocy. Nowhere else in the world is like this. Quebec needn’t be like this. If Ottawa won’t push back, it could at least force IRCC out of the bloody way.

Source: https://apple.news/Aopv1ZeK0SmqU09IXj1BkJQ

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Ottawa is doing little to eliminate discrimination against French-speaking African students: More data and less rhetoric please

2023/05/31 Leave a comment

Unfortunately, we do not have enough transparency and data to assess whether this discrimination is evidence-based or not. And of course these arguments do not question the fundamental value and, in some cases, lack thereof, of the ongoing increases in international students and two-step immigration:

The fact that Immigration Canada discriminates against Black students from French-speaking Africa is something researchers and observers of Québec and Canadian politics have been documenting and denouncing for years. 

Once again this month, we learned from a study by the Institut du Québec (IDQ) that the federal government is refusing half of the applications for study permits to foreign students who were selected by Québec and accepted by a Québec university. This figure increases to 72 per cent for African students.

Denunciation of this discrimination, and of the federal government’s inaction on it, goes far beyond the circle of immigration experts. Leaders of French-language higher education institutions, political actors and civil society are now speaking out as well. 

As researchers in the fields of political sociology and the sociological and ethnological study of nationalisms and interethnic relations, we are interested in social transformations in Québec and Canada, as well as social representations of immigration. 

On a global scale, this discrimination sends a very bad message to Canada’s partners in the Organisation internationale de la francophonie. At the Canadian level, it has an impact on the vitality of institutions in francophone communities outside Québec. 

At the Québec level, it has an impact on the vitality of programs in regional colleges and universities. At the Montréal level, it also has an impact on the vitality of French language higher education institutions and, in particular, on the capacity of the Université du Québec to fulfill its social mission. 

Québec has done its homework

This situation was well known when the Liberal Party of Canada became a minority government in 2019. It was also known when the same government won again in 2021, still as a minority government. The data just published by the IDQ are indisputable: the situation continued in 2022. 

Although there have been modest improvements in some places, this has not reversed a stubborn and persistent underlying trend. The data show that despite warnings, denunciations and investigations by many journalists, Immigration Canada is still dragging its feet. 

The Québec government has not always been immune to criticism in this area. The immigration reform piloted in 2020 by Simon Jolin-Barrette drew criticism for a variety of reasons. One of these was a change to the Québec Experience Program that slowed, if not hindered access to citizenship for foreign students studying in Québec. 

Québec’s new immigration minister, Christine Fréchette, has been much more far-sighted, informed and pragmatic. Her promise to reorient the Québec government’s immigration policy is in tune with the higher education community. These circles have long recognized the importance of offering a fast track to citizenship for students who have gotten work experience through their studies, internships and the networks they developed in Québec. 

Immigration Canada’s inaction is incomprehensible

This shift by Québec’s Minister of Immigration, Francization and Integration is in line with the informed opinions of Quebec’s higher education institutions. It also brings hope to Montréal’s French-language higher education community, which has been complaining for several years that it is not competing on a level playing field with English-language institutions of higher learning. 

The latter operate in a completely different market than French-language universities. Since the removal of the ceiling on fees for foreign students, English-language higher education institutions have been earning significantly more revenue than French-language institutions. Many actors in the education sector have denounced how this systemic inequality reduces the attractiveness of French-language institutions, and in particular, the ability of the Université du Québec network to fulfill its mission of academic and social integration. 

Faced with this major change in direction by the Québec government, the inaction of Immigration Canada is all the more incomprehensible. 

After Sean Fraser blamed his department’s discriminatory practices on algorithmic errors, subcontracted the work of its officials to the McKinsey firm, acknowledged a problem of systemic discrimination within its own organization and promised to address this problem, the 2022 figures from his department show the same misfires and the same discriminatory practices as in previous years. 

In an embarrassing moment, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister was asked to defend his record. The slight increase in acceptances that she mentioned does not meet the legitimate expectations of students whose applications have been accepted by a Québec institution. 

Minister Fraser no longer has the legitimacy required

Ottawa must draw conclusions from this new data. If the Trudeau government were not championing the fight against systemic racism in every forum, it might be possible to overlook this lack of credibility on the part of its minister. But at this point, federal Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister Fraser no longer has the legitimacy to retain this file.

The failure of the Liberal Party to act on such an important issue for Québec and Canada’s francophone communities is regrettable. It casts a shadow over the important success of the update of the Official Languages Act, the passage of which was rightly celebrated by both federal and Québec governments. 

If we want to celebrate the new version of the Official Languages Act, we must be consistent and provide access to French-language higher education institutions to all students who want to contribute to the vibrancy of Canada’s francophone communities. 

We should be pleased that the Québec government got this message. It is more than regrettable that it is taking so long for Ottawa to understand it.

Source: Ottawa is doing little to eliminate discrimination against French-speaking African students

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Canada’s costly housing market leaves international students open to exploitation

2023/05/02 Leave a comment

No questioning, of course, of whether or not Canada should set levels for students, along with temporary foreign workers, to reduce housing and other pressures. Or whether the government should review existing designated learning institutions (DLI), particularly private colleges, given their recruitment practices:

Skyrocketing rent prices in Canada’s major cities are leaving more and more people struggling to find an affordable place to live. National conversations about the housing crisis often overlook a growing segment of the population that is extremely vulnerable to housing discrimination, rent gouging, rights abuses and sexual harassment: international students. 

Canada had more than 807,000 international students in 2022, around 40 per cent of whom come from India. While all these students need housing, many face discrimination in the rental market. Tania Das Gupta’s ongoing research into Punjabi newcomers in Canada has found that some landlords discriminate against international students based on gender and ethnicity. 

Discriminatory ads

An online search for rentals shows many ads for properties that are available to international students. In addition, many ads are aimed at Indian students with landlords seeking tenants who are vegetarian or from particular regions of India. 

The wording in the ads seems innocuous, but many can be discriminatory and prey on international students. Landlords often demand large upfront payments. And international students are often sought because their relatively recent arrival in Canada and temporary migration status means they are less likely to complain. 

Housing as a human right

Even though these ads violate the Ontario Human Rights Code, they continue to be posted on public websites. The code defines the right to be free from discrimination in housing as “not only the right to enter into an agreement and occupy a residential dwelling, but also the right to be free from discrimination in all matters relating to the accommodation.” 

Das Gupta’s ongoing research features in-depth interviews with students and service providers. Respondents have shared that many live-in landlords tend to infantilize and over-monitor them. Others, especially female international students, have experienced sexual harassment and assault as well as sexual exploitation.

A 2018 survey at McGill University found that 38.6 per cent of international students experienced sexual harassment and 23.6 per cent experienced sexual assault. 

Sub-standard, illegal and overcrowded housing

Accommodation aimed at international students can often be sub-standard, over-crowded and unsafe. Many often lack fire alarms and carbon monoxide detectors and have pest infestations. Many secondary units in single-family homes, like basement suites, are built without permits and not to code. 

Brampton, Ont., a city where many Indian international students reside, had a vacancy rate of 0.8 per cent in 2019, which is well below the minimum of three per cent considered acceptable. It is no wonder then that Brampton has an estimated 50,000 illegal units. 

This is dangerous and can lead to tragic outcomes. In January, an international student in Cape Breton, N.S. died in a fire in an overcrowded international student house. In December 2022, Cape Breton University advised international students to defer coming to Canada because of the shortage of suitable accommodation.

Another common issue with housing for international students is overcrowding. With rental costs increasingly unaffordable, many students are renting single rooms with others. Some online ads even offer a room with only one bed that is to be shared with another tenant the student does not know. One ad on Kijiji stated: “looking for 1 Indian girl to share one room with another Punjabi girl.”

Screenshot of an ad on the website Kijiji for a shared room in a house in Brampton, Ont. Author provided

Stories of landlord harassment and wrongful evictions are common across Canada. These incidents combined with the costly rental market mean that homelessness is a common experience for students. A 2018 study found that more than 31 per cent of post-secondary students experience some type of homelessness. 

While the study did not focus on international students in particular, Das Gupta’s ongoing research shows that homelessness is common with stories of some students sleeping in their cars because they cannot afford rent.

Ending the culture of exploitation

A recent CTV W5 investigation exposed how international students at Cape Breton University and other Canadian post-secondary institutions are strategically recruited because they pay significantly higher tuition fees than Canadians.

The extreme nature of the crisis at the university led students to speak out and advocate for the rights of international students, including raising awareness that complaining about human rights abuses, sexual assaults or other crimes will not hurt their chances of staying in Canada.

But such advocacy can only go so far. Structural changes by governments and post-secondary institutions are required and municipalities need to better regulate illegal rental units. And importantly, international students eager to voice solutions must be consulted and heeded.

Source: Canada’s costly housing market leaves international students open to exploitation

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

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