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

An investigation by Indian officials that alleges dozens of Canadian colleges and universities might be linked to a scheme of illegally ferrying students across the Canada-U.S. border, reveals the “staggering” extent to which holes in the immigration system can be exploited, some experts say.

“If the allegations are true, it reveals shocking gaps in our integrity protocols … this is deeply, deeply concerning and problematic,” Raj Sharma, a Calgary-based immigration lawyer, told CBC News Network, adding that the allegations suggest “wide-scale human smuggling.”

India’s Enforcement Directorate said in a news release on Tuesday that it had uncovered evidence of human trafficking involving two “entities” in Mumbai after probing the Indian connection to the Patel family, who froze to death in January 2022 while trying to cross the border from Manitoba into Minnesota during frigid weather conditions. 

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

Arrangements would be made for the Indian nationals to be admitted to Canadian colleges and universities and apply for student visas, according to the Enforcement Directorate. 

But once the Indian nationals reached Canada, instead of joining the college, they illegally crossed the border from Canada into the U.S. and the fee received by the Canadian schools was remitted back to the individuals’ account, the Enforcement Directorate said.

The investigation also revealed that around 112 colleges based in Canada entered into an agreement with one entity and more than 150 with another entity, the Enforcement Directorate said.

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

RCMP has reached out to India

Camille Boily-Lavoie, a spokesperson for the RCMP, said in an email to CBC News that it has reached out to India through its International Policing Liaison Officers to seek additional information about the investigations.

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

The process of issuing study permit applications and acceptance is entirely managed by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the student applicant and the post-secondary institution, said Dayna Smockum, a spokesperson for Ontario’s Ministry of Colleges and Universities.

“The Ministry 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 enact more stringent border control measures to protect Ontario, our institutions, and all of Canada.”

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

It says it has introduced a cap on enrolment levels at Designated Learning Institutions (DLIs) — schools approved by a provincial or territorial government to host international students.

The IRCC says it has also required DLIs to verify all letters of acceptance, introduced consequences for those institutions that fail to participate in student compliance exercises, and increased the minimum financial requirements for study permit applicants.

Immigration system lacks oversight, expert says

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

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

The U.S. has been using biometric technologies like facial recognition and taking fingerprints in their processing of immigrants for over a decade and have all but eliminated identify fraud in their program, Sundberg sad.

But Canada doesn’t have the personnel, or the technology to effectively screen documents or individuals, he said.

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

“But I’m not surprised at all that we see people both in Canada, the United States and overseas that have co-ordinated to take advantage of our wide-open system,” he said.

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

“And it did not. They were addicted to international students to fund their programs,” he said.

Colleges and educational institutions should have been aware that such a problem existed with the recruitment of international students, Zaifman said, but instead chose to continue appointing agents outside Canada to recruit students with no control over what they were doing.

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

“Some universities were a little more diligent, but not all. They were appointing agents and they were attracting students, and it never occurred to them that maybe the movement of these students was not genuine.” 

‘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 this alleged scheme may be mostly “fly-by-night” private colleges.

“Some of these private colleges that were facilitating this trade really aren’t colleges. They’re an abandoned office that have an outdated copy of Microsoft Word, and that’s the whole curriculum,” he said. 

“The big emphasis here is not so much the legitimate colleges and legitimate universities across the country, but it’s these fly-by-night things that are opening up over gas stations.”