Over 700 Indian students are recently facing displacement from Canada after the authorities in the North American nation found their admission offer letters to educational institutions to be fake.

Students have obtained deportation letters from the (CBSA)- Canadian Border Security Agency.

According to the reports, these 700 students had registered for study visas through Education Migration Services (Jalandhar) led by Brijesh Mishra, who had taken more than Rs 16 lakh per student for all costs, including admission fees to premier institute Humber College but excluding the airfare and security deposits.

These students moved to Canada on a study basis in 2018-2019. The scam came to light when these students applied for Canadian permanent residency (PR), for which the admission offer letters came under vision. The CBSA reviewed the documents based on which the visas were allocated to the students and found the admission offer letters to be fake.

Professionals said most of these students had already finished their studies, got work permits, and earned work experience. They landed in trouble only when they applied for permanent residency.

This education scam is one of its kind, which came to the forefront in Canada for the first time. Experts said that such a prominent fraud was an outcome of a large number of applicants to Canada.

A Jalandhar-based adviser- who has been sending these students to Canada for the past ten years said, in such frauds, numerous elements are involved – from getting fake offer letters from colleges to delivering forged fee payment receipts to students for seeking visas as visas are allocated only after depositing the fee to the colleges.

In this case, most students got offer letters from colleges where they did not study eventually after moving to Canada. They were either shifted to other institutes or asked to wait for the next semester, that is, not in the semester shown in the documents at the time of applying for visas, a well-known consultant from Kapurthala said, adding that there is a huge rush of Indian students to Canada and such despair of students is being capitalised by some fraudulent agents by planning with a Canada-based private college.

A Jalandhar-based student, among these 700 students, on the condition of anonymity, said she has finished her diploma in computer science from a Canadian public college because, at the time of seeking a visa, she got an offer letter from a private college, but she demanded getting admission to the government college, and for that her fee was returned by the agent and he facilitated her to get admission in the new college. She said the consultant told her she could change her college anytime after reaching Canada.

She said there are several such matters wherein students change their college on arriving in Canada after paying some charge to the agent.

Several students said that their payment was returned to them by the said agent, and because of this, they were admitted to some other institutes, but they did not update the Canadian government about it. And returning the fee (by the agent) made things slightly questionable about the agent.

Another consultant told in this case, the role of those colleges that gave the admission offer letters must be investigated, that is, whether they (colleges) had issued them or forged them by the agent. He also stated that the involvement of such colleges cannot be overseen as students are mostly unaware of such things.

Earlier, a few colleges in Montreal were blacklisted by the Quebec government due to the high admission rate of international students there. Students who were admitted to these colleges were advised by Indian High Commission to file a complaint with the ministry of higher education, the government of Quebec. A consultant said these students got a negative review, but now they are being considered empathetically by the Canadian High Commission. Reports said the students’ only choice is to challenge the deportation notices in court, where proceedings could last about four years.

Police Commissioner Jalandhar Kuldeep Singh Chahal said no such complaint has come to his notice.

Students said the agent did it smartly as he did not sign any application. He got everything signed by the students. He made students self-applicants. So, now it is difficult to prove his involvement in this scam. At the same time, it is also hard to prove the students’ innocence. But the fact is that all the students are innocent, the students said.

News Source: The Indian Express