Indian students deportation: Canada immigration minister ensures process to protect students

Toronto: The Canadian government is developing a process to ensure that a large number of Indian students facing the prospect of deportation on charges of obtaining visas using fake admission letters will get an opportunity to prove that they were taken advantage of, immigration minister Sean Fraser has said.

The Indian students, mostly from Punjab, face deportation from Canada after the authorities here found their admission offer letters to educational institutions fake. The matter came to light in March when these students applied for permanent residency in Canada.

Responding to a question in Parliament on Monday, Fraser, the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Sean Fraser asserted that the "innocent students, who are the victims of fraud", would be allowed to "prove that they were taken advantage of." The government will provide an "appropriate remedy" for them, he said while noting that many students were "dealing with serious mental health concerns with the uncertainty they are struggling with." "We'll put a process in place to allow them to prove that they were taken advantage of and provide an appropriate remedy for them," Fraser said in response to a question by Jenny Kwan, a member of the opposition New Democratic Party.

The minister, however, reiterated that the fraudsters or those complicit in fraudulent schemes would bear the consequences of not following Canada's laws.

India has repeatedly been urging Canadian authorities to be fair and take a humanitarian approach since the students were allegedly victims of some agents.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that India has taken up the issue with Canadian authorities. "If there were people, who misled them (the students), the culpable parties should be acted upon. It is unfair to punish a student who undertook education in good faith," he said in New Delhi. "We are in touch with Canada on the issue," he said.

Some Indian students in Canada facing the prospect of deportation on charges of obtaining visas using fake admission letters have received "stay orders" from Canadian authorities, government sources said in New Delhi on Sunday.

The sources also said that the actual number of Indian students facing deportation from Canada is much less than 700.

Last week, a Canadian parliamentary committee voted unanimously to urge the border services agency to stop the deportation of Indian students who were duped by unscrupulous education consultants in India to enter the country with fraudulent college admission letters.

Kwan, who tabled the motion, said on Monday that "international students who have been defrauded by crooked consultants should not be punished with deportation and inadmissibility based on misrepresentation".

Last week, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, responding to a question by Indian-origin MP Jagmeet Singh on the fate of the Indian students, said, "We are deeply aware of cases of international students facing removal orders over fraudulent college acceptance letters." "To be clear, our focus is on identifying the culprits, not penalising the victims. Victims of fraud will have an opportunity to demonstrate their situations and present evidence to support their cases," he said.

Inputs from PTI