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Will provide appropriate solution to Indian students facing deportation, says Canadian minister
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
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 said 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.
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.
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.”
