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Canada: Ex-Indian students disappointed with lenient sentencing to immigration agent in fake docs case
Last year, over 150 ex-students from India, mainly Punjab, faced deportation from Canada as the documents they had used to enter the country were found to be forged
Toronto: Even as some of the former international students from India once facing deportation start receiving permanent residency and long-term work permits, they are disappointed that the immigration consultant who got them into trouble was given a somewhat lenient sentence after he was found guilty on three charges on Wednesday.
Brijesh Mishra, the immigration consultant from Jalandhar, had prepared fraudulent documents for the students to gain admission to Canadian higher education institutions leading many of them to face potential deportation last year. Mishra appeared before a British Columbia provincial court in Vancouver on Wednesday and pled guilty to the three charges including misrepresentation, while two other counts were stayed.
Among the impacted former students is Ravinderpreet Singh, 28, originally from Tarn Taran in Punjab and now resident in the town of Brampton in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Among those who organised protests last year against deportation proceedings, he said, “I’m very happy he (Mishra) is finally facing punishment, but the length of the sentence is not enough. He wasted years of my life and I faced depression and financial problems.”
Toronto-based immigration lawyer Sumit Sen, who represented one of the ex-students and counselled others, agreed, as he said, “The sentence should have been much more, it should have been nine years.”
Sen felt the judgment took into account the remorse Mishra expressed, thereby the sentence has the term for the three counts running concurrently, totaling three years. With credit for time served since he was arrested in June last year while entering the country, he has about 19 months remaining of the sentence but could be eligible for parole prior to that.
“Overall, the matter will help those who have to appear before the task force. They can prove Mishra was the architect of the fraud and they were vindicated,” he added.
Last year, over 150 ex-students from India, mainly Punjab, faced deportation from Canada as the documents they had used to enter the country were found to be forged. These students arrived in Canada between 2017 and 2019, and in rare instances, in 2020. They started receiving notices from the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) in 2021 and 2022, for a hearing as the agency concluded the letter of offer of admission to a Canadian higher education institution, which formed the basis of their study permits, was “fake.”
Agents in India used fraudulent documentation to procure study permits for them and they started receiving notices from immigration authorities late last year once these were detected. The majority of the affected students were represented by Mishra, then with the Jalandhar-based counselling firm Education and Migration Services Australia (EMSA).
The task force, comprising of officials from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) and the CBSA, was formed in June 2023 and is examining the cases and allowing those who came to Canada as genuine students to remain in the country, enabling them to get work permits and even apply for permanent residency.
Ravinderpreet Singh is among those who is waiting for his work permit while he said at least three of the former students have become permanent residents after they were reprieved by the government. Among them is Balbir Singh, originally from Amritsar and now based in Surrey in British Columbia, who said, “It’s been two-and-a-half years of suffering. Now my family and I are relieved and happy.”
Ravinderpreet Singh felt more needs to be done to tackle the menace of such immigration agents at the source, in India. “There needs to be action taken there so the future of students coming to Canada is not hurt like ours has been,” he said.
