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Ex-Indian students facing deportation from Canada over fake documents protest
A group of former international students from India, who are facing potential deportation from the country, staged a protest in downtown Toronto on Thursday.
A group of former international students from India, who are facing potential deportation from the country, staged a protest in downtown Toronto on Thursday afternoon in front of a Federal immigration office.
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About 50 of those affected participated in the nearly two-hour-long demonstration, and were joined by other organisations like the Naujawan Support Network.
They displayed banners stating they were victims of fraud and seeking justice. “We are victims, not culprits” and “Stop deportation”, others said. Another called upon Federal Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to “speak up.”
The majority of the students impacted are from Punjab. They face an exclusion order from the Canada Border Services Agency or CBSA which could result in their deportation from the country as well as a ban for five years from entering it again.
The students arrived in Canada between 2017 and 2019, and in rare instances, in 2020. They started receiving notices from the CBSA in 2021 and last year, 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.”
The majority of the affected students were represented by the agent Brijesh Mishra of the Jalandhar-based counselling firm EMSA Education and Migration Services Australia.
The ex-students said they were being victimized for no fault of theirs. In an open letter under the banner of Victim Students released in March, they said, “We are desperate for justice; we are victims of fraud; we have no criminal level but facing a removal order.”
“No one can understand our anguish when we learned for the first time through CBSA that the offer was fake and we have been dying and struggling ever since,” it added
Among those facing this problem is 27-year-old Inder Singh, who is based in Brampton in the Greater Toronto Area and is originally from Amritsar. He said that while about 70 of them had joined forces to raise this matter, it was difficult to estimate the number of those actually impacted and that could even reach a thousand.
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Among the groups supporting them is the Nuajawan Support Network, which functions primarily in the province of Ontario, and comprises international students and workers who came together to “stop the exploitation and abuse we face from employers, landlords, immigration consultants and the government,” according to their online profile.
