Education fraud one of its kind
More than 700 Indian students are facing deportation from Canada after the authorities in the North American country found their ‘admission offer letters’ to educational institutions to be fake. They received deportation letters from the Canadian Border Security Agency (CBSA) recently.
This education fraud is one of its kind which came to the fore in Canada for the first time. Experts said that such a big fraud was a result of a large number of applicants to Canada.
Talking to indianarrative.com on the phone from Toronto, Chaman Singh Batth said that after passing +2, about 700 students applied for study visas through Education Migration Services, Jalandhar headed by one Brijesh Mishra. These visa applications were filed from 2018 onwards till 2022.
Mishra charged each student between Rs.16 to Rs.20 lakh for all expenses including admission fees to a premier institute Humber college. Air tickets and security deposits were not included in the payment to the agent.
Batth said after he and other students landed in Toronto and were heading to Humber college, a telephone call was received from Mishra telling them that all seats in the courses offered to them got filled adding that they would now have to wait till the start of the next semester after 6 months or else they could get admission to some other college and safe time. He, however, returned their Humber college fee which further made students believe his genuineness.
Unsuspecting students as advised by Mishra contacted another college, less known, and took admission to available 2-year diploma courses. The classes commenced and after completion of the courses, students got work permits. On becoming eligible for permanent resident status in Canada, the students, as per the rule, submitted relevant documents to the immigration department.
Batth says: “all trouble started when CBSA scrutinized the documents on the basis which visa was granted to the students and found admission offer letters fake. Deportation notices were issued to all the students after granting them an opportunity for a hearing.”
To a question, Batth replied that the agent very cleverly did not himself sign our visa application files but made each student sign to show that the student was a self-applicant without hiring the services of any agent. This was deliberately done by Mishra as he had faked the documents.
The CBSA officials were now not accepting the claims of innocence of the “victims” as there was no evidence to prove that agent Mishra prepared and arranged all documents. The CBSA was also not accepting the failure of the Canadian visa and airport authorities that issued visas and allowed them entry by checking the authenticity of all documents.
The only remedy left for the students is to challenge the deportation notices in court where proceedings may continue for 3 to 4 years. It is common knowledge that hiring the services of Canadian lawyers is a very costly proposition.
The parents of cheated students tried to repeatedly contact the agent in Jalandhar, but his office was locked continuously.
[With Inputs from IANS]
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How many Americans, Europeans would gamble, play lottery with $40,000/€35,000 ?
About a year back, Mexico deported two plane-load fulls of illegal Indians.
What is the source of funds of these Indian gamblers ?
Their families resources, employment history, education should be investigated.
Hard working Indian diaspora for decades remitted funds-to foreign reserves of India, but the same is being drained off by some questionable characters.
1980’s:
Money was raining for crooked Travel agents. They promised asylum abroad. At home in India, terrorism was growing by leaps & bounds/mushrooming.
Good action. India should have system that every letter should have scan & bar code to verify its genuineness, online.