Mumbai: Study abroad dreams are seemingly crushed for 700 Indian students who have been deported from Canada after their Visa documents were found to be fake. These deportation notices have been issued by the Canadian Border Security Agency (CBSA).
Several Indian students who submitted their 'admission offer letter' while applying for Permanent Residency found that the letters on the basis of which their Visa was issued, were fake.
The long con: Visa fraud detected during PR application
Chaman Singh Batth, an Indian student in Toronto, said that after passing +2, about 700 students applied for study visas through Education Migration Services, Jalandhar headed by a person known as Brijesh Mishra, reports indianarrative.com.
Mishra reportedly filed these visa applications from 2018 to 2022 and charged each student a sum of Rs 16 to Rs 20 lakh for all expenses, including admission fees to a premier institute Humber College. Only the air tickets and security deposits were not included in the payment to this agent.
Once the Indian students landed in Toronto, Mishra called them up to say that all seats in the courses offered to them in Humber College were already full and 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 save time.
Mishra even returned their Humber college fee which further made students believe his genuineness.
The unsuspecting students contacted another college, less known, and took admission to available 2-year diploma courses, as advised by Mishra. Their classes commenced and they finished their courses, after which they 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. And that's where the trouble began.
"CBSA scrutinised the documents on the basis of 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," said Batth.
Court proceedings remain the last resort
Students report that the agent did not sign the visa application files himself. Instead, each student was asked to sign his own form so he seemed like a 'self-applicant' who did not hire the services of any agent.
Now, the CBSA officials are 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 is 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 students can now challenge the deportation notices in court, where proceedings may continue for 3 to 4 years while hiring Canadian lawyers remains a costly affair.
Meanwhile, parents of these cheated students tried to contact the agent's office in Jalandhar, which remained shut.
(with inputs from IANS)
