Amid continuous crackdowns and changes in its immigration policy, Canada is said to have flagged more than 10,000 fake foreign student acceptance letters. As per the Canadian Daily The Globe and Mail, the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) in its stringent verification discovered scores of would-be foreign students who said they had a genuine place to study may have been attaching a fraudulent acceptance letter to their application to get into the country.
What is even more concerning is that the report linked 80 percent of foreign students to India's Punjab and Gujarat.
How did Canada uncover fake foreign students' acceptance letters?
As per the Canadian media report, the strict verification of documents by the officials was introduced after a group of international students applying for Permanent Residence faced deportation last year. This happened because an unlicensed immigration consultant in India had submitted fake acceptance letters with their applications for study permits.
Bronwyn May, director-general of the International Students Branch at the Immigration Department, stated in the report that since IRCC started verifying acceptance letters from colleges and universities in the past year, officials have 'intercepted more than 10,000 potentially fraudulent letters of acceptance.'
May said 93 percent of the 500,000 acceptance letters attached to study permit applications the department checked in the past 10 months had been verified as genuine by a college or university. However, 2 percent were not authentic. While some applicants had their place cancelled by a college or university, in other cases, colleges and universities failed to respond to questions about whether the letters offering applicants a place to study were genuine.
IRCC has intensified investigations, including a probe into 2,000 cases involving students from India, China, and Vietnam. Of these, 1,485 students allegedly submitted fraudulent documents, leading to entry refusals or deportations.
Canada scraps fast-track study permit visa program
In the meanwhile, a few days back, Canada scrapped the fast-track study permit visa program. IRCC announced that it is no longer accepting study permit applications submitted under the Student Direct Stream (SDS). IRCC announced that going forward, all study permit applications will be submitted using the standard application process.
Student Direct Stream (SDS) is a visa program that was implemented in 2018 by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) to expedite study permit applications for international students from 14 countries, including Brazil, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, India, Morocco, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, and Vietnam.
The government of Canada stated on its website that the initiative is being discontinued to "strengthen program integrity, address student vulnerability, and give all students equal and fair access to the application process."