One year ago, hundreds of international students from India were facing deportation because they had been identified as having the same immigration consultant who submitted bogus admissions letters to obtain study permits for those students. As it turns out, this bogus admissions loophole has been getting exploited by supposed immigration consultants from all around the world, not just from India. After a review of around 360,000 applications, more than 9,000 instances have been identified where a study application included a fake university admissions letter.
Currently, there is an international student from Nigeria, Lola Akinlade, who is facing deportation for the same reason. Akinlade completed her post-secondary education in 2019 and was looking to further her education while also working in Nova Scotia. Both she and her husband were working in Nova Scotia but have been stripped of their resident status and their ability to study, work, and access healthcare services. The family of three grew to become a family of four while in Canada, but that baby boy, who is a Canadian citizen, has also lost his ability to receive healthcare services because of his parent’s ‘status’.
The Akinlades were all-in on Canada, having sold their home in Nigeria to be able to afford Lola’s tuition fees and the start-up costs associated with emigrating to the other side of the world. The Akinlades have nothing to fall back on should they get deported back to Nigeria, and both parents have been stripped of their ability to work and provide for their children. So, the Akinlades have been forced to make ends meet on a shoe-string budget, while also trying to manage paying the costs associated with lawyers, hoping their immigration lawyer can stay their deportation order and “return” their status to them. But it will come down to whether the Akinlade’s humanitarian application is approved by Immigration, Refugees, Citizenship Canada (IRCC), an application process that does not give the family the right to stay in Canada, and without an application processing timeline.
Good solutions to immigration problems are not always permanent.
Back when Karamjeet Kaur and hundreds of international students from India were facing deportations because of bogus admission letters, the Honourable Sean Fraser, then-Minister of Immigration, came out with the process of applying for temporary resident permits (TRPs) to overcome the misrepresentation that occurred. However, this special process was only available to those that were subject to removal at the time because of the misrepresentation, so it was not a permanent solution. Additionally, this special measure was only an option available to those who were subject to immediate removal from Canada.
One challenge with TRPs is that they are often discretionary, which can depend on the immigration officer that is reviewing the application. Even when two matters may be the exact same, if the immigration officers vary how they interpret the circumstances and the level of compassion they hold, the outcome can vary as well. When immigration officers reference a “balance of probabilities”, as to why they determined an individual or family deserve to be deported, those determinations may be susceptible to subconscious bias.
To better understand the immigration dilemma, Canadian immigration rules place the onus for everything in an application on the applicant, even if the applicant ends up hiring an immigration consultant. Then, when situations like the bogus admissions letters emerge, the IRCC describes its role as being focused on identifying culprits, not on penalizing victims of fraud. But it is hard to see how this could happen if the starting point for the interaction between the aspiring Canadian and immigration officer is, “You had to know about everything regarding your application, including that the immigration consultant that you and other applicants were using was secretly involved in crime”
Stripping aspiring Canadians of everything they have legally worked towards.
What most Canadians are unlikely to be aware of is that although temporary residents, such as those on work or study permits, do not automatically have access to healthcare coverage, they can receive some healthcare coverage if they can meet certain study and work criterion, depending on the province. But by stripping individuals and families like the Akinlades of their status, it unravels their lives by shattering everything that they have legally worked towards. Everything from being taxpayers and being able to access healthcare coverage to being able to take care of their children.
Adults may be able to cope with being homeless and toughing it out when waking up with a headache or going to bed hungry, but not little children. Not when those same children are also denied the right to an elementary education or to attend elementary school to learn and play with other school-aged children. At that point, dehumanizing individuals and families like the Akinlades by stripping them of everything they have legally worked toward is the equivalent to throwing them in cages.
So, what happens when individuals and families like the Akinlades get stripped of their ability to provide for their children and starved of all their financial resources to the point that they are unable to pay for food, housing, lawyers and other necessities? They are expected to leave “voluntarily”. After they leave voluntarily, however, they are then banned from returning to Canada for at least 5 years, after which they are eligible to reapply to return to Canada. Then, getting back on that same path, to become Canadian, brings with it a different set of obstacles, often too much for those aspiring Canadians to overcome, even those individuals and families that showed great promise.
A two-tiered justice system can create for a two-tiered immigration system.
As I mentioned in “Hundreds of International Students Defrauded and to be Deported”, our Federal Courts have a fair track record of upholding the law, but they are not incapable of getting things wrong or getting persuaded to show lenience, even though there should be no discretion in the application of the law. The two constants when it comes to the application of discretion inside Canda’s courts, whether they be Federal Courts or Provincial Courts, has always come down to two things: money and family connections. These are two privileges that are not afforded to temporary residents, who are often cash-strapped and are establishing their roots as first-generation Canadians.
Over the past few years Canada has introduced different programs that provide different pathways for those who want Canada to be part of their future. However, one program that is unlikely to have ever been considered might be providing an expedited pathway to become Canadian for individuals and families who were deported from Canada due to the fraudulent actions of an immigration consultant who they retained to help them with their application. It is entirely plausible that some of those individuals and families who interacted with immigration officers that had less compassion toward their specific circumstances and to whom the “balance of probabilities” indicated that they should be deported, their outcome may have been different if they had interacted with a different immigration officer.
In instances where individuals and families are deported from Canada, context matters. Those individuals and families that have been deported due to a single document, a fake university admissions letter, generally did not overstay their visa or attempt to avoid the IRCC’s request to meet or hide from policing and public safety stakeholders. If they were studying and working in accordance with their study and work permit, and leaving footprints and making their presence felt as positive contributing members of society then we should reconsider whether the decision to deport them, due to fake university admissions letters, is in the public interest of all Canadians. If not, then these aspiring Canadians who showed great promise deserve to be expedited and put back on track to become Canadian.
The entire idea behind “discretionary powers” is that they allow a person the ability to make decisions based on a personal judgement or choice, and them having freedom to choose what to do in a particular situation without being bound by strict rules or guidelines. As a result, two different people who both are entrusted with discretionary powers may end up making a judgement or choice that is different from one another, with one judgement or choice being better than the other. In instances where a single document resulted in an individual or family being deported despite that they were positively contributing members of society, then something needs to be done for those aspiring Canadians. Because the difference between “right” and “wrong” is a different standard than what is legal and illegal.
credit link:https://www.voicemagazine.org/2024/08/09/over-9000-the-case-of-lola-akinlade-and-international-students-at-risk/
