Last Updated On 14 June 2023, 10:15 PM EDT (Toronto Time)
Today, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser announced that he will stop the deportation of innocent international students in fake offer letter case by exercising his ‘discretionary authority.’
However, he made clear that international students who intentionally were part of this scam will still be deported from Canada.
Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) offers ‘discretionary authority’ to immigration minister to make exceptions to existing rules & regulations.
Sean Fraser said “I want to make it clear that international students who are not found to be involved in fraud will not face deportation. The Immigration Refugee Protection Act offers me discretionary authority which I believe should be exercised in the present context.”
Immigration Minister in his officially released statement said that he has already assembled a task force of IRCC officials who will work closely with the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) to identify the victims of fraud, i.e., the students who came to Canada to study and exactly did that.
Senior IRCC and CBSA officials at the ADM level will be part of this new task force.
CBSA will identify the international students facing deportation because of fraudulent offer letter or documentation and send the list to IRCC.
Senior IRCC official’s will then evaluate the files of these internationals students and make their observation.
Quoting an example, minister said that officers will assess if any of these international student started working immediately after arriving in Canada, rather than studying. Then they will be deported as they did not follow their intention of studying.
Minister also clarified that there are not 700 international students facing deportation based on fake documentation.
As per immigration minister, there are only dozens of international students affected in this fake offer letter case.
Furthermore, minister has instructed officers to issue a Temporary Resident Permit to international students who came to Canada with a genuine intent to study and without knowledge that their consultant has used a fraudulent documentation.
This will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis and ensure that these students who graduated can remain in Canada and are not subject to the 5-year ban as usually happen in the cases of misrepresentation.
During the course of this procedure, preliminary Temporary Resident Permits (TRPs) will be issued if necessary to prevent the imminent deportation of any international students‘ case under review.
In addition to this, IRCC has been collaborating even more closely with Designated Learning Institutions (DLIs), provinces and territories, and organizations representing Canada’s colleges and universities in order to detect and combat fraud more effectively and to maintain the integrity of the immigration programs.
Minister reiterated, “The Government of Canada’s focus is on identifying those who are responsible for the fraudulent activity and not on penalizing those who may have been affected by fraud.”
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