An investigation by Indian officials that alleges dozens of Canadian colleges and universities might be linked to a scheme of illegally ferrying students across the Canada-U.S. border, reveals the “staggering” extent to which holes in the immigration system can be exploited, some experts say.
“If the allegations are true, it reveals shocking gaps in our integrity protocols … this is deeply, deeply concerning and problematic,” Raj Sharma, a Calgary-based immigration lawyer, told CBC News Network, adding that the allegations suggest “wide-scale human smuggling.”
India’s Enforcement Directorate said in a news release on Tuesday that it had uncovered evidence of human trafficking involving two “entities” in Mumbai after probing the Indian connection to the Patel family, who froze to death in January 2022 while trying to cross the border from Manitoba into Minnesota during frigid weather conditions.
The Enforcement Directorate said its investigation found that about 25,000 students were referred by one entity, with over 10,000 students referred by another entity to various colleges outside India every year.
Arrangements would be made for the Indian nationals to be admitted to Canadian colleges and universities and apply for student visas, according to the Enforcement Directorate.
But once the Indian nationals reached Canada, instead of joining the college, they illegally crossed the border from Canada into the U.S. and the fee received by the Canadian schools was remitted back to the individuals’ account, the Enforcement Directorate said.
India alleges that dozens of Canadian colleges are working with human traffickers in India to allow people to make their way into the United States. The accusations come from India’s law enforcement following their investigation into the deaths of a family at the Manitoba-U.S. border.
The investigation also revealed that around 112 colleges based in Canada entered into an agreement with one entity and more than 150 with another entity, the Enforcement Directorate said.
The allegations have not been proven in court and India has not identified the Canadian colleges allegedly involved.
RCMP has reached out to India
Camille Boily-Lavoie, a spokesperson for the RCMP, said in an email to CBC News that it has reached out to India through its International Policing Liaison Officers to seek additional information about the investigations.
Colleges and Institutes Canada, a national advocacy organization for Canada’s post-secondary education network, said that it had no details on the nature of the colleges reportedly involved in the Indian allegations.
The process of issuing study permit applications and acceptance is entirely managed by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the student applicant and the post-secondary institution, said Dayna Smockum, a spokesperson for Ontario’s Ministry of Colleges and Universities.
“The Ministry of Colleges and Universities has no role in this process,” Smockum said in an email to CBC News. “As our government has repeatedly done, we continue to call on the federal government to enact more stringent border control measures to protect Ontario, our institutions, and all of Canada.”
In an email to CBC News, the IRCC said that since 2023, it has focused on strengthening the integrity of the international student program.
It says it has introduced a cap on enrolment levels at Designated Learning Institutions (DLIs) — schools approved by a provincial or territorial government to host international students.
The IRCC says it has also required DLIs to verify all letters of acceptance, introduced consequences for those institutions that fail to participate in student compliance exercises, and increased the minimum financial requirements for study permit applicants.
Immigration system lacks oversight, expert says
But Kelly Sundberg, a former Canada Border Services Agency officer who is a professor of criminology at Mount Royal University, said the system has no oversight and is “being exploited” by transnational criminals.
“This type of fraud, of gaming our immigration system has been going on for quite some time actually,” he said, noting that the volume of those potentially involved “is staggering.”
The U.S. has been using biometric technologies like facial recognition and taking fingerprints in their processing of immigrants for over a decade and have all but eliminated identify fraud in their program, Sundberg sad.
But Canada doesn’t have the personnel, or the technology to effectively screen documents or individuals, he said.
Indian law enforcement agencies are alleging links between numerous colleges in Canada and two ‘entities’ in Mumbai accused of trafficking students across the Canada-U.S. border. Criminologist Kelly Sundberg says Canada’s honour-based immigration system is being exploited by transnational criminals, yet it has virtually no oversight or enforcement.
Sundberg said he would be “absolutely astonished” to find out that there are colleges or universities that are actively and knowingly engaged in this alleged criminal enterprise.
“But I’m not surprised at all that we see people both in Canada, the United States and overseas that have co-ordinated to take advantage of our wide-open system,” he said.
Ken Zaifman, a Winnipeg-based immigration lawyer, says that from his experience, the responsibility of oversight should lie with the educational institutions.
“And it did not. They were addicted to international students to fund their programs,” he said.
Colleges and educational institutions should have been aware that such a problem existed with the recruitment of international students, Zaifman said, but instead chose to continue appointing agents outside Canada to recruit students with no control over what they were doing.
“The numbers were so significant and no one really wanted to do anything about it,” he said.
“Some universities were a little more diligent, but not all. They were appointing agents and they were attracting students, and it never occurred to them that maybe the movement of these students was not genuine.”
‘Fly-by-night’ schools
But Robert Huish, an associate professor at Dalhousie University in the department of international development studies, says he believes many of the schools involved in this alleged scheme may be mostly “fly-by-night” private colleges.
“Some of these private colleges that were facilitating this trade really aren’t colleges. They’re an abandoned office that have an outdated copy of Microsoft Word, and that’s the whole curriculum,” he said.
“The big emphasis here is not so much the legitimate colleges and legitimate universities across the country, but it’s these fly-by-night things that are opening up over gas stations.”
Published at Sat, 28 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000
Russian air defence systems may have brought down Azerbaijani plane, U.S. official suggests
Russian air defence systems may have brought down an Azerbaijan Airlines plane this week, a U.S. official said Friday after an Azerbaijani minister also suggested the plane was hit by a weapon, citing expert analysis and survivor testimony.
Friday’s assessments by Rashan Nabiyev and White House national security spokesperson John Kirby echoed those made by outside aviation experts who blamed the crash on Russian air defence systems responding to a Ukrainian attack.
These statements raised pressure on Russia, where officials said a Ukrainian drone attack was underway in the region where the Azerbaijan Airlines flight was heading for a landing. They did not address statements blaming Russian air defences.
Kirby told reporters on Friday that the U.S. “have seen some early indications that would certainly point to the possibility that this jet was brought down by Russian air defence systems,” but refused to elaborate, citing an ongoing investigation.
Pressed on whether the U.S. has intelligence that helped lead to that conclusion, or was simply relying on informed speculation from experts based on visual assessments of the crash, Kirby characterized the short answer as “yes,” but said he’d “leave it at that,” without providing further details.
MSNBC reported Friday that Russia may have mistakenly shot down the flight after misidentifying it as an incoming drone, citing two unidentified U.S. military sources.
As Azerbaijan mourns 38 people killed aboard a flight that crashed in Kazakhstan, experts are pointing to signs they say suggest a missile, potentially one from Russia, was responsible.
The plane was flying from Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku to Grozny, the regional capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, on Wednesday when it turned toward Kazakhstan and crashed while making an attempt to land there, killing 38 people and injuring 29 survivors.
Nabiyev, Azerbaijan’s minister of digital development and transportation, told Azerbaijani media that “preliminary conclusions by experts point at external impact,” as does witness testimony.
“The type of weapon used in the impact from outside will be determined during the probe,” he said.
Survivors heard loud noises as aircraft circled
Passengers and crew who survived the crash told Azerbaijani media that they heard loud noises on the aircraft as it was circling over Grozny.
Flight attendant Aydan Rahimli said that after one loud noise, the oxygen masks automatically released. She went to perform first aid on a colleague, Zulfugar Asadov, and then they heard another bang.
Asadov said that the noises sounded like something hitting the plane from outside. Shortly afterward, he sustained a sudden injury like a “deep wound. The arm was lacerated as if someone hit me in the arm with an axe,” he said.
He denied a claim made by Kazakh officials that an oxygen canister had exploded inside the plane.
Two other survivors recounted hearing explosions before the plane went down: Jerova Salihat told Azerbaijani television in an interview in the hospital that “something exploded” near her leg, and Vafa Shabanova said “there were two explosions in the sky, and an hour and a half later the plane crashed to the ground.”
Dmitry Yadrov, the Russian aviation chief, said Friday that as the plane was preparing to land in Grozny in deep fog, Ukrainian drones were targeting the city, prompting authorities to close the area for air traffic.
Yadrov said that after the captain made two unsuccessful attempts to land in Grozny, he was offered other airports as an alternative but decided to fly to Aktau in Kazakhstan, across the Caspian Sea.
He didn’t comment on statements from some aviation experts, who pointed out that holes seen in the plane’s tail section suggested that it could have come under fire from Russian air defence systems.
Ukrainian drones had previously attacked Grozny, the capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, and other regions in the country’s North Caucasus.
Azerbaijan Airlines blamed the crash on unspecified “physical and technical interference” and announced the suspension of flights to several Russian airports. It didn’t say where the interference came from or provide any further details.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday that Russia was at fault for the crash.
“We can see how the clear visual evidence at the crash site points to Russia’s responsibility for the tragedy,” Zelenskyy wrote on the social media platform X.
Kremlin declines to comment
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on the claims that the plane was hit by Russian air defences, saying that it will be up to investigators to determine the cause of the crash.
“The air incident is being investigated and we don’t believe we have the right to make any assessments until the conclusions are made as a result of the investigation,” Peskov said in a conference call with reporters.
If it’s proven that the plane crashed after being hit by Russian air defences, it would be the second deadly civil aviation accident linked to fighting in Ukraine.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was downed with a Russian surface-to-air missile, killing all 298 people aboard, as it flew over the area in eastern Ukraine controlled by Moscow-backed separatists in 2014.
Russia has denied responsibility, but a Dutch court in 2022 convicted two Russians and a pro-Russia Ukrainian man for their role in downing the plane with an air defence system brought into Ukraine from a Russian military base.
Investigators from Azerbaijan are working in Grozny as part of the crash probe, the Azerbaijani Prosecutor General’s office said in a statement.
Airlines pause flights to some Russian cities
Following Wednesday’s suspension of flights from Baku to Grozy and Makhachkala, Azerbaijan Airlines announced on Friday that it would also halt service to eight more Russian cities.
The company will continue to operate flights to six Russian cities including Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Kazakhstan’s Qazaq Air also announced Friday that it was suspending flights from Astana to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg for a month.
FlyDubai also halted flights to Sochi and Mineralnye Vody in southern Russia for the next few days.
The day before, Israeli El Al suspended flights from Tel Aviv to Moscow citing “developments in Russia’s airspace.” The airline said it would reassess the situation next week.
Published at Thu, 26 Dec 2024 13:02:23 +0000