Everyone knows that Canada has a problem with illegal immigration. Tens of thousands of migrants illegally flow across our unmanned border every year, and tens of thousands more arrive at Canadian airports under false pretences with the intention of overstaying a visitor visa or destroying their travel documents and claiming asylum.
Canada received 50,390 asylum seekers this way in 2017, another 55,035 in 2018 and is on track to receive nearly 50,000 again this year.
As my colleague Sue-Ann Levy reports in the Toronto Sun, asylum seekers will cost taxpayers in the City of Toronto $75 million this year. This comes in addition to the burden on provincial taxpayers, who pay for gold-plated social services for asylum seekers, and the $1.3 billion estimated by the Parliamentary Budget Office for the Feds to process these applications.
What many Canadians don’t realize, though, is that this is just the start of our illegal immigration woes.
There are other, more sophisticated schemes that enable hundreds of thousands of migrants to come to Canada while circumventing our immigration laws.
According to a new bombshell report, one in three people who are in Canada with a student visa are not enrolled at any educational institution in the country. This worrying report comes from none other than the neutral researchers at Statistics Canada.
As Douglas Todd reports in the Vancouver Sun, there is no indication that 30.5% of international students are signed up to attend a Canadian post-secondary school.
According to the most recent immigration levels report tabled to Parliament, Canada issues nearly 320,000 study permits each year. The number of international students in Canada in 2018 was 573,000 — four times as many as there were in 2000 and 73% more than four years ago.
As Lindsay Shepherd reports for True North, apparent fraud in the English Language exam program makes it even easier for fake students to come to Canada. Shepherd spoke to respected Toronto immigration lawyer Richard Boraks, who provided evidence of fraudulent language certificates being issued and explained how many foreigners come to Canada with student visas but have no intention of studying — or leaving.
“Look at Laurentian University. They set up entire courses [for international students largely from India], and none of the kids showed up,” said Boraks. “They all went to work illegally, working 60-80 hours as truck drivers.”
A Globe and Mail investigative report shed further light on this phenomenon, explaining how trucking companies send inexperienced “student” drivers out on the dangerous winter roads, sometimes causing deadly crashes, in exchange for reference letters that help these fake students gain permanent residency.
Crooked immigration consultants around the world are known to tell their clients the easiest way to get to Canada is by pretending to be a student, then working illegally until they can qualify to stay permanently.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently appointed a new immigration minister, Toronto MP Marco Mendicino. Unlike Trudeau’s previous immigration ministers, Mendicino has an extensive background fighting against those who seek to undermine our safety and security.
As a federal prosecutor, Mendicino worked to put members of the Toronto 18 al-Qaeda terrorist cell behind bars.
While Mendicino will no doubt have to follow Trudeau’s marching orders to welcome 350,000 newcomers each year through legal channels, he should also focus his attention on cracking down on the hundreds of thousands who come to Canada illegally.
