Indian people-trafficking claims against Canadian colleges reveal an 'exploited' immigration system, experts say.

An investigation by Indian officials into dozens of Canadian colleges and universities that may be linked to a scheme to illegally ferry students across the Canada-US border reveals the “amazing” extent to which loopholes in the immigration system can be exploited, some experts say.

“If the allegations are true, it reveals shocking gaps in our integrity agreements…. This is deep, deeply affecting and problematic,” Raj Sharma, a Calgary-based immigration lawyer, told the CBC News Network, adding that the allegations suggest a “wider-scale reduction in human trafficking .”

India's Enforcement Directorate said in a statement issued on Tuesday that it had found evidence of human trafficking involving two “organisations” in Mumbai after investigating Indian links to the Patel family, who froze to death in January 2022 while trying to cross the border from Manitoba into India. Minnesota during the cold weather.

The Enforcement Directorate said that its investigation found that around 25,000 students are sent by one organization, and more than 10,000 students are sent by another camp to different colleges outside India every year.

Arrangements will be made for Indian nationals to be admitted to Canadian colleges and universities and apply for student visas, according to the Enforcement Directorate.

But when the Indians arrived in Canada, instead of joining the college, they crossed the border illegally from Canada to the US and the money received by the Canadian schools was returned to the people's accounts, the Enforcement Directorate said.

The investigation also revealed that approximately 112 colleges based in Canada entered into an agreement with one institution and more than 150 with another organization, the Enforcement Directorate said.

These allegations have not been confirmed in court and India has not identified the Canadian colleges that are said to be involved.

The RCMP reached out to India

Camille Boily-Lavoie, spokeswoman for the RCMP, said in an email to CBC News that it has reached out to India through its International Police Liaison Officer for more information about the investigation.

Colleges and Institutes Canada, which is an organization that fights for the rights of Canadians behind the secondary network, said that it does not have information on the type of colleges that are reported to be affected by the allegations in India.

The process of issuing study permit applications and admissions is completely controlled by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the applicant and the higher education institution, said Dayna Smockum, spokeswoman for Ontario's Ministry of Colleges and Universities.

“The Department of Colleges and Universities has no role in this process,” Smockum said in an email to CBC News. “As our government has done repeatedly, we continue to call on the federal government to implement stronger border control measures to protect Ontario, our institutions and all of Canada.”

In an email to CBC News, IRCC said that starting in 2023, it is focused on strengthening the integrity of the international student program.

It says it has introduced a cap on enrollment rates at designated learning institutions (DLIs) – schools approved by the state or territory government to host international students.

The IRCC says it also required DLIs to verify all admission letters, submit the results of those institutions that fail to participate in student compliance tests, and increase the minimum financial requirements for study permit applicants.

The immigration system doesn't understand, says the expert

But Kelly Sundberg, a former Canadian Border Services Agency chief who is a professor of criminology at Mount Royal University, said the program is being ignored and is being “exploited” by international criminals.

“This kind of fraud, of playing our immigration system has been going on for a long time,” he said, noting that the number of those who may be involved is “staggering.”

The US has been using biometric technologies such as facial recognition and fingerprinting in its immigration processing for more than a decade and it has been more than a decade since it eliminated identification fraud in its system, Sundberg lamented.

But Canada doesn't have the manpower, or expertise to effectively check documents or people, he said.

WATCH | Canada's honor-based immigration system is 'being abused,' criminologist says:

Canada's honor-based immigration system is 'being exploited,' says criminologist

Indian law enforcement agencies suspect links between several Canadian colleges and two 'organizations' in Mumbai accused of smuggling students across the Canada-US border. Criminologist Kelly Sundberg says Canada's immigration system is being exploited by criminals, yet there is no oversight or enforcement.

Sundberg said he would be “very surprised” to find out that any colleges or universities knowingly participated in this alleged criminal enterprise.

“But it's no surprise that we're seeing people in Canada, the United States and overseas come together to take advantage of our open plan,” he said.

Ken Zaifman, an immigration lawyer based in Winnipeg, says that in his experience, the oversight role should be in educational institutions.

“And it didn't happen. They were drowning in international students to fund their programs,” he said.

Colleges and educational institutions should have known that such a problem exists with the recruitment of international students, said Zaifman, but instead chose to continue to appoint agents outside of Canada to recruit students who have no authority in what they do.

“The statistics were very important and no one wanted to do anything about it,” he said.

“Some universities were a little more active, but not all of them. They were appointing agents and attracting students, and it didn't occur to them that maybe the movement of these students wasn't real.”

'Fly-by-night' schools

But Robert Huish, a professor at Dalhousie University in the department of international development studies, says he believes many of the schools involved in the alleged scheme may be private “fly-by-night” colleges.

“Some of these private colleges that have been running this business aren't really colleges. They're just an abandoned office with an outdated copy of Microsoft Word, and that's the whole curriculum,” he said.

“The emphasis here is not so much on the official colleges and universities around the country, but on these late-night things that open up over gas stations.”