Harsimrat K Badal urges EAM to save future of 100’s of Punjabis facing deportation in Canada

Chandigarh: Bathinda MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal today urged union external affairs minister Dr S Jaishankar to save the future of hundreds of Punjabi students who were facing deportation after being duped by an unscrupulous education services agent by taking up their case with the Canadian authorities.

Mrs Harsimrat Badal, who has written a letter in this regard to the External Affairs minister, said the emphasis should be on taking strict action against dubious institutions as well as authorized agents who had played with the future of the students. “Unsuspecting students who are victims to this scam should be treated sympathetically as they have fulfilled all needed criteria for securing Permanent Residency after up-skilling themselves and should be granted the same without any hindrance”.

Mrs Badal said while 700 students had faced action on the same ground earlier, now it had come to light that 200 more students had been served deportation orders by the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) after it was revealed that they had been given fake admission letters by an authorized agent – Education Migration Services, Jalandhar.

  Explaining the fraud perpetrated on the students, Mrs Badal said “first they were given forged admission letters to a renowned college after being charged Rs 16 to 20 lakhs each for the same. When they reached Canada the students were informed that the admission had been cancelled and admission was secured for them in an alternative institution”. Mrs Badal said the students up-skilled themselves in the alternative institution but were issued deportation orders when they applied for Permanent Residency as their original admission documents were found to be fake.

Asserting that this scam was continuing since long and that the authorized Indian education agent alone could not have engineered it all alone without the involvement of

Canadian operatives or educational institutions in Canada, Mrs Badal said “action needs to be taken against all such persons including Canadian colleges giving admissions to students above their capacity intake”. She said as far as the students were concerned, they were duped by the education services agent who posed as an authorized representative of a college in Canada.

  “The students never intended to play any fraud. They followed the correct procedure before applying for Permanent Residency and if they had known otherwise they would not have applied for the same”, the MP added.