Immigration Department launching program to track foreign students
· Toronto Sun
OTTAWA — Just weeks after an auditor general’s report drew a red circle around Canada’s beleaguered international student program, the Immigration Department said changes are on the way.
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During testimony proffered Monday in front of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, deputy minister Ted Gallivan said the concerning figures contained within the audit were due to ministry shortcomings.
“(The numbers) were symptoms of the fact the IRCC (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada) didn’t manage an entry-exit regime, full stop,” he said.
“In the action plan we’re building, in fact, the initial system implementation is in May … to have an indicator of in the country or not in the country.”
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Gallivan said the numbers were indicative of the fact that IRCC had no game plan — or intention — to manage or track departures after the expiration of an individual’s visa.
In the audit released last week by Auditor General Karen Hogan , more than 153,000 students were flagged as potentially being in Canada under violation of their student visa in 2023 and 2024, despite the fact IRCC only had the bandwidth to conduct about 2,000 investigations annually.
During that same time period, 4,057 investigations were launched with about 40% of those cases stalling due to students not responding to requests for more information.
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Between 2018 and 2023, 800 study permits were found to have been issued to applicants using fraudulent applications with many of those individuals applying to become permanent residents.
“We’ve now taken responsibility for managing that in collaboration with the CBSA (Canada Border Services Agency),” Gallivan said.
“We’re beginning pilots (pilot projects) next month on what techniques work, when do you intervene with students.”
He said that approach will also be expanded to other visa streams, saying the same situations exist with visitor and work visas.
“This is a paradigm shift for IRCC, where we agree with the concern that Canadians have that we’re not sure who’s in or out of the country and we’re doing the work — both from an IT perspective and from a management perspective — to manage that more effectively,” Gallivan said.