'An overstay has repercussions': Officials promise action after damning report on international student program

OTTAWA — Immigration officials submitted a plan of action to House of Commons committee on Monday, following an auditor general’s report that highlighted serious integrity controls in the international student visa program last month.

Part of that is ensuring voluntary compliance by student visa holders.

“We have to make sure that there’s a full continuum from telling people the rules to reminding them nicely to reminding them forcefully,” said Deputy Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Ted Gallivan, during his testimony on Monday. “Part of it, is the threat of no-return visa.”

“You know, an overstay has repercussions, including up to a five-year ban from readmittance to the country,” he added. “I’ve asked the team to start pilot work around aggressively managing the end of the visa as a management control and so we’ve got IT work underway.”

Last month, Auditor General of Canada Karen Hogan published a report that showed post-secondary institutions flagged 153,000 cases of non-compliance in the international student program between 2023 and 2024, but the department only had the budget to investigate 4,000 cases.

Gallivan acknowledged that the number of high risk cases or fraud ought to drive the budget, not the other way around.

Gallivan, has only been deputy minister of the department for the last four weeks. He started his new job on the same day the audit was published. His predecessor was Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar, who now serves as the president of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

The report, with help from the Canada Border Services Agency, also showed that only 40 per cent of the 39,500 students required to leave due to lapsed visas in 2024, had in fact left the country. It also showed 800 cases involving fraudulent documentation were not investigated.

Gallivan said he has not received an explanation as to why those cases were not pursued by the department.

Gallivan said the CBSA has worked to increase its capacity on forced removals. But during her testimony, CBSA president Erin O’Gorman said it’s better for the overall system for IRCC to ensure voluntary compliance over forced removal.

“It’s an expensive prospect to have a CBSA officer find somebody to remove them,” she told committee.

O’Gorman said her agency prioritizes “serious admissibility failed claimants” but that CBSA officers will remove people who are out of compliance. Gallivan and O’Gorman promised more communication to between the agency and the department.

“Most students are genuine, and I think will remove themselves off the basis of the work that’s being discussed today,” said O’Gorman. “Some have come for the wrong reasons, and they may find themselves in our serious and admissibility category.”

“But every year we do remove individuals who are out of compliance with their immigration status as a matter of course, and so we’ll continue to do that,” she added.

National Post

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