47,000 foreign students may now be in Canada illegally, says IRCC; 'India one of the top countries'

Canada has as many as 47,000 foreign students who are at present in the country illegally, the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada revealed at a House of Commons committee. They entered the country as students but then they may have violated their terms of visa, making them ineligible to stay in the country, IRCC said, as reported by the National Post.

Aiesha Zafar, the head of migration integrity at the agency, said that 47,175 people who entered Canada as students are potentially “non-compliant,” meaning that they are not attending classes as required by the terms of their visa.

At the meeting, Zafar was asked if there were any specific countries from where IRCC identified the maximum fraud. “What specific countries has IRCC identified frauds from? Is there a predominant country?” asked Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garne Garner.

“India is one of the top countries," Zafar said.

Zafar said the figure came via Canada's post-secondary institutions, reporting that they've lost track of their international student. It is not yet determined whether these students are fully non-compliant. The official said it would be challenging for the IRCC to come up with the exact number of international students violating their visa terms.

As for finding and removing non-compliant visa holders, she said that was the responsibility of the Canada Border Services Agency.

“Any foreign national in Canada would be under the purview of the Canada Border Services Agency, so they have an inland investigation team,” she said as she was responding to Garner's question on how to "track and remove" students in violation of their visas.

Schools report to IRCC if an international student stops attending classes. Such individuals can then be referred to the Canada Border Services Agency for enforcement action following IRCC's investigation. But IRCC does not have any mechanism of its own to track such students if a school does not report.

The National Post reported that earlier this year, data from the IRCC revealed that in just the spring of 2024, 50,000 foreign nationals who entered the country on student visas were reported as “no shows” by the schools at which they were registered. Of those, 19,582 no-shows were Indian nationals. The next highest country-of-origin for no-shows was China, with 4,279 cases.