https://www.theepochtimes.com/world...adas-battle-against-immigration-fraud-5973547
Federal and provincial governments have announced measures to crack down on immigration fraud by toughening regulations and even closing entire programs. But what if these moves are merely scratching the surface of a much larger problem?
This past December, Canada’s immigration department announced a halt on applications for the Start-up Visa (SUV) Program, which had allowed foreign entrepreneurs to move to Canada to start new businesses.
While many applicants were genuine entrepreneurs, the SUV program was known among immigration analysts as being particularly prone to fraud.
In August 2025, immigration consultancy firm Bluewater Immigration rang the alarm bell over the high rate of “fake startup ventures” applying under the SUV program—startups conjured out of thin air to obtain permanent residency under false pretences.
Meanwhile, in November 2025, Ontario took the dramatic step of suspending an immigration program known as the Skilled Trades Stream and returning all pending applications after an internal review concluded it was “vulnerable to systemic misrepresentation and/or fraud.” The decision left many applicants in limbo, prompting protests outside Queen’s Park, where advocacy groups and migrant representatives denounced the suspension. These dramatic moves signal a renewed focus by Canada’s policymakers on combating immigration fraud, though there are signs that the cases addressed so far may represent only the tip of the iceberg.
A 2021 Gallup poll found that 74 million people worldwide would like to move to Canada. While many do not meet the country’s immigration criteria—and accept that reality—a smaller number attempt to circumvent the system through various schemes.
According to a March 2025 report by the Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association, Canada’s immigration department refused over 52,000 temporary residence applications “due to misrepresentation” in the first half of 2024 alone.
In March 2025, then-Immigration Minister Marc Miller said the federal government had investigated “an average of over 9,000 cases of suspected immigration fraud every month” in 2024.
Marriage Fraud
Falsifying a foreign worker or international student application may be relatively straightforward—but what about falsifying an entire marriage?
On Jan. 5, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) posted a statement on X cautioning Canadians to “think carefully before marrying someone and sponsoring them to come to Canada,” especially if they have only recently met and the person wishes to marry quickly.
The immigration department calls this a “relationship of convenience.” At times, the bride and groom are a fraudster and an unsuspecting victim–often, they are two co-conspirators.
Sham marriages were put in the spotlight in October 2025 when viral social media posts began to circulate alleging that a Tim Hortons manager in Picton, Ont., offered a 17-year-old female employee $20,000 to marry the manager’s brother—an Indian national—so that he could obtain permanent residency.
In a statement to Epoch Times, Tim Hortons acknowledged the incident, calling it “completely unacceptable.”
“Tim Hortons restaurants are owned and operated by franchisees who independently manage their own labour for their restaurants. The restaurant owner terminated the manager involved soon after he became aware of the completely unacceptable situation on his team,” said the company.
Since a portion of marriage fraud goes undetected and results in the fraudster obtaining permanent residency, the number of cases is unknown. According to one estimate from f0rmer Ryerson University professor Kenise Murphy Kilbride, there could be as many as 10,000 cases a year.
A System Stressed
Canada’s sheer volume of immigration applications—the backlog has now topped one million—is fuelling the growth of an industry centred on helping newcomers navigate the immigration process. Unfortunately, this rapidly growing industry is itself struggling to contain a rise in fraud.
Licensed immigration consultants in Canada now number 11,733. They fall under the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants (CICC), the authority mandated by the Government of Canada to license immigration consultants.
Legally, no one can just declare themselves to be an immigration consultant and start charging money for their services, but many do anyway. This has led to a parallel, shadow industry of unlicensed consultants cropping up.
The CICC’s 2025 annual report notes that the College shut down 5,390 websites and social media pages of what it calls “unauthorized practitioners” last year alone.
On Jan. 15, the Government of Saskatchewan released a statement announcing the first-ever charges against an unlicensed immigration consultant in the province.
The move comes after Saskatchewan passed the Immigration Services Act in July 2024, which Premier Scott Moe’s government heralded as a major strike against immigration fraud, saying it had the “highest fines for violations in the country.”
Fraud in Education
One of Canada’s most notorious immigration fraud trends has been the proliferation of fly-by-night, strip-mall colleges in the post-pandemic period, when international student numbers surged—institutions so dubious that then-Immigration Minister Marc Miller described them as “the diploma equivalent of puppy mills.”
The federal government eventually cracked down, placing a cap on international students in October 2024 and mandating soon after that international students at colleges could only get post-graduate work permits if they graduate from in-demand fields of study such as health care or skilled trades.
These measures led to a 52 percent decline in international student arrivals, and some colleges are slashing programs and even closing campuses to cope with the financial hit.
But the fight to combat shady colleges continues. B.C. has been conducting a legal crackdown, with its Private Training Institutions Regulatory Unit (PTIRU) cancelling the designation certificates of three colleges in 2025.
The most recent such cancellation came in October 2025 with the decertification of Pacific Link College.
In response to an inquiry from Epoch Times, B.C.’s ministry of post-secondary education and future skills said that the action against Pacific Link came after a routine inspection found “serious violations.”
“Reasons for cancellation include programs not being delivered as approved, inappropriate attendance policies, and students being enrolled without meeting admission requirements,” the ministry said. Pacific Link College didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Some experts in the field of immigration believe these kinds of anti-fraud measures are a sign of progress, but still do not go nearly far enough.
Neera Agnihotri is an immigration consultant in B.C. and one of the founders of One Voice Canada, a non-profit working to combat the exploitation of international students and foreign workers.
She says pleas from those working in the immigration industry for strong action to clean up Canada’s immigration system have too often fallen on deaf ears.
“We’ve been telling Immigration: ‘Hello, this is happening. Hello, this is not right. Hello, let’s do something.’ But I think the only time Immigration jumps is when media gets involved,” she said.
Forgery
Agnihotri says governments should dedicate more resources to proactively rooting out illegitimate colleges and immigration fraud. This includes a pernicious kind of corruption that she has experienced herself: the sale of Labour Market Impact Assessments (LMIAs).
An LMIA is a document that employers typically need to obtain to hire temporary foreign workers (TFWs), showing that no Canadian or permanent resident is available to do the job.
A black market in fake LMIAs has cropped up, targeting desperate migrants lured into a false promise of working in Canada.
In December 2024, the federal government announced that a positive LMIA would no longer confer extra points towards permanent residency, in an effort to disincentivize forgery.
Agnihotri says this is a reform that she and others had long been pushing for, but said it is only the first step towards resolving an ongoing problem.
There have even been instances where she herself has discovered forged LMIAs with her own immigration firm’s name on them.
While the federal government’s removal of the extra LMIA points have reduced the amount of forgery, Agnihotri says it is an open secret in the immigration industry that unscrupulous actors are still cashing in on demand from those desperate enough to shell out thousands for an LMIA.
“If there’s a consumer, it’s supply and demand,” she says.
Expiring Permits Spark Asylum Claim Concerns
Meanwhile, the new year may bring about another serious challenge to Canada’s immigration system: a surge in illegitimate asylum claims from international students and foreign workers with expiring permits.
The Carney government’s 2026-2028 Immigration Levels Plan promises to reverse the “unprecedented rate of growth” of Canada’s temporary resident population that it says has “put pressure on housing supply, the healthcare system, and schools.”
Specifically, the plan pledges to reduce the total number of temporary residents to 5 percent of Canada’s population, from a historic height of 7.5 percent in 2024.
Concretely, accomplishing this objective means many of the nearly three million temporary residents on Canadian soil will have to fly home instead of becoming permanent residents—but will they do so?
Many international students in particular came to Canada with the belief that they would be able to eventually obtain permanent residency, and many of their families sacrificed much to fund this dream.
These dreams were spurred on by the federal government’s effort to jumpstart immigration after it had stalled during the pandemic.
This campaign featured announcements that seemed to confirm the idea that a student visa was a golden ticket to Canada, such as a statement issued by the Department of Immigration in January 2021: “The government has made significant efforts to encourage international students to settle permanently in Canada, as they help create jobs and fill labour shortages so our businesses can thrive.”
Now that Canada has done a U-turn on immigration, not all of those who wanted to stay will be able to. This is where the fraud potentially comes in.
While many temporary residents will dutifully leave when their permit expires, there are increasing indications that some will make a last-ditch effort to stay by filing an illegitimate asylum claim.
As an immigration consultant, Agnihotri says that she is approached by temporary residents who want to file an asylum claim. When she asks on what grounds they are basing the claim on, they tell her they want to stay in Canada.
While Agnihotri informs them that simply desiring to stay in Canada after one’s permit expires is not a valid basis for an asylum claim, she says there are others in her field who are less scrupulous.
In November 2024, then-Immigration Minister Miller sent a letter to the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants over concerns of “potentially unethical advice” being given by consultants encouraging international students to file bogus asylum claims to remain in Canada.
In 2026, 2.1 million temporary residents will hold expired or expiring permits. This is setting up to be an unprecedented experiment: will there be an orderly exodus, or will Canada’s immigration system be flooded with false asylum claims?
This comes as our refugee system is already heavily burdened. According to data from Statistics Canada, the number of “asylum claimants, protected persons, and related groups” has grown for 15 straight quarters, topping 500,000 in the third quarter of 2025.
The federal government is now seeking to contain the growth in asylum claims—and particularly to head off a surge in bogus claims from temporary residents—with Bill C-12, also known as the Strengthening Canada’s Immigration System and Borders Act.
Bill C-12, which is now making its way through the Senate, prevents asylum claims made one year after the claimant has entered the country from being referred to the Immigration and Refugee Board.
The bill also expands the Government of Canada’s power to “cancel, suspend or change immigration documents.”
By all indications, 2026 is shaping up to be a major test of how effectively Canada can address the challenges and shortcomings in its immigration system.
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