During a Commons Citizen and Immigration committee meeting, an official from Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada revealed that thousands of university and college acceptance letters used by foreign students applying to study in Canada this year may be fake. Bronwyn May, director-general of the International Students Branch, stated that over 10,000 letters could not be verified by the IRCC and are considered “potentially fraudulent.”
The committee is currently examining a new system for verifying post-secondary acceptance letters that was introduced last year. According to May, early indications suggest that the new process is effective. The IRCC reviewed approximately 500,000 university and college applications along with their attached Canadian school acceptance letters. While 93 percent of acceptance letters were validated, more than 10,000 are still under scrutiny and are suspected to be fraudulent.
Of the unverified acceptance letters, 2 percent could not be confirmed with the school, 1 percent had been canceled by the school, and in 2.7 percent of cases, there was no response from the school. May informed MPs that the enhanced letter of acceptance system has been in operation for about 10 months, and they are currently analyzing the data related to the 10,000 plus acceptance letters.
She emphasized that the IRCC is closely monitoring the situation and is conducting investigations into potential sources of the fraudulent letters. Reports have surfaced over the past year of foreign students unknowingly receiving falsified school acceptance letters from fraudulent immigration consultants.
Jennifer Cowan and Matthew Horwood contributed to this report.
