Auditor General Uncovers Student Visa Fraud

0:00Canada's Auditor General Karen Hogan has uncovered serious gaps in the controls for the International Student Program. She found that immigration officials lacked the resources to properly check applications with budgets allowing just 2,000 investigations each year. The audit highlighted a major oversight from 2018 to 2023, where 800 study permit applicants used fake documents or lied on their forms, but the department never followed up. See all those visa holders later applied for other ways to stay in Canada, and 456 of them got approved. International student visas have dropped sharply as a result, hitting universities and colleges hard, especially with new, lower caps on student. Numbers The immigration minister is urging struggling schools to seek support from provinces. These findings come amid broader efforts to tighten the program and ensure its integrity, with officials now under pressure to fix these. Own our abilities moving forward. That's the story for today.

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