Indian students and Canada

Canada's dramatic spike in rejecting study permits for Indian students — soaring from 32% to 74% in just two years — is a direct consequence of a broken system and a necessary response to India's alarming actions. While officially attributed to combating widespread application fraud, this policy shift is inextricably linked to a grave diplomatic crisis provoked by the Indian government's reckless behaviour on Canadian soil, including assassinations and political interference.

India is, by far, the top source of international students in Canada, and while most of these students are qualified, a large number of people abuse the system — falsifying financial records and academic documents, or acquiring acceptance letters from phoney universities and colleges — to enter the country with the intention of illegally settling in the country, or crossing the porous border with the US to settle there.

The core of this rupture is the involvement of India's intelligence agency in the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian citizen and Sikh dissident, in the province of British Columbia. Canada's intelligence service confirmed India's role in the assassination, and New Delhi's mangled cover-up — coupled with Indian media and politicians' proclivity for saying the quiet part out loud — irrevocably strained the bilateral relationship, forcing Canada to scrutinise all avenues of exchange with extreme caution.

The resulting visa crackdown is thus a justified defensive measure against a country that may not be Canada's rival, but is certainly not its friend. Canada has no obligation to keep inviting students from a country that refuses to even provide assurances that its citizens and services will obey Canadian laws. If India has a problem with Canada's new policies, it could change its own policy of disregarding international norms and the rule of law. Even better, India could simply stop sponsoring terrorism everywhere in the world.