… I might be looking at Canadian immigration and student visa policies and thinking that there were some pretty nice loopholes to exploit. Because there are some fairly juicy ones out there.

The most obvious loophole – which, in fairness, the government is already moving to close – is that student visas don’t currently require students to attend a particular institution. Hence the stories of students arriving but never attending a school, or of some Ontario institutions “stealing” visa students by pouncing on them at Pearson and convincing them to come to a different college than the one to which they’d been admitted (I have no idea if this one’s true, by the way – but it’s a great yarn).

It’s also how a human trafficker teamed up with an unscrupulous employee at Lakeland College (the college itself was blameless) to issue fake acceptance letters which allowed a group of 60 Polish welders to enter the country. The human trafficker profited on the arrangements by hiring the men out to construction firms at twice the rate he paid the men.

But even with new, tighter student visa rules, potential gaping holes remain. The Canada Experience Class allows graduates of Canadian institutions to gain permanent residence based on:

(1) Obtaining a diploma in four semesters of “full-time study” (as defined by the institutions itself).

(2) Working for one year following graduation as a “retail sales supervisor,” or in a “specialized service occupation” (a classification which includes line cooks).

How difficult do you think it would be, say, in one of the provinces with relatively lax regulation of private institutions, to do a deal with such an institution to create some customized four-semester “full-time” programs? And then do some deals with employers to give these people jobs at which they can be ruthlessly exploited for twelve months? Actually, my guess is you wouldn’t even need to pay them salaries – if their families trusted you enough to get the paperwork done right and get their kid permanent residence status in Canada, they’d probably pay you. I don’t know exactly what the going rate for a pathway to Canadian citizenship is, but I’d guess mid-five figures, at the very least.

If I can come up with this, you can be fairly sure that actual human traffickers have come up with it, too. In fact, something not a million miles from this happened in California last year. The odds that something comparable is happening here are unknowable, but I’d guess they’re high enough that we should worry.

A couple of bad apples have the potential to spoil things for everyone. A little more vigilance on everyone’s part will pay dividends in the long run.