The purpose of a system is what it does

On immigration fraud.

(Liberal Immigration Minister Lena Diab.)

Let’s be clear about immigration fraud.

It started at the top. It was on purpose. And it’s still happening on purpose.

After a week of damning reports, and even a craven disregard for a return to decency, it has become abundantly clear that the government’s much-touted “reforms” are more about managing political perception than fixing a broken system. Behind the rhetoric lies a reality of widespread fraud, a continued lack of oversight, and an immigration department which has lost even greater control of its own bastardized mandate.

One of the most glaring failures has been the confirmed explosion of fraud within the international student program. Earlier this week, a scathing report from the Auditor General revealed that the IRCC failed to investigate the vast majority of cases flagged for potential fraud or non-compliance. Out of 153,000 cases identified in 2023 and 2024, only about 4,000 investigations were actually launched — a measly 2.6%. Even more troubling, 40% of these investigations were simply dropped because the students didn’t bother to respond to emails.

Speak to industry insiders and they’ll tell you that a “pay-to-play” market ran rampant between the years of 2021-2024, almost entirely on the basis of an understanding that fraudulent letters of acceptance, through equally dodgy institutions, would not be investigated through official immigration channels.

Let us not forget, even Ontario Premier Doug Ford touted this unvetted explosion — the worst policy decision in our nation’s history — as a success story. And yes, his office assisted in building for Conestoga, the worst offender of all the nation’s illegitimate institutions.

Reporting on that, from the height of sifting through the rubble:

This culture of non-enforcement extends to the asylum system, which has seen a massive surge in claims. Since 2015, the backlog of refugee claimants has grown by a staggering 2,900%. While the government speaks of protecting the “vulnerable,” critics (read: normal people with morals and scruples) point out that the system is being exploited by those using it as a legal strategy to stall their removal from Canada. International students have spammed asylum claims after striking out in the labour force, making the trend so obvious that even then-immigration minister Marc Miller admitted it “[didn’t] smell good.”

Record levels of asylum fraud, in the six figures, is no mere matter of paperwork. The programme has become the safe haven for serial extortionists, varying degrees of triggermen from the Indian subcontinent, and those who have exploited a key loophole in the Safe Third Country Agreement: Canadian judges no longer care to enforce the law.

Furthermore, the government’s growing approach to “chain migration” — the process by which immigrants brings in numerous family members — has also come under fire for being blown off its hinges, and lacking any checks and balances.

“Under Bill C-3, anyone who can find a Canadian in their family tree is considered Canadian,” writes Jamie Sarkonak of the National Post, citing the case of a person whose last Canadian ancestor was born in 1835, nearly 200 years ago. Their approval took 3 weeks.

But perhaps most concerning is the government’s complete failure to track and plan for deportations. The Auditor General’s report found that the IRCC has no way of knowing how many international students with expired visas actually leave the country.

They haven’t been looking, because they don’t want to know.

Government officials now believe Canada’s undocumented worker population to be in the 500,000s following the worst of the ‘Fraser Wave.’ Speak to policy experts and those deeper in the know, and that actual number is believed to be closer to 1.5 million. It is expected that another 1.5 million + in visas are due to expire by the end of 2026.

That’s three-million potentially undocumented workers. That’s two Manitobas. Does that sound like “taking back control” of immigration, as Carney sniped on Wednesday?

The Liberal government’s response to these issues has been largely defensive, with ministers often dismissing legitimate questions as “ridiculous” or accusing critics of bad faith or bigotry. Meanwhile, the government’s own announced “revised” targets are illegitimate, and deploy all manner of creative accounting tricks.

True immigration reform, re-unlocking the future for young Canadians, fixing upward social mobility for generations denied additional rungs on the ladder for the first time in Canada’s history, will require more than grandfathering-in the scams and scammers of yesterday and today, and claiming we’re even.

There’s no single pipeline this country could build to the Pacific Coast that can solve for replacing and undercutting its labour force, driving price-to-income ratios north of 10-to-1, and walling off the nation’s launch-pad to reserve infinite space for an infinite amount of indentured servants.

There’s no solving for the 30-40% of STEM grads who flee for greener pastures (primarily south of the border), when our solution is to bring in 3-4 day labourers for every one that exits.

After ruining the economy during Covid, after never believing in borders or the nation to begin with, the answer was always going to be an infinite supply of cheap human capital — a “problem” that countries like India will tell you they have just the “solution” for.

Except, the real “problem” is India’s. Demographically, the country is too young, too overpopulated, and too unskilled. Now, its forced to export this problem to willing recipients. But Canada shouldn’t be in the favours to India and the Century Initiative business — it should be in the Canada business.

In a just world, the Sean Frasers, Marc Millers, and Lena Diabs of the world, they’d be hauled in front of a tribunal next week, and made to answer for their willful blindness. But this is the Canada of the 2020s. The poison is in the glass, not the liquid. There’s a newly minted banality to our indifference and our corruption.

But that doesn’t mean we settle for it.

Our politicians were wrong. Our business lobbies have been way out of line. One group of scammers gave an inch, and then another group of scammers took a mile. Only by keeping immigration reform front and centre can we continue to claw back a version of the semi-competent. If it drops out of the top pocketbook issues, expect 25% Canadian youth unemployment within the next election cycle, and a return to sky-rocketing rents.

The only thing worse than what’s been done to this country, the sullying of our oath of citizenship and the disrespect we’ve shown proud Canadians old and new (the majority of whom built here or came here to be part of something more than a safety school run out of an international airport), would be to accept “taking back control” at its word.

Einstein told us that “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.”

I assure you, there’s been no policy more evil than that which has denied a generation — and counting — a chance at having a fraction of the life once enjoyed by their parents.

That fight continues, because it must.

Alexander Brown is the writer of Acceptable Views, co-founder and managing editor of Without Diminishment, and a director with the National Citizens Coalition.