MUMBAI – For the second year in a row, Indian nationals have made the most refugee claims in Canada. This is a trend that is worrying immigration experts and officials. The Immigration Board of Canada says that between January and June of this year, 9,947 claims were made by Indian citizens. This is more than 18% of the total 55,093 claims made during that time.
The number of claims has gone down since 2024, when there were 32,563 claims from Indians, the most ever. However, Indian people are still a big part of the refugee system, which has raised concerns.
Kanwar Sierah, an immigration expert in Mississauga, has been quite vocal against the trend, calling it a “fraud industry with Government blessings.” Sierah called the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) “the breeding ground of blood-sucking ‘licensed’ consultants churning out copy-paste asylum claims for Visitors, Students & Foreign Workers” in a series of posts on social media.
Sierah’s data shows that Indian claimants also have a high rate of refusal, at 19%, which puts them in the top 10 for rejected cases among all nationalities. The significant number of abandoned and withdrawn cases is even more striking. Indians make up 53% of all abandoned claims and 9% of all withdrew claims. This means that a lot of people who file claims don’t follow through with them, which could be because they weren’t really being persecuted.
Sierah told the media that there are “a few genuine” cases, but the system is “literally flooding” with bogus asylum petitions. He said that a lot of people come to Canada on visiting visas and then advisers give them “package deals” that include a refugee claim. A lot of these assertions are said to be based on a fear of being persecuted for supporting the Khalistan separatist movement, which Sierah thinks is not a good reason.
The problem isn’t just with people who have guest visas. People with study permits and work visas from other countries have also begun applying for asylum, especially since it has grown harder to get permanent status in Canada. Student support groups have told the media in the past that they know of several examples like this where students are utilizing asylum petitions as a last resort to stay in the country.
Indian officials are also worried that some people are joining pro-Khalistan protests outside Canadian missions to shoot pictures, which they then use as fake proof to support their refugee claims. Since the government of then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took office in late 2015, the number of asylum claims from Indian citizens has been steadily rising. That year, there were just 379 petitions from India.