Canada okays study permit for 50-year-old

SOCIAL media have been buzzing with anger over the recent case of a 50-year-old man who initially entered Canada on a visitor visa but later acquired a study permit.

A post shared by CanadaHousing2 on Reddit posted a video of a 50-year-old Indian who said that he came to the country with a visitor visa, however, with the help of a Canada-based educational consultancy, GOAT Consulting Inc Canada, he was also approved for a study permit in the country.

In the 17-second video, the man said that his name is Prateek Bhai Gadhvana and “I came here on a visitor visa and GOAT helped to get a study permit and I got the approval.”

He also added, “They also helped me to get my wife's spousal open-work permit. So I came here to collect it.” 

The video was a promotional bit as there is a @goat.ca_ watermark on it. However, users on Reddit expressed strong reactions to the unlikely approval of a study permit for someone this old. They also questioned the immigration system's fairness and loopholes exploited by consultants.

One user wrote, “Yet they deny a female doctor PR because she is 40 years old. Yes a doctor was denied PR due to her age and sent packing. STUPID system. I thought open spouse visas were axed for non-university masters and the like...”

Another wrote, “How is this even possible? Like I know there are immigration consultant and lawyers out there using unscrupulous and illegal ways of scamming the system into getting people visas. Like unless they're openly committing fraud and claiming to the government that they've left the country before they re-applied for a different visa, it should be impossible for anybody on a visitor visa to convert it to any other visa. Our system is completely broken. We need to completely overhaul it with clear set rules with no exception.”

One user added, “You can't just come here with a visitor visa and convert it to a more permanent type of visa. We need to clamp down on these PR pathways that are strife with exploitation and fraud. This should be completely unacceptable to all Canadians no matter if they're far-left to far-right.”

Critising Canada's immigration system, one user said, “There is no country in the world with an immigration system and leaders as idiotic as Canada. We should be forcibly ending the current government or at least being a bit unruly like the French. What we are doing as citizens now is absolutely nothing. Complacency isn't going to work.” 

Another added, “These immigration lawyers have no shame.”

Some other wrote, “This guy is the face of the problem. I feel bad for the respectable Indian Canadians (Canadians) who worked hard for our country. They are lumped in with these 'students' now and must hate it.”