Kushandeep Singh was born in 1999 in Bibipur, a village of a thousand inhabitants in Punjab, India. Like almost everyone in Bibipur, the Singh are farmers: they own a farm with a small plot of land, some cows and some buffaloes. But unlike the others they decided to invest in Kushandeep’s education. So while most of the village children went to the local public school, little Singh went to a private school in a nearby town, Patiala. The family spent a third of their income on tuition alone. His father took him to town on a rickshaw he had hired on purpose, also giving a ride to other students. Along the way – an hour out and one back – the streets were lined with advertising posters. Kushandeep knew them by heart: at first they were from local restaurants and shops, then from McDonald’s. In the high school years, many billboards began promoting a different product. Education after graduation. In Canada.
For many families it was an attractive offer. It was about sending their children to study in an English-speaking country, safe and above all with tolerant immigration policies. As Kushandeep was doing well in school and his English was improving, his parents began to seriously consider enrolling him in a Canadian university. And they did what everyone in Punjab does: they turned to a recruiter.
The Canadian dream
It is estimated that there are tens of thousands of these intermediaries in India alone, although there is no way to know the exact figure as the sector is not regulated. In Patiala their offices are everywhere. They are the ones who connect students like Kushandeep with community colleges (local training centers, which offer two-year courses) and universities abroad, fill out the necessary documents and apply for a visa. Usually they are not paid by families but by universities, who willingly spend this money with the prospect of collecting international fees, four or five times higher than ordinary ones.
In Canada, thanks also to federal policies that have greatly encouraged this strategy, in 2019 there were 642 thousand foreign university students (they were about 239 thousand in 2011); Indians made up 34 percent of the total and many came from rural Punjab. According to press releases and government reports, international fees ensure Canada more than $ 21 billion in revenue each year, more than the auto parts industry, plus the wood industry.
To settle in the country, a boy or a girl must first obtain a visa to study, no matter what college or university; after graduation, you need a permit that allows you to live and work there for a maximum of three years; with that permit he can apply for permanent residency, which is granted on the basis of a score that takes into account knowledge of English, education and professional experience. When explaining these steps, an experienced recruiter makes it all seem very simple. It does not dwell on the faculty that should be chosen to get enough points, nor on the real probabilities of obtaining a long-term permit. The Canadian government does not say how many students who apply for permanent residency then receive it. In 2015, the Canadian Institute of Statistics calculated that they could be between 20 and 27 percent.
In the winter of 2017, Kushandeep ended up at a university he had never heard of, Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) in Surrey, a remote place in the province of British Columbia. That year, the KPU admitted six thousand foreign students (up from 525 just ten years earlier), and recorded a profit of $ 22 million. The agent he had turned to Patiala had promised him a comfortable and successful life, but when Kushandeep arrived in Surrey it was freezing cold, his roommates were never there because they worked continuously and everything was too expensive. He paid $ 400 a month for a bed to share with one of his new roommates, $ 50 for a bus pass, $ 200 for groceries. He had to look for a job quickly. The law allows students to work a maximum of twenty hours off campus, which is not enough to cover expenses. So in the end most of the boys and girls agree to be paid in black and much less than the minimum wage.
Some held out during the pandemic, many others lost their jobs and had to drop out of college. Kushandeep, despite many difficulties, managed to graduate and obtained a visa for three years. Its history and the system that transformed Canada’s universities, making them dependent on foreign student fees and therefore on intermediaries, is very well told in an investigation by the Canadian monthly The Walrus.
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