Officers from the Canada Border Providers Company (CBSA) visited — ‘raided’ — a protest website in Calgary the place worldwide graduates have been demonstrating, with individuals reporting that officers checked their immigration paperwork.
The CBSA is liable for imposing immigration legal guidelines, investigating potential violations and finishing up removals throughout Canada.
The protest includes greater than 1,000 worldwide graduates, most of them Indian college students from Punjab. The demonstrators have been protesting on the streets and collaborating in a sequence starvation strike for practically 10 days after their Submit-Commencement Work Allow (PGWP) purposes had been extensively rejected. They’re urging authorities to rethink their instances, saying they enrolled in and accomplished their programmes believing they had been eligible for the permits.
The problem is reportedly linked partly to an immigration consultancy based mostly in Jalandhar, Punjab. Households within the state usually make substantial monetary investments to ship their youngsters overseas, and the affected graduates say they paid important tuition charges beneath the understanding that they might qualify for post-study work permits.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has stated its June 2026 replace merely clarified current eligibility necessities for non-credit programmes and didn’t change the core standards for PGWP eligibility.
The graduates, nonetheless, argue that their purposes had been submitted in good religion based mostly on earlier interpretations of the foundations and must be reassessed.
The continued dispute has expanded from particular person utility rejections into a significant public demonstration, drawing reactions from Canadian immigration authorities and the Alberta provincial authorities as affected graduates search authorized cures and administrative opinions.
