CIMM – Letter of Acceptance Verification – February 28, 2024
Key Facts and Figures
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) launched a Letter of Acceptance Verification Project in February 2018.
From February 2018 to October 2023, IRCC completed 41,374 manual Letter of Acceptance (LOA) verifications through this system. Of these verifications, 3,794 (9.2%) were confirmed by the Designated Learning Institutions (DLIs) as being either fraudulent or altered.
On December 1, 2023, IRCC launched an enhanced, mandatory LOA Verification Portal. From launch to February 21, 2024, 111,925 LOAs were verified by DLIs. Of these responses, 90.8% were matched, 3.7% were not matched, 2.2% were cancelled by the DLI, and 3.3% received no response.
Key Messages
IRCC takes the issue of program integrity seriously. We are strengthening International Student Program integrity and enhancing protections to address student vulnerability and unethical recruitment, and to eliminate non-genuine-actors in the program.
To protect prospective students from LOA fraud, IRCC implemented a new system to verify LOAs from post-secondary Designated Learning Institutions before a study permit is issued. Since December 1, 2023, LOA verification is mandatory.
We recognize the immense contributions that international students make to our country and we are committed to providing a path to Canada that is honest and transparent. All applicants must continue to ensure that, before applying for a study permit, they do their research, have a genuine LOA from a DLI, and refer to the official IRCC website to get information about our programs and fraud prevention.
If an individual believes they have been deceived by an unscrupulous consultant, we urge them to come forward and report fraud.
Supplementary Information
When a study permit application is received online, IRCC automatically sends the DLI an email to advise that they have new LOAs to verify in the portal, which is accessible with a secure code. In the portal, the DLI is provided an excel-based document containing a list of study permit applicants who have indicated that they are attending that DLI.
DLIs are provided the following information to support validation:
a copy of the actual LOA that the student submitted to IRCC;
the student identification number issued by the DLI on the Letter of Acceptance (LOA);
the applicant’s last name;
the applicant’s first name; and
the applicant’s date of birth.
The LOAs shared via the IRCC Portal contain additional personal information the DLI can use to verify that the LOA is indeed from their institution (e.g. mailing address, email address, field/program of study).
The DLI has 10 calendar days (currently 15 calendar days for administrative purposes) from the date of application receipt to complete the verification activity by providing to IRCC a status update of “Verified – Matched, Verified – No Match, or Cancelled”.
A study permit application is not deemed complete and submitted until this verification is done. If the verification is not completed within the allotted timeframe, IRCC will return the study permit application to the applicant and the processing fee will be refunded.
Manual LOA verification is completed for applications that cannot go through the portal (e.g., paper-based applications). An IRCC processing officer emails the DLI to confirm the student’s acceptance. Once the DLI responds, the officer continues processing the application.
Systematic verification of all post-secondary LOAs associated with all study permit applications benefits all stakeholders:
IRCC: Ensures that we are dealing with legitimate LOAs.
Students: Limits the chance of exploitation by unscrupulous agents.
DLIs: Ensures that fraudulent LOAs bearing the DLIs name are not being used for nefarious purposes.
