Navinder Singh isn't fit for Canada, but the immigration system isn't so sure. He's still fighting deportation eight years after his arrest

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When permanent resident Navinder Singh was caught with child pornography on his phone in 2018, he didn’t understand what was so wrong about it. He thought that his 19 videos of sexual abuse were “funny” and told a forensic psychologist afterward that things “were different in India.”

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Without any details — it gets worse — this alone would tell any regular Canadian that Singh was incompatible with our society. But at every step of the way, the system has fought hard to keep him in Canada. By 2024, he was still here, fighting deportation, and it’s very possible that he remains. His case highlights the many failure points at which the immigration system fails to keep criminal perverts out of the country.

Singh first came to Canada back in 2013 on a temporary foreign worker permit, which was upgraded to permanent residency in 2018. This was an admission and integration failure: he didn’t share the western taboo against child sexual abuse, nor did he absorb that part of our moral code in the years prior to his arrest. We don’t appear to screen for that when admitting foreign workers.

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Singh got his permanent residency papers at the end of February 2018 (along with his family). But the papers needed to be confirmed by immigration officials, so the next day they crossed from Alberta into Montana and back again to jump the immigration queue, a loophole known as “flagpoling.” It was here that Canada Border Service Agency officers became suspicious: Singh had a Class 1 licence that officers suspected was fraudulent.

Singh gave his phone to border officers, who found........

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