Brazillian deported after blowing whistle on business using undocumented workers
A Brazilian man is claiming he was misled into working illegally for a company in Winnipeg — and was then deported after he brought it to the attention of authorities.
A Brazilian man is claiming he was misled into working illegally for a company in Winnipeg — and was then deported after he brought it to the attention of authorities.
Ighor Santos, 27, says he was ordered to leave the country after blowing the whistle on the man who recruited him and other foreign nationals to work illegally on a construction job in Winnipeg.
As previously reported by True North, Gurwinder Singh Ahluwalia, 43, of Winnipeg pleaded guilty to one count of unauthorized employment of foreign nationals under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act for hiring Santos and others to work illegally for his company.
Santos said he came to Canada in March 2023 and worked at the site for nearly five months.
He and his family first reached out to the authorities later that year, telling Canada Border Services Agency officials he'd been coaxed into working illegally under the promise of eventually being provided a work permit.
However, Santos said that after an interview that went on for several hours, he was shocked when a border agent told him he had to leave the country because he too had broken the law.
"I was, of course, sad because I tried to [do] the right thing … to avoid this to happen to me, because none of this was my intention," Santos said in an interview conducted with the CBC from São Paulo.
“At the end of the day,” Santos continued, “the wrong people, they're still there.”
Meanwhile, Ahluwalia—who had been living in Canada since moving from India in 2010 and became a Canadian citizen in 2019—was only sentenced to 20 months of house arrest and ordered to pay a $50,000 fine.
The court also heard at least 14 foreign nationals were illegally employed on the site, and it remains unclear how many of those foreign nationals have been allowed to remain in the country.
Did Ahluwalia make more than $50,000 dollars in profits as a result of his illegal employment? Is he still allowed to opertae his company from the comfort of his own home? Canada is just so tough on crime!