Gaming Canada's Immigration

Well, who would've thought it?  There is an entire underground operation of immigration consultants busy as proverbial Canadian beavers helping a host of clients evade legal imperatives to qualify for landed immigrant and citizenship status in Canada.  Rumours do have full substance, after all.  And all it took was a fully determined hierarchy spurred on by a Conservative Cabinet Minister heading Citizenship and Immigration Canada to get the investigation rolling.

Federal officials initially identified 6,500 individual instances of abuse of the Canadian immigration system.  That has now swelled to double the number at 11,000 nationally identified, resulting from a nation-wide enforcement of winkling out true numbers of those acquiring Canadian citizenship and immigration status through fraud.

The fraudulent and up to now completely successful manoeuvres that yielded fine results for bogus immigrant claims allowed foreigners to sponsor relatives and to qualify for Canadian passports, benefits and the right to vote.  These were people, furthermore, who never even lived in Canada for any meaningful period of time, as required by law.

Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Jason Kenney is set to announce that his officials were prepared to immediately strip some 2,900 Canadians of their fraudulently-gained citizenship status in Canada.  The Immigration Department's working relationship with the Canada Border Services Agency and the RCMP to combat this outstanding problem resulted in a high degree of success.

There is every intention now of prosecuting those involved, and revoking their Canadian status.  A host of charges have been laid for the most part against immigration consultants accused of aiding and directing clients to defraud the government.  Consultants, according to Minister Kenney, were taking in "upwards of $25,000" per family in payment for this type of corrupt service.

Almost half of the 11,000 now under investigation are permanent residents who likely committed residence fraud, when an immigrant claims that they've moved to Canada but continue to live abroad.  Sound familiar?  Remember the IDF assault against Hezbollah in Lebanon, which conflict in response to hostile action from Lebanese terrorists led to Canada 'rescuing' Canadian-Lebanese citizens from the war zone at huge public expense?

"Anecdotal evidence suggests that a percentage of applicants from the Middle East obtain permanent resident status, then Canadian citizenship, with the goal of acquiring a second passport as insurance in case of instability in their country of first residence", according to a federal study.  Released under the Access to Information Act, the study found a significant level of fraud among permanent residents applying to sponsor family members in Lebanon.

While only residents of Canada are able to legally sponsor relatives for immigration, the study said that up to a third of Lebanese sponsorship cases were suspect.  The sponsors not residing in Canada, pretending they did for the purpose of helping relatives to acquire immigrant status.  Enforcement officials were alerted when a large number of immigrants gave the same address as their Canadian home.

Another government report read: "As a result, many permanent resident applicants are reluctant to leave the Gulf (because of high-paying jobs and business opportunities) to settle in Canada permanently but want to obtain permanent resident status and citizenship for reasons of security, the future of their children and a potential doubling of their salary by virtue of holding a Canadian passport", revealing that a "significant" number of sponsorships were fraudulent.

Thanks to the generosity of opportunities within Canada it is expected that there will be legal challenges to this move by Immigration Canada, but those Cabinet orders will go forward in revoking fraudulently-gained status nonetheless.