‘It may go unnoticed’: Why Canada is ripe for immigration scams

2016/12/15 Leave a comment

One of the more recent scams to have emerged but no indication that any of the fraudulent applications resulted in the granting of permanent residency (and story doesn’t answer the headline question):

Imagine that your business name is used as bait to scam foreign workers hoping to come to Canada or that your stolen personal identity is used as the contact for the scheme.

It is happening to some of Canada’s best-known companies, including Bell Canada, Via Rail, Scotiabank and Bombardier and to a Montreal businessman, CBC News has learned.
Those companies and the Montreal man were unaware that someone had used them as a front to defraud foreign job seekers out of thousands of dollars until CBC News told them.

“This is the first we have heard of Giant Tiger being mentioned in this capacity,” said Alison Scarlett, manager of brand communications for Giant Tiger Stores Ltd.

“We are absolutely appalled that our trusted name would be used in such a scheme.”

The CBC investigation began after hearing from two Canadians whose family members were trying to immigrate to Canada from India.

The relatives in India were working through a contact who claimed to be a lawyer named Daniel Philip Bornstein and who would help them obtain a Canadian job and documentation.

Once offered a job in this country, the prospective immigrants would pay a fee. The catch: the job offers turned out to be bogus.

How the scheme worked

The lawyer claiming to be Daniel Philip Bornstein approached a third party consultant in India who had clients wishing to immigrate to Canada.
Documents obtained from the Indian consultant show that he then provided job postings from a number of Quebec-based companies, including SNC Lavalin, Via Rail, Golder Associates, Siemens Canada, Scotiabank, Bell, Brookfield Global, Giant Tiger, Systemex Automation and Bombardier. The job postings all appeared to be real positions from the companies’ websites.

Bell Bombardier

Companies such as Bell, Bombardier and Scotiabank were unaware their names had been used in the immigration scheme. (Shutterstock)

He would then arrange a phone interview with someone he said was a company representative. Applicants would then receive a job offer letter and contract, often using the company’s real logo and contact details.
Once the contracts were signed, he provided them with what looked like government documents including visas and Labour Market Impact Assessments.
The clients would pay more than $3,000 by transferring money through a pre-arranged bank account or online money transfer site.

The real Daniel Bornstein

To establish his credibility, the fraudster told prospective victims that he is a lawyer registered with the Law Society of Upper Canada with no complaints against him.
A quick search of the law society online database does list information for a Daniel Philip Bornstein and does show no complaints.

There is no current contact information or company association listed, making it harder for clients to verify his identity and making it easier for anyone to just use that name.

CBC News tracked down the real Daniel Bornstein, who confirmed that he is registered with the law society and spent two years practising tax and estate law in Montreal but is now a partner at a linen supply company.

He said had no idea his name was being used for fraudulent activity and found it “very alarming” to know that his name could be easily lifted from a legal directory.

The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre confirmed that it received three separate complaints against someone named Daniel Philip Bornstein dating back to 2012 from Nepal, Kazakhstan and Singapore.

CBC tried repeatedly to contact the man claiming to be Daniel Bornstein, however, the Montreal business address he provided to the clients was not valid and no one answers at the phone number he listed.

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Opinion: Why did Canada increase immigration targets? | Grubel

2016/12/14 Leave a comment

The standard contrarian view of current levels of immigration by Herbert Grubel, with some valid points (on the process and spin) and some exaggerated (his figures on the immigrant ‘burden’ are exaggerated as Pendakur and others have indicated, and viewing children of economic class as another potential burden is bizarre):

How does mass immigration serve the interests of political parties? It brings financial and electoral support from employers who profit from being able to employ low-skilled and high-skilled labour at wages that are lower than what they would have to pay for Canadian workers. Electoral support also comes from the owners of real estate, developers and brokers, construction workers and mortgage brokers who gain much from the increased business immigrants bring.

Parties also gain support from immigrant communities who expect to gain political and economic clout, enjoy having family members join them, and benefit from larger markets for ethnic products and media. Support also comes from the large “immigration industry” of social workers, lawyers and language teachers who are paid by the government.

These groups benefiting from mass immigration lobby the government effectively, while the general public is unorganized and does not. To the contrary, the public is lobbied by the government, which issues a constant flow of propaganda about the alleged economic and social benefits from mass immigration and suppresses the distribution of fact-based accounts of the negative effects.

The government also issues highly misleading information about the 172,500 “economic migrants” who will be selected in 2017 for their likely economic success. In fact, assuming an average family size of four, only 43,125 of them will be truly economic immigrants, the rest will be their spouses and children. Many will later be joined by their parents and grandparents, who will number 20,000 in 2017 and contribute very little to the economy.

…Information about many negative effects of mass immigration is kept from the public. For example, recent immigrants, even after many years in Canada, have lower incomes and pay lower taxes while they absorb the same government services as Canadians. As result, immigrants impose a fiscal burden of $30 billion a year on taxpayers, which will grow all the time with the arrival of new immigrants. For a perspective on this figure, consider that there is much debate over the affordability of spending $30 billion to renew the Canadian navy over the next 30 years!

Canadians suffer from the effects immigrants have on the cost of housing and the levels of congestion, pollution and overcrowding in schools, universities and hospitals, the latter especially as the many parents and grandparents of immigrants near the end of their lives and add to the ever-growing wait lists for medical treatment experienced by all Canadians.

….Immigrants raise the total size of national income but not of individual Canadians since immigrants’ pay matches their contribution to output. The gains from the so-called “opportunities to trade” are very small, as are the claimed gains due to economies of scale in production since manufacturers and mining companies already access world markets enabled by free trade and low transportation costs.

Immigrants increase Canada’s cultural diversity, but the benefits from it have reached diminishing returns and the development of ethnic enclaves threatens national harmony and security.

These and other facts about the detrimental effects of mass immigration on the well being of Canadians are well documented by government statistics and academic research. Unfortunately, governments and the beneficiaries of mass immigration have prevented these facts from reaching wide audiences and allowing political parties to continue to use mass immigration policies for their narrow self-interest.

However, the election of President Donald Trump shows that there is a limit to these policies. At some point, suffering workers and taxpayers will vote for politicians who promise to put their interests above those of a political party, business and other groups. Voters in many countries of Europe have already done so. Could McCallum’s announced higher immigration levels have the same result in Canada?

Source: Opinion: Why did Canada increase immigration targets? | Vancouver Sun

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Douglas Todd: The hidden cost of foreign-student policy

2016/12/12 Leave a comment

Some valid points regarding the rise of international students and their impact although the healthcare costs are likely grossly inflated: using the provincial average is not appropriate for young age cohort that tend to have fewer healthcare needs.

And the concern about slipping standards is more anecdote based without hard data to back this up:

Although unheeded by politicians, Knight and Altbach say Western foreign-student programs have lost their humanitarian ideals, grown into a giant business and now largely draw second-tier students, many of whom struggle with new languages.

Kwantlen Polytechnic University political science professor Shinder Purewal and Patrick Feeney, a B.C.-based education professor now at Chiang Mai University in Thailand, add to such warnings about the hidden costs of Canada’s foreign student policy.

While both scholars support foreign student programs, they fear they’ve mushroomed out of control. Canadians, the scholars say, need to be aware of the disguised burden on taxpayers. Purewal and Feeney also say academic standards are declining in many classrooms.

Working independently, Purewal and Feeney reveal there have been significant repercussions as the ratio of foreign students at B.C.’s two leading universities, UBC and SFU, has grown to one in four, with by far the largest cohort from Mainland China.

Even though the portion of foreign students at suburban Vancouver’s Kwantlen Polytechnic University is one in eight (almost half the foreign students are South Asian), internal documents show that Kwantlen recently paid more than $300,000 to student-recruiting agents in India.

To further illustrate how massive the industry has become, Purewal said Metro Vancouver is home to more than 150 private colleges and universities that cater almost exclusively to foreign students. He calls them “drive-thru institutions, basically two-room colleges.”

What are the hidden financial costs of Canada’s foreign-student policies?

Purewal, who is also a registered immigration consultant, says Canadians are not aware that the more than 300,000 foreign students in the country at any one time receive provincial taxpayer-funded health care.

The foreign students — as well as their spouses and children — have their doctor and hospital visits paid for by Canadian taxpayers, even though they have not contributed to the universal health care program.

With B.C. home to 110,000 foreign students, and the average resident using up almost $6,000 a year in medical expenses, Purewal calculated “the cost could be up $635 million” to the province’s health care system, not including spouses and children (who are also allowed free public-school educations).

“While the post-secondary institutions earn more tuition money, the Canadian taxpayers foot the bill for their health costs,” said Purewal, who has served as a citizenship court judge, where he’s seen how Canadian policy also favours foreign students as future immigrants.

Many foreign students and especially their spouses also seize on the option to work while in Canada, often full-time, says Purewal, echoing a new trend discovered by Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland.

In many cases, Purewal believes, Canadian bosses prefer to hire foreign students or their spouses. “You can exploit them to bone. They are not going to talk about labour standards. They can’t complain. Employers are happy with this system.”

What’s happening in higher education itself?

Purewal and Feeney are skeptical about the mantra from administrators and politicians that foreign students do not take the seats of domestic students.

The two academics maintain that, since government funding for higher education is declining, the money available to create seats for domestic students is also, in effect, declining. Domestic student enrolment in classrooms is capped.

Former UBC president Stephen Toope is among those who have said B.C. government funding for university students has been cut almost in half from its high in the 1970s, when it covered 70 per cent of per capita costs.

Purewal says the competition between domestic and foreign students becomes particularly keen in winning coveted spots in masters or PhD programs, which are small, with varied selection criteria.

Purewal also maintains universities are not asking most foreign students in Canada, who typically pay anywhere from $12,000 to $18,000 a year in fees, to pay their own way in full.

Their fees do not finance infrastructure, he said. If foreign students had to completely make up for the taxpayer money that has gone into constructing UBC, SFU or Kwantlen, Purewal estimated their fees would have to double or triple.

The quality of education is also declining in many university and college classrooms, says Feeney.

Source: Douglas Todd: The hidden cost of foreign-student policy | Vancouver Sun

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USA: Most say immigrants strengthen the country – Pew Research

2016/12/10 1 Comment

The latest numbers from Pew Research, both surprising in terms of overall support and less so given the sharp contrast between Democrats and Republicans:

About six-in-ten Americans (63%) now say immigrants strengthen the United States because of their hard work and talents, while 27% say immigrants are a burden on the country because they take jobs, housing and health care. The share of Americans who see immigrants as more of a strength than a burden is now at its highest level in more than twenty years of Pew Research Center surveys.

The stark partisan differences in opinion on how immigrants impact the nation are little changed over the course of the last year. Today, an overwhelming share of Democrats and leaners (82%) think immigrants strengthen the country with their hard work and talents, while just 13% say they are a burden. By contrast, Republicans are more divided: Roughly as many (44%) say immigrants are more of a burden on the country because they take jobs, housing and health care as say they strengthen the country because of their hard work and talents (39%).

There are key demographic differences within the Republican Party, however. About half of Republicans under the age of 50 say immigrants strength the country (51%), while fewer say they are a burden (35%). For older Republicans, the balance of opinion is the reverse: More say immigrants burden the country (52%) than say they strengthen it (29%).

Similarly, Republicans with a college education are more likely to say immigrants strengthen the country than say they burden the U.S. (51% vs. 34%). By contrast, Republicans without a college degree are more likely to say immigrants burden the country because they take jobs, housing and health care (47% vs. 36%).

There are only modest demographic differences among Democrats; wide majorities across age and education groups say immigrants strengthen the country because of their hard work and talents.

Source: 3. Political values: Government regulation, environment, immigration, race, views of Islam | Pew Research Center

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Conservative MP seizes agenda from immigration minister at committee [over Vegreville closing]

2016/12/08 Leave a comment

I can understand the Conservative MP Shannon Stubb’s anger over the closing and the impact on Vegreville, which would be comparable if IRCC decided to shut down the Sydney citizenship processing centre on efficiency grounds.

However, interesting that the Conservatives chose to focus almost exclusively on this issue rather than challenging the immigration levels plan, both in terms of the overall increase to 300,000 as well as the break down between categories. But perhaps, all politics is local…:

Immigration Minister John McCallum appeared before a House of Commons committee Tuesday to answer questions on Canada’s plan to bring in 300,000 immigrants and refugees next year, but his time was cut short by a Conservative MP whose Alberta riding stands to lose 280 jobs due to a federal office closure.

MP Shannon Stubbs took the floor for more than an hour to read letters from residents about the impact of the planned closure of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s case processing centre in Vegreville, Alta.

Stubbs told McCallum she wanted an economic impact analysis of the decision that she said would be “complete devastation” for the town of 5,800. She broke down in tears as she read statements from employees, businesses and local residents who said it would ravage the local economy, sports teams and charities.

Stubbs added she was advocating for the community that is enduring “extreme anxiety and escalating stress.”

She said the closure, announced in October, is the equivalent of the loss of 290,000 jobs in Toronto. It would have a dramatic effect on the community’s youth, who look to the office as a future employer and an entry into the civil service.

“The impact on our youth population will be felt on locals schools, with up to 25 per cent of Vegreville students possibly having to leave our schools to relocate with their families,” she read from one letter.

Her office has received about 100 letters and more than 200 phone calls on the issue, she said.

McCallum defended the decision to move the centre to Edmonton, about 100 kilometres away, saying it would improve efficiency. He said the lease on the Vegreville building was up and that certain job vacancies were not being filled.

“It was felt there would be a much stronger performance in Edmonton and hence the decision was made,” he said.

Source: Conservative MP seizes agenda from immigration minister at committee – Politics – CBC News

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More people should engage in politics so ‘no party gets to run against Muslim Canadians,’ Justin Trudeau says

2016/12/06 Leave a comment

Pitch perfect:

Galloway asked the prime minister for his reaction to the proposal to screen immigrants for “anti-Canadian values” put forward by federal Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch.

Trudeau did not address Leitch by name. He said he told a group of Muslim-Canadians during a recent meeting that he was happy to have them as supporters. However, he said he suggested they encourage family members and friends to also get involved in politics, whether on behalf of the Liberals or another party that aligns with their values.

Media placeholder

“The other two political parties have leadership races on now. I’d like to see more Canadians of diverse backgrounds engaging with parties that line up with their convictions and ideologies to make sure that no party gets to run against Muslim Canadians or any other group of Canadians and demonize them,” Trudeau said.

“And I think the way we do that is getting involved in the whole breadth of the political spectrum in Canada. I’m happy when people decide they are more aligned with me and my party, but they should also think about being active and aligned with parties that disagree with me on certain issues.”

Galloway also asked the prime minister about how his policy, which has brought more than 35,000 Syrian refugees to Canada in just over a year, contrasts with that of U.S. president-elect Donald Trump and some politicians across Europe, who advocate for a more closed approach on refugees.

“I’m not going to answer whys,” he said. “I’m just going to continue to point out the facts that the way Canada is benefiting from welcoming in people who are so deeply committed to living up to the opportunity given to them.”

He added, “I challenge any one of those governments or those citizens to sit down around a table like this and break bread and not be afraid of the other.”

Source: More people should engage in politics so ‘no party gets to run against Muslim Canadians,’ Justin Trudeau says – CBC.ca | Metro Morning

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Thousands of alleged fugitives nabbed at Canadian borders in wake of CBC Toronto investigation

2016/12/05 Leave a comment

Hard to understand why this took so long:

Canada’s borders have become less porous in the wake of a CBC News investigation that revealed a major security gap in the way passengers were being screened before being allowed into Canada.

In the past 12 months since new screening measures came into effect on Nov. 21, 2015, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) apprehended 3,067 people with outstanding criminal arrest warrants at border crossings.

In the previous 12 months, before the changes came into effect, the CBSA caught just 556 alleged fugitives.

The almost fivefold increase is in large part due to the efforts of a southwestern Ontario woman who demanded answers after being sexually assaulted — allegedly by a Nigerian man who was able to get back into Canada despite having warrants out for his arrest.

“Knowing that potentially some other person’s rapist has been caught at the border, or somebody that’s done something terrible to someone else, gives me some comfort,” she said.

CBC News is not identifying her because she is a victim of sexual assault.

The changes to national border security came last November after CBC News looked into her case and discovered front-line border agents at primary inspection points did not have access to the Canadian Police Information Centre.

CPIC is a database detailing criminal records, individuals with outstanding arrest warrants and other information outlining who might be a risk to Canadians. Only travellers deemed suspicious and sent for more secondary checks were being screened through CPIC at border crossings. Now CBSA agents at all inspection points screen every passenger arriving in Canada through CPIC.

Jean Pierre Fortin, the head of the union representing Canada’s border and immigration agents, says the changes have boosted national security.

Border picture

Canadian governments had quietly been aware of the loophole in border security since at least 2002. Yet giving all front-line CBSA agents access to a database was considered too costly. (Sarah Bridge/CBC)

“It’s sad that this only came because of a terrible situation … but we got a better tool through CPIC to our front-line officers to be able to intervene right away.”

Source: Thousands of alleged fugitives nabbed at Canadian borders in wake of CBC Toronto investigation – Toronto – CBC News

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Influential Chinese-Canadians paying to attend private fundraisers with Trudeau [investor immigrant angle]

2016/12/03 1 Comment

Sigh … One of the better initiatives of the Conservative government was shutting down the business immigrant program after evaluations showed just how flawed it was and just how few benefits it provided Canadians.

And of course the broader ethical issue of such fundraising – paying for access – remains:

Mr. Chan was at the most recent Trudeau fundraiser, which was held on Nov. 7 at the West Vancouver mansion of B.C. developer Miaofei Pan, a multimillionaire from Wenzhou province who immigrated to Canada a decade ago. More than 80 guests got their pictures taken with Mr. Trudeau at the $1,500 per ticket event, including Mr. Chan.

Mr. Pan told The Globe and Mail he lobbied the Prime Minister to make it easier for well-heeled investors from China to come to Canada. He said he told Mr. Trudeau the program put in place by the former Conservative government was “too harsh.”

In exchange for permanent residency, rich immigrants must invest $2-million and are subject to strict audits.

“If they don’t do business over two years here, they cannot stay or they have to leave the country. So I wanted the Prime Minister to know that is not a very merciful policy towards these people because they want to invest or stay,” Mr. Pan said. “It’s all about investment that Canada needs. I have friends, and [they are] wealthy people, who want to stay and invest.”

A Chinese government agency in Mr. Pan’s hometown that builds ties with and keeps tabs on expatriate Chinese, supplied photos of the Trudeau-Pan event to media in China. The Foreign and Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the Wenzhou People’s Government promotes China’s interests abroad, according to former Canadian diplomat and China expert Charles Burton.

“That is an agency of the Chinese Communist Party,” Mr. Burton told The Globe and Mail. “The fact that the photos appeared in the [Wenzhou Metropolis Daily] in China suggests that the people who participated in that activity must have been tasked by the Chinese state to try and promote the Chinese position with influential people in Canada. In this case, our Prime Minister.”

Mr. Pan is honorary chair of a Chinese-Canadian organization that is an unabashed backer of Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea and East China Sea.

In 2012, he was part of a campaign by overseas Chinese groups to rally public support for the Chinese government’s position in a dispute with Japan over islands in the East China Sea that are close to key shipping lanes, bountiful fishing grounds and possible petroleum reserves.

That year, Mr. Pan was quoted in the Macau Daily newspaper saying his organization, the Canadian Alliance of Chinese Associations, had “declared its stand in newspapers” and that “overseas Chinese were responsible for defending China’s territorial integrity.”

In 2015, the Canadian Alliance of Chinese Associations held a symposium at which speakers backed Beijing’s assertion of title to islands, reefs and banks in the South China Sea, and issued a statement saying it “strongly supports the Chinese government’s defence of sovereignty over the South China Sea.”

The Prime Minister’s Office and the Liberal Party kept the Nov. 7 fundraiser confidential. Neither the PMO nor the party website noted the event. At the time, Mr. Trudeau was in Vancouver to announce a new marine strategy.

“The party has … been clear that not every event is on the party’s national website, while it’s important to note that the Liberal Party of Canada is still the only major federal political party that maintains an active online events listing in any form at all,” party spokesman Braeden Caley said in an e-mail. “All fundraising by the Liberal Party of Canada fully complies with all Elections Canada rules and regulations for political fundraising.”

The Liberal Party would not provide The Globe and Mail with a list of attendees. Mr. Pan said all the guests were his friends, and all are Canadian citizens.

Source: Influential Chinese-Canadians paying to attend private fundraisers with Trudeau – The Globe and Mail

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CMHC head says foreign buyers a ‘scapegoat’ for high Vancouver prices

2016/12/02 Leave a comment

Although he is right to point out that other factors are involved, I am not completely convinced by the data he uses to downplay the role of foreign investors,  compared to the data used by others such as David Ley (see The Asian force behind Vancouver’s housing boom, Blame politicians for Metro Vancouver’s housing price crisis):

High housing prices in the Vancouver region stem from a variety of factors, with foreign buyers shouldering a disproportionate amount of blame, says the president of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.

Evan Siddall said he is concerned about “unhealthy tensions” pitting existing residents against recent arrivals, and also older homeowners against younger families priced out of the market.

“Who is to blame for Vancouver’s affordability problems? To some, the scapegoat is obvious – blame foreigners,” Mr. Siddall said Wednesday in prepared remarks to the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade.

“While it would be convenient to hang all of the blame for high prices on others – offshore buyers – it’s just not that simple. Sure, it makes for a tempting narrative. Them, not us. And while foreign investment clearly is a factor, it is not the only one.”

Mr. Siddall listed a wide range of factors that he sees as contributors to Vancouver’s expensive real estate: domestic residential investing, population and economic growth, low interest rates and housing supply constraints.

Some industry observers argue that buyers from China are the primary drivers behind Vancouver’s housing boom that spilled into the suburbs.

Mr. Siddall said evidence points to housing investor activity in Canada originating from predominantly domestic sources, yet foreign investment is often seen as the culprit in Vancouver. Going off script, he added: “When a white person buys a house, we don’t notice. If somebody of a different colour does, we do. And that’s not good economics.”

During a news conference after his speech, Mr. Siddall said the debate over housing affordability is contentious. “This contrast between us and them is a factor. We notice things that are different better than we notice things that are similar,” he said.

The CMHC president added that the federal government has policy tools, with the Minister of Finance knowing not to use economic stimulus to unduly influence the real estate market.

“Our analysis confirms that the most important factors accounting for house price increases over the long term are economic,” Mr. Siddall said in his prepared speech. “We believe two income-related factors are at play: An increase in high-paying jobs and a tendency of these jobs to concentrate in cities. This is an important and statistically robust factor in Toronto, less so in Vancouver. The impact in Vancouver may differ because wealth, rather than income, could play a much more pronounced part here.”

The B.C. government implemented a 15-per-cent tax on foreign buyers in Metro Vancouver in August. On Tuesday, the province said purchasers who are not Canadian citizens or permanent residents accounted for 7.1 per cent of the total deals in Metro Vancouver closed between June 10 and Oct. 31.

British Columbia, which began collecting data on June 10 on foreign purchasers, noted that in the seven weeks leading up to the tax’s implementation on Aug. 2, foreign purchasers accounted for 13.2 per cent of the region’s total. The regional statistics, including transactions that involve buyers from China, are based on closed deals registered with the province’s land title office.

The price for detached houses sold in October within the City of Vancouver averaged more than $2.6-million, or double the average price for detached properties in the City of Toronto. The market in and around Vancouver remains the most expensive in Canada, despite prices dropping recently for detached houses, condos and townhomes.

“Our attachment to low-density single-family housing in many neighbourhoods represents regressive urban planning and makes the problem worse. This is basic economics. The more we hold back supply, the faster prices will rise in response to increased demand. And Vancouver’s supply response is among the weakest in Canada,” Mr. Siddall said in his speech.

In a new survey released on Wednesday, CMHC said the share of foreign buyers in Canada’s major markets is still low. The federal housing agency said foreign condo ownership in the metropolitan area of Vancouver has declined to 2.2 per cent in its latest survey of property managers and condo boards, compared with 3.5 per cent in the fall of 2015. In the Toronto region, the proportion of condos owned by people whose primary residence is outside of the country decreased to 2.3 per cent from 3.3 per cent, while dropping to 1.1 per cent from 1.3 per cent in the Montreal area.

Beyond the three largest markets, CMHC found that the share of international condo buyers has remained small in places such as Saskatoon, Regina, Edmonton, Calgary and Halifax.

Source: CMHC head says foreign buyers a ‘scapegoat’ for high Vancouver prices – The Globe and Mail

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Clients of convicted immigration consultant facing deportation for lying

2016/11/28 Leave a comment

Important conviction for immigration and citizenship fraud, and good to see that both the consultant being punished and individuals pursued with revocation.

This is important both in its own right as well as helping to maintain broader confidence in the Canadian immigration and citizenship program, and is one of better and needed initiatives of the previous Conservative government:

One by one, many of the 1,200 former clients of an unlicensed Richmond, B.C., immigration consultant are getting the bad news — they’re no longer welcome in Canada because they lied.

CBC News has learned 320 immigrants, who each paid thousands of dollars to New Can Consulting and owner Xun (Sunny) Wang, are now facing deportation to China.

One year ago, Wang, 47, was convicted of one of the biggest immigration scams in Canadian history — making $10 million by filing fraudulent immigration applications for his clients.

In one of his ploys, Wang falsely used his own home in Richmond as an address for 114 of his clients who didn’t live in Canada.

Xun 'Sunny' Wang Richmond house

Convicted immigration fraudster Xun (Sunny) Wang used his own home in Richmond as a fake address for at least 114 of his clients. (Mike Zimmer/CBC )

His appeal of his seven-year prison term and $900,000 fine was rejected last month.

Three of his former employees will be sentenced in January and three more are awaiting trial. At least three others have warrants out for their arrest.

Now the Canada Border Services Agency says of Wang’s 320 ex-clients facing review of their immigration status, approximately 200 could be stripped of their citizenship and 120 could lose their permanent residency status.

Hundreds of other former New Can clients could also be in trouble.

500 more cases being investigated

In an email to CBC News, the border agency said it is continuing efforts to “uncover fraud on approximately 500 cases remaining to be investigated”.

That means out of the 1,200 clients of New Can, over 800 could ultimately be sent back to China.

Guo Liang Lin is one of them.

At his recent hearing before the Immigration Refugee Board (IRB), the clean-cut man in his late 40s was ruled “inadmissible to Canada due to misrepresentation.”

Eric Leung and Guo Liang Lin

Immigration consultant Eric Leung, left, and client Guo Liang Lin. Lin admits he signed documents that said he lived in Canada three times longer than he actually had to obtain permanent residency. Lin was working with a different immigration company at the time, which he blames for falsifying records. (Manjula Dufresne/CBC )

Lin was issued an exclusion order, banning him from re-entry into Canada for five years unless he gets permission from immigration officials to come back sooner — something an immigration and refugee spokesperson says rarely happens.

Lin immediately launched an appeal on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, a move that will allow him to remain in Canada for nine to 12 months until his case is reviewed by the Immigration Appeal Division.

Passport ‘falsified’

To obtain details of Lin’s case, CBC News attended his IRB hearing on Nov. 23.

The board adjudicator heard that Lin, who received permanent resident status in 2010, had spent just seven months in Canada over five years — not the minimum two years required by law.

This allowed him to live and work in China, while keeping his wife, son and daughter in B.C.

But his passport was altered by New Can Consulting, his IRB hearing heard, with entry and exit stamps falsified to make it appear Lin had spent 980 days, or just over 2½ years, in Canada.

Permanent residents are entitled to most social benefits in Canada, including health care.

Source: Clients of convicted immigration consultant facing deportation for lying – CBC News | Investigates

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