Canada battles Indian visa frauds, Lankan boat-people

New Delhi

12 September 2010

Jason Kenney, the immigration minister of Canada, describes
his country as being at war with unscrupulous Indian immigration
consultants who do not shy away from employing every trick in the
trade, including marriage of convenience, to expl
oit the dream of many
Indians to visit or emigrate to Canada.

Kenney, who met with home minister P Chidambaram
and overseas
Indian
affairs minister Vayalar Ravi last week, expects the Indian
government
to make statutory efforts to rein in fraudulent agents and
the relevant
state and police agencies to enforce them on priority.

Speaking in an exclusive interview to this newspaper, Mr
Kenney hopes
the proposed Emigration Management Bill, which is likely to become an
Act of the Indian Parliament by the year-end, will clarify the
offences for unscrupulous agents in education sector.


In Canada, it is a crime for a person who is not a lawyer, notary or
member of a recognised association of immigration consultants to accept
a fee for providing immigration advice.

Unlike Australia and Britain which have capped or cut immigration,
Canada has maintained high levels of immigration during and since the
economic recession. The number of permanent residents or economic
migrants from India is rising, but the number of Indian students has
tripled in the past few years.

Although India is Canada's number one immigration source country, it
has fewer illegal immigrants from India as compared to central America
or the Caribbean.

Canada remains generous in its treatment of asylum-seekers, which is
probably why it is attracting an influx of boat people fleeing a
post-LTTE Sri Lanka.

We just had a boat load of nearly 500 Sri Lankan-Tamils transiting
through Thailand arrive off the coast of Canada in a huge human
smuggling operation that we believe is tied to the Tamil Tigers, he
says. A second boat is reported to be on its way to Canada and there
was some intelligence that more are being planned.

Kenney was expected to finish his swing through Asia with a visit to
Australia, which is facing a similar problem of asylum-seekers from Sri
Lanka.

We are asking the ASEAN nations to cooperate in interdicting the
vessels. These are rickety, leaky boats that should have been
decommissioned, they were never made for trans-Atlantic travel, and we
intend to crack down on this dangerous form of exploitation by
stiffening our laws, he asserts.

No comments: