Immigration fraud affects us all
September 14, 2012 · 0 Comments
Ask any politician of South Asian descent about the issues that most concern his South Asian constituents and he/she will immediately list immigration is top of the agenda. And over the years, we’ve heard of all kinds of scams that have been pulled by immigrants and their so-called immigration lawyers and consultants. Fake certificates, documents, affadavits, fake marriages… Nothing it would seem is off the table when it comes to that opportunity to come to Canada.
Gaining illegal entry into Canada has been a multi-million dollar industry and over the years hundreds if not thousands of scamsters have enriched themselves through the scams designed to help immigrants beat the system and get in.
Ever since Minsiter for Immigration, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney took charge of the department, he’s undertaken all kinds of measures designed to thwart attempts to breach the integrity of our immigration system.
Besides reforming it, he has now taken to aggressively going after those who make it possible-crooked immigration consultants who commit an offence by coaching their clients to lie and cheat as well as the clients themselves who willingly went along with the plan.
Unlike the United States which gets a large proportion of poor illegal immigrants from across their border southern Mexican border, Canada tends to get the well-heeled and often middle-class to rich immigrants who pay big bucks to a network of crooks to get legal status from day one.
The people scaming the system in Canada today aren’t really the poor refugees but the rich who often continue working in tax free havens while letting their families live in Canada tax free. Worse still are families who give the illusion of residency in Canada while living and working abroad. Every loyal and patriotic Canadian should be outraged not just by this fraud but all the other frauds because at the end of the day, we as taxpayers end up paying for the scams, directly or indirectly.
These so-called ‘legal’ immigrants get to enjoy all the privileges available to all tax-paying Canadians like free health care, subsidized university education, world class amenities and infrastructure all at no cost.
We at Can-India would like to hear your views on the issue of immigration and fraud.
Tags: Canada, Immigration, list, South Asian, system, tax
AUTHOR BIO
Pradip Rodrigues started out as a journalist at Society magazine, part of the Magna Group in Mumbai. He wrote extensively on a variety of subjects. He later moved to the Times of India where he was instrumental in starting the now defunct E-times, a television magazine. He conceptualized Bombay Times and became its first assistant editor where he handled features and page three. Since coming to Canada in 2000, he has freelanced for newspapers and magazines in India and written autobiographies for seniors.
