Edmonton Immigration Self-help clinic

Ethnic communities adore Jason Kenney

2012-02-18T06:26:00.000-07:00

Ethnic communities adore Jason Kenney:

Marriage Fraud

2012-02-14T19:15:00.001-07:00

Immigrant marriage fraudster finally deported

BY ROBERT SIBLEY, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN FEBRUARY 14, 2012

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"It's not something I would have wished for," Lainie Towell says of the eventual deportation of her ex-husband Fode Mohamed Soumah. "This was the man I married and I thought we would build a life together. But it was worth it if this outcome is going to change the system to help others."

Photograph by: PAT MCGRATH, The Ottawa Citizen

OTTAWA — It is one of the unsavoury secrets of Canada's immigration system. Each year hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Canadian women and men marry foreigners and agree to act as sponsors for them in Canada, only to find themselves abandoned once that spouse is in the country.

This past weekend, however, one of those marriage fraudsters got his just desserts thanks to a spouse who refused to be a victim. Lainie Towell's ex-husband, Fode Mohamed Soumah, was by all accounts deported back to his native country of Guinea in West Africa.

He had walked out on his 2007 marriage to Towell three weeks after uttering his wedding vows, but it took more than three years for the Canadian Board Services Agency to get him on the airplane after he used every avenue of appeal.

Officials in the office of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, who is responsible for the CBSA, did not respond Monday to queries about the deportation. However, Towell said Monday she heard from "a couple of good sources" that Soumah had left the country. "I'm confident he's gone, based on information from people who would know."

What does she think now? "It's not something I would have wished for," she said. "This was the man I married and I thought we would build a life together. But it was worth it if this outcome is going to change the system to help others."

That the system needs change is unquestionable. Estimates are hard to come by, but Julie Taub, a long-established immigration lawyer, estimated the number of cases of immigrant marriage fraud ran into "thousands."

"I get about two or three calls a week on this, but I can't take them all on," Taub said. "I have many clients whose complaints I have passed on to the CBSA. These cases are a rip-off of the Canadian taxpayer."

They are also emotionally wrenching. The fraudsters prey on and betray the fundamental human need for love and companionship without, as it seems, any moral compunction. "It's all about playing on human frailty," Taub said. "All of (the clients) without exception are lonely, susceptible and want to meet somebody.

"There are older Canadian men who fall for young Russians or Chinese and agree to marry them despite the huge age discrepancy, and then the women walk out on them. There are women who are divorcees, never been married, older, and who are thrilled that they have found someone who is romantic and courts them. All these people are victims."

Towell's experience is likely typical. A well-known Ottawa dancer and performance artist, she married Soumah in April 2007 in his hometown of Conakry. She had come to know him after first visiting Guinea in 2004 to study dance traditions. Subsequent trips demonstrated their devotion to each other, or so she thought. As Towell later discovered, Soumah had fathered a child with a 15-year-old girl before leaving Guinea to come to Canada.

After they got married, Towell started the application process to bring her husband to Canada. He arrived on New Year's Eve 2007. Three weeks later, he left for Montreal, saying he wanted a divorce and warning her that if she made a fuss, he would start collecting welfare which she would have to repay to the government. As Soumah's sponsor, Towell signed a contract with Citizenship and Immigration Canada that made her financially responsible for Soumah for three years even if the marriage failed. If he received any form of social assistance, she'd be on the hook.

"Imagine what it was like," Towell said. "I brought this man home and introduced him to all my friends and my family, all my dance students. Then my prince turned into a frog, and I'd been defrauded. I felt completely ashamed and embarrassed."

Perhaps so, but Towell did not play the passive victim. She complained to the immigration ministry, but it wasn't until she went public that government officials began to pay attention. At one point, she donned her white wedding dress, strapped a door on her back and crawled up the steps of Parliament Hill.

Not surprisingly, the stunt attracted attention. Towell soon heard from others who had also been victims of marriage fraud, asking for help and advice. Women's groups and other advocacy organizations started showing up at Immigration Minister Jason Kenney's town hall meetings to demand regulatory changes.

The wheels started to turn. The immigration ministry enlisted border services enforcement officers to investigate cases of alleged marriage fraud. According to news reports, the border agency opened nearly 40 criminal cases of suspected marriage fraud from 2008 through to the end of 2010. It also received roughly 200 leads on possible marriage fraud cases in that same time period.

Last year, Kenney proposed new regulatory measures to prevent people from using marriages of convenience to circumvent Canada's immigration laws. The proposed changes include a five-year ban on the sponsored spouse being able to sponsor another mate in order to stop people from engaging in cyclical marry-sponsor-divorce schemes. There would also be a two-year conditional residency requirement to ensure relationships were legitimate before granting permanent residency to the sponsored spouse. As well, the minister said he would increase the number of investigators and resources to go after fraudsters. These regulatory changes are under review.

Kenney's press secretary, Candice Malcolm credited people such as Towell who came forward with their stories for helping to bring about the regulatory changes. "Minister Kenney became aware of marriage fraud through some high profile cases, as well as from individuals who came forward during various town halls and consultations to alert the minister of this problem and the suffering it causes for victims.

"Our government takes the issue of marriage fraud very seriously. We have no tolerance for those who abuse our system, who lie and cheat to jump the immigration queue, and who prey on innocent and vulnerable victims."

Regulations similar to those in the works in Canada have long been in place in other countries such as the United States and Australia.

Cop loses Rs 12L in immigration fraud - The Times of India

2012-02-11T10:55:00.000-07:00

Cop loses Rs 12L in immigration fraud - The Times of India:

Send Obama your Resume

2012-02-07T16:04:00.000-07:00

NotBetterOff.com:

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Mr. President, we must not allow an engineer gap! | Center for Immigration Studies

2012-02-07T16:00:00.000-07:00

Mr. President, we must not allow an engineer gap! | Center for Immigration Studies:

Jennifer Wedel (an “avid Republican”!) got the drop on President Obama the other day by asking him why, with so many American engineers like her husband unemployed, he wants to import even more engineers from abroad. Obama responded that industry tells him there’s a “huge demand” for engineers around the country, and that she should send her husband’s résumé to the White House.

The Republican National Committee has leapt at the opportunity, launching a site called Not Better Off, highlighting the weak job market during the president’s tenure and urging people to send him their résumés.

It’s a nimble political response, but there’s one problem: The Republicans also want to import cheap foreign labor for tech companies. The Bloomberg/Murdoch group Partnership for a New American Economy (a/k/a “Billionaires for Open Borders”) ran an ad in South Carolina showing that every GOP presidential candidate wants increases in “skilled” immigration, concluding that “there’s really no debate . . . America needs high-skilled immigrants to create new jobs and grow our economy.”

Actually, there is debate. And the crux of the debate is the question, how skilled is “high-skilled”? Where do we draw the line? At a bachelor’s degree in a “STEM” (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) field? Master’s? Ph.D.?

The discussion has focused on this because the tech industry has shifted some of its lobbying money from the customary push for increases in the H-1B visa (ostensibly a program to import temporary labor) to new proposals to automatically give a permanent green card to any foreign student receiving a degree in the U.S. in a technical field. This is commonly referred to as the “staple a green card to the diploma” approach, and is found in a number of bills or proposals, such as the “Staple Act” and the “Brain Act.” The issue being considered by lawmakers, then, is which diplomas to staple green cards to.

There’s not much of a push to give special immigration access to foreigners receiving bachelor’s degrees in STEM fields because there’s nothing particularly special or “high-skilled” about them. Don’t take my word for it; Darla Whitaker, the head of human resources for Texas Instruments, told Congress last fall that TI doesn’t sponsor foreign students with bachelor’s degrees for green cards or “temporary” H-1B visas because they don’t need to — there are plenty of American students getting bachelor’s degrees in STEM fields.

What’s more, my colleague Steven Camarota has calculated from Census Bureau data that in 2010 there were 1.8 million working-age, native-born Americans with bachelor’s degrees in engineering who were unemployed, no longer in the labor force, or working in fields besides engineering. That’s not all technical fields, mind you, just engineering.

At the other end of the skill spectrum, there’s little need for such a program, since pretty much all foreign Ph.D. recipients who want to stay end up staying already. A internal report from the National Science Foundation specifically planned for increases in the admission of foreign Ph.D. candidates to undercut salary increases for Americans: “A growing influx of foreign Ph.D.’s into U.S. labor markets will hold down the level of Ph.D. salaries to the extent that foreign students are attracted to U.S. doctoral programs as a way of immigrating to the U.S.” In other words, foreign Ph.D.s would be willing to accept lower salaries because part of the compensation package would be access to the U.S., something American and permanent resident students already have.

The lower salaries will create a cycle, according to the NSF report:

The relatively modest salary premium for acquiring an NS&E [natural science and engineering] Ph.D. may be too low to attract a number of able potential graduate students. A number of these will select alternative career paths outside of NS&E, by choosing to acquire a “professional” degree in business or law, or by switching into management as rapidly as possible after gaining employment in private industry. For these baccalaureates, the effective premium for acquiring a Ph.D. may actually be negative.

So, flood the market with foreign Ph.D. candidates, thus lowering salaries, thus inducing talented American young people to pursue other career options, thus creating the need for even more foreign Ph.D. students. Your government at work!

But as problematic as automatic green cards for Ph.D.s might be, the real political fight is over the level of education in between — the master’s degree. Should foreign students getting a master’s degree in a technical field get an automatic green card? Industry lobbyists, think tanks, columnists, and lawmakers are pushing hard in this direction. There are almost three times as many master’s degrees as Ph.D.s in STEM fields awarded to foreign students, which means their inclusion in a “staple” bill would do that much more to hold down wages.

And the current number of foreign master’s-degree recipients is just the starting point. Given the lower standards and shorter time investment for a master’s degree, the potential for abuse — diploma mills effectively selling green cards — is much, much greater. The Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation warned last year that the stapling-a-green-card approach would result in “inducing the enrollment of poor-quality foreign students in U.S. higher education institutions simply to obtain green cards.” This isn’t merely theoretical; a few years back the State Department official responsible for visa issuance told Congress that “a school in the United States can be found for even the poorest academic achiever . . . schools that actively recruit foreign students for primarily economic reasons, and without regard to their qualifications or intentions, may encourage such high-risk underachievers to seek student visa status as a ticket into the United States.” If that happens now, just imagine the increase in such activity that would occur if a green card were guaranteed at the end of the process.

What’s more, the whole debate over retaining foreign students is based on a dying model of higher education. Brick-and-mortar schools that students must travel to will soon go the way of typewriters and rotary phones; online education is the wave of the future. As Walter Russell Mead advises universities, “A new educational system is being born; get with the program or end up as road kill.” Under this new model, should someone in Bhutan who gets a master’s degree in dairy science from the University of Phoenix automatically be given a green card? If not, why not?

The whole discussion of immigration benefits for foreign students raises the question of why we’re admitting so many foreign students in the first place. All foreign students, even those paying full tuition out of their own pockets, receive massive subsidies in the United States, since universities are like subway lines: The price of admission doesn’t come close to covering costs. Among foreign doctoral students specifically, virtually all their funding comes from U.S. sources — often taxpayers. It’s largely a cheap-labor program for universities; as George Borjas haswritten: “Foreign students play the same role in staffing the research labs of American universities that Mexican illegal workers play in staffing the vast agricultural fields of California. Both groups of workers enter the country, substantially increase the supply of workers, lower wages in their respective occupations, and increase the profits and economic resources of the companies that hire them.”

But that’s an issue for another day. The question now is whether lawmakers will succumb to a phony “missile gap”–style panic about U.S. competitiveness created by lobbyists for tech companies that desire cheap labor. If we have a competitiveness problem — and I’m sure we do — lawmakers need to look to our dysfunctional fiscal and regulatory policies; importing more middling engineers from abroad isn’t going to fix anything. Unfortunately, congressmen who don’t even know how to switch on their computers swoon for this Johnny-can’t-do-math nonsense like teenage girls at a rock concert.

Ironically, the only thing that has prevented the passage of such measures is the Hispanic Caucus. They’ve held increases in skilled (mostly Asian) immigration hostage for years, wanting to trade them for amnesty for the overwhelmingly Hispanic illegal-alien population. That’s why, if Republicans win the presidency and full control of Congress in November, thus removing the Hispanic Caucus as an obstacle, one of the first things the 113th Congress might try to do is increase immigration in the midst of the worst economy and highest unemployment in generations. I think they’ll be in for a big surprise if they try.

CBC.ca | The Sunday Edition | The Accountant's Dilemma

2012-02-05T10:07:00.001-07:00

CBC.ca | The Sunday Edition | The Accountant's Dilemma:

The Accountant's Dilemma

In every way but one, Krishnan Balakrishnan is the poster child for the kind of immigrant Canada wants.

He is an aviation executive - speaks perfect English, is wealthy, highly educated in a sought-after field and, best of all, he had a job waiting for him when he stepped off the plane from Mumbai.

But Mr. Balakrishnan also has an 11-year-old daughter with autism.

On the one hand, he is a worker with much to offer Canada and the Canadian economy. On the other, he is a father whose family could be a burden on Canada's social system.

Balancing those two realities has turned what could be a picture-perfect immigration application into a painful, drawn-out process that has destroyed a friendship, strained a family and destabilized a Canadian business.

Here is John Chipman's documentary, The Accountant's Dilemma.

Click on http://www.cbc.ca/video/news/audioplayer.html?clipid=2192779618

Skilled Indian workers are homing in on Canada as the country ramps up its economy - The Economic Times | Share on LinkedIn

2012-02-04T13:03:00.000-07:00

Skilled Indian workers are homing in on Canada as the country ramps up its economy - The Economic Times | Share on LinkedIn:

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Move to plug visa hole to US - Yahoo!

2012-02-02T17:05:00.000-07:00

Move to plug visa hole to US - Yahoo!:

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New Delhi, Feb. 1: The Centre has requested Latin American countries to stop issuing visas-on-arrival to Indian nationals if their passports do not have US or Schengen visas.

The move is aimed at preventing Indians from illegally immigrating to the US by crossing over from Mexico.

Official sources in New Delhi said many flew to Dubai, which offers visa-on-arrival to Indians. From Dubai, they take a plane to South American countries such as Guatemala, which has a similar facility.

Indians then travel to neighbouring Mexico ' where they do not get visas on arrival but secure one in advance ' and sneak across the border into Texas.

In 2010-11, US officials held over 1,500 Indians for trying to cross the Texas-Mexico frontier. Some Latin American countries have stopped such visa facilities after pressure from Americans.

Washington has complained to New Delhi that some of the Indians sneaking in from Mexico have claimed religious persecution in India and sought refuge in the US.

Sources said some of the immigrants wore a turban to plead with American officials to let them in saying Sikhs were being persecuted in India.

Why the American dream could come to an end

2012-01-29T13:57:00.001-07:00

Brandie Barbiere walks past her household possessions after they were removed to her front yard during a home foreclosure on Oct. 5, 2011 in Milliken, Colorado. Barbiere said she had stopped making the mortgage payments 11 months before, after she lost more than half her home child care business due to the continued weak economy.

John Moore/GETTY IMAGES

By Bill Schiller Foreign Affairs Reporter

It was a chill January day last year when Lucy Berrington and 400 other immigrants from around the world gathered in Boston's famed Faneuil Hall — the nation's "cradle of liberty" on the historic "Freedom Trail" — to take an oath and become citizens of the United States.

For many immigrants who come to America to seek a better life, it's an almost sacred ceremony, "something like being born again," says Berrington, 42, who came to the U.S. from Britain in 1997.

Despite a wintry New England day, she found "warmth" in the words of the presiding judge, she says.

"It was unexpectedly moving," observes Berrington, a graduate student at Tufts University, "a lovely thing, really."

But, she adds candidly, "something seemed off."

Standing beneath a painting of founding father Samuel Adams and other greats, Berrington was seized by the feeling that she and her new fellow Americans had come to the land of opportunity late.

"I felt I was arriving at the party as it was winding down."

One year on, an avalanche of statistics and darkening attitudes support her anxiety.

So it was no surprise this week when President Barack Obama in his State of the Union address called keeping the American dream alive, "the defining issue of our time."

Never before in the modern era has America seemed so broken, its beacon-like "American dream" which has drawn so many to its shores, so elusive.

Today some 24 million Americans are out of work.

Nearly 50 per cent of all citizens live in households that depend on some form of government benefit.

And the country's housing market remains a train wreck in agonizing slow motion. One in every four American homeowners are "underwater" to use the parlance of our times, owing more on their mortgages than their homes are actually worth.

Some experts predict the plague of foreclosures will worsen.

It wasn't always this way, of course. For nearly 250 years, long before the phrase "the American dream" was coined in 1931 by author John Truslow Adams, the concept of a land of transformative opportunity was a magnet for America, drawing the talented, the determined and the ambitious.

Yet, grateful though she is for the opportunity to become a citizen, Berrington worries that America's ability to offer immigrants a chance to transform their lives has passed.

"I couldn't help but question the premise," she says, recalling the day she became an American, "namely, the enduring appeal of the American dream at a time when its achievement seemed ever less likely."

"There is an increasing gap between the rhetoric and the reality," she says. "America still wants to perceive itself in a certain way, and yet it is not willing or not able to be what it says it is and what it represents."

It is also increasingly unwelcoming.

Nearly 400,000 people were deported from the United States in 2011, the highest number in the history of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"In desperate times we are less welcoming," laments Michael F. Ford, founding director of the Center for the Study of the American Dream, at Ohio's Xavier University. "That has been true since the founding of the republic."

These are desperate times indeed. A recent survey by the centre found that nearly two of every three Americans believes America is a country in decline.

A clear majority, 57 per cent, say they have "lost confidence in the country's standing in the world" — up from 52 per cent in 2010.

Perhaps more shocking, the Pew Charitable Trust found that in today's America — proud home to capitalist culture for more than two centuries — just 50 per cent of Americans now have a "positive" reaction to the word "capitalism."

A key reason for that is America's unending housing debacle, which has overrun millions of American homeowners leaving them broke, broken and angry.

From 2006 to 2010 American real estate prices plummeted 30 per cent, losing a stunning $6 trillion off their value.

That's what pushed former realtor Charles Koppa to the edge, inspiring him to launch his grassroots "Mad as Hell" seminars in Ramona, Calif., near San Diego.

His aim, he says, is to arm people with sufficient knowledge to take on the "banksters," who force-fed investors, then forced foreclosures nationwide, stripping homeowners of whatever equity they had.

Koppa, 71, wants an end to what he calls "foreclosure tyranny," and hopes to harness the Internet to inspire an "Occupy Our Homes" movement much like Occupy Wall Street.

"I'm tailoring seminars so that people can start to gather forces in their own homes."

Their theme song, Koppa reveals, is Leonard Cohen's "Everybody Knows." ("Everybody knows the fight was fixed/the poor stay poor, the rich get rich.")

On Tuesday, in response to growing national concern, President Obama vowed to launch an investigation into the handling of mortgages during the crisis.

The tsunami of statistics that attach to the crisis stagger: 2.2 million homes are now in foreclosure with more on the way; $800 billion in existing mortgages are more than 90-days delinquent; new home sales that once stood at 1.28 million in 2005 plummeted to just 305,000 in 2011; and 2 million construction jobs have been lost.

America's housing sector is a wasteland with some cities featuring not one, but several boulevards of broken dreams.

Given all this, perhaps it was more than idle rhetoric this month when Republican hopeful Mitt Romney, in a speech following his victory in the New Hampshire primary, claimed "the middle class has been crushed" and that his campaign was all about "saving the soul of America."

But it will take more than rhetoric, idle or otherwise, to steer America back to prosperity.

The capacity of the American economy to both build and attract facilities that produce jobs is also in sharp decline.

A new survey and study from the Harvard Business School this month shows America's competitiveness is faltering and the immediate future isn't bright.

More than 70 per cent of respondents — a cohort of 10,000 HBS graduates in senior executive positions in America and all over the world — say they expect the decline in American competitiveness to continue for at least three more years, dragging American living standards down with it.

More troubling, respondents report from first-hand experience, the U.S. is losing two-thirds of all bids to land new job-producing facilities.

The multi-year study shows that more facilities have moved out of the U.S, than have moved in.

"The threat to U.S. competitiveness we face today is far more complex than the one America confronted in the 1980s," lead author Michael E. Porter cautions.

This time, it's not just about Japan, and re-educating an American auto industry to learn about "fit and finish," "just-in-time" supply deliveries and better fuel efficiency.

It's more than that. America is now competing in a world with not one but more than 100 competitors, and must make deep structural changes to become more productive, creating more value per unit of resources deployed, if it wants to compete.

But there's another problem.

"The U.S. government is more fiscally constrained and politically gridlocked than it was three decades ago," Porter writes. The implicit message: gridlock must go if America is to move ahead.

But some aren't so sure that America is positioned to make that turnaround.

"I think America's pre-eminence in the world, which resulted from the 20th century and two world wars and the Cold War, that period of economic and political dominance is clearly ending," says Canadian writer Ronald Wright, author of the 2009 bestseller, What is America?

American prosperity was built on what many thought was never-ending expansion, he says. While the expansion is over, attitudes of the period still linger.

"Americans got used to the idea that things were always going to get bigger and better and that standards of living would always rise," says Wright. But so it was, too, with the imperial powers of Britain and France and Spain before them: they all had to learn accept limits eventually.

"I don't think this spells doom for the American republic," he says, provided "the republic realizes it has to play by the same rules as other nations do, take part in international agreements and deal with common problems."

If America can adapt to these changing circumstances, perhaps the "party" Lucy Berrington felt she came to late can be revived.

"A friend of mine said, 'The party isn't winding down. You just arrived at an awkward pause,'" she says. "I can't agree. If it is an awkward pause, it's going to be a very long awkward pause and I think there's going to be a lot of trouble before it gets going again.

"I hope it does," she says.

Migration and immigration changing Vancouver into "city of strangers" | The Vancouver Observer

2012-01-28T15:40:00.000-07:00

Migration and immigration changing Vancouver into "city of strangers" | The Vancouver Observer:

Vancouver is a city of immigrants and outsiders, and any political party that can't engage them will lose out, according to demographic studies by Andrew Yan, a researcher at the research and development division of Bing Thom Architects (BTA).

“We’re a city of strangers,” Yan said, adding that political parties will have to “learn to bridge, as opposed to bunkering themselves out of one particular neighborhood or one particular group.”

“Political parties need to think of themselves as lighthouses that shine on urban issues and concerned with how they will govern rather than clubhouses focused on their special interests and obsessed with how they will rule.”

The demographic research is telling. According BTA Works research, Vancouver has the lowest portion of local residents who were born within the province, compared to other major metropolitan areas in Canada. Vancouver's beauty and quality of life attracts migration from other parts of Canada, as well as immigration from around the world.

If you talk to people in Montreal, three out of four will have been born in the province of Quebec, he said. In Ottawa, tha figure is significantly lower, but still a majority at 60 per cent. In Toronto, that number drops to under half, with 46 per cent of Torontonians being born within Ontario – in Calgary, that figure falls to 44 per cent. In Metro Vancouver, just 41 per cent of residents were born in B.C.

In Vancouver, studies show that just one in three were born in the province of their residence.

Metropolitan Region	Born in Province of Residence	Total	%
Metro Montreal	2,676,965	3,588,520	75%
Metro Ottawa	669,250	1,117,125	60%
Metro Toronto	2,345,290	5,072,075	46%
Metro Calgary	472,085	1,070,295	44%
Metro Vancouver	858,815	2,097,960	41%

Selected Metro Vancouver Cities	Born in Province of Residence	Total	%
Richmond	51,750	173,570	30%
Vancouver	188,740	571,600	33%
Burnaby	70,105	200,855	35%
Coquitla	49,450	113,560	44%
Surrey	175,135	392,450	45%
Abbotsford	62,590	122,175	51%
Port Coquitlam	27,310	52,230	52%
Langley (Township)	12,325	23,335	53%

Source: Statistics Canada, 2006 Census of Population, Statistics Canada catalogue no. 97-557-XCB2006015 (Canada, Code01)

What do those statistics that mean? It means that the population is from everywhere else from Winnipeg to Ireland to Hong Kong and may not be fully aware of the histories of Vancouver or British Columbia and all trying to find their way here.

But according to Yan, it's not a new issue. It's a continuation of an old story, he said, noting that the City and the region has always been dependent on large money flows from somewhere else from Great Britain to Eastern Canada, and now it is moving in from Asia.

Take a wealthy neighbourhood like Shaughnessy: today, 37.2 per cent of the area is Chinese, according to a Vancouver Sun map based on Canada Census data.

While many are long-term residents with strong roots in Vancouver, others are relative newcomers. For many, that means that mentioning a big political name or a well-known political figure from 20 years ago isn't likely to ring a bell for many locals.

“When a person lacks a history and the economic, social, or cultural conditions of the City inhibits many people to develop deep roots in Vancouver, how do you build your City up?” Yan asked.

In some ways, Vision Vancouver has been able to better adapt to the structural changes in Vancouver compared to older parties such as the NPA or COPE, Yan said.

"Vancouver used to be a city of homeowners, and now it's 50-50 (homeowners and renters)," he said. "Rather than unicultural, Vancouver has become defined by its cultural plurality. While the majority of Vancouverites used to be from the province, the vast majority are now from outside the province."

Kamloops This Week - Kenney previews immigration-law changes

2012-01-27T21:08:00.000-07:00

Kamloops This Week - Kenney previews immigration-law changes:

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Should I buy real estate in 2012 ?

2012-01-27T13:33:00.001-07:00

What happens when Canada's housing bubble pops?

by Erica Alini on Thursday, January 26, 2012 1:56pm - 12 Comments

A few days ago, Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney released another alarming, albeit muted, warning shot about the state of the Canadian real estate market. Some properties in Canada are "probably overvalued," the central banker said during an interview with CTV. Last week Finance Minister Jim Flaherty hinted he is also worried about housing: "We watch the housing market carefully and we are prepared to intervene if necessary," he said.

So, are we literally living in a bubble? And when it bursts, will it get as ugly as it did south of the border? Here's where the most recent speculation is pointing:

Yes, we're in a bubble, and it will probably pop soon.

The signs of a bubble are unequivocal. At 13 years and counting, Canada's current housing boom is one of the longest-lasting in the world, the Bank of Nova Scotia noted in a recent report. The real price of Canadian homes has increased by 85 per cent on average since 1998. Prices stagnated in 2008, at the height of the financial crisis, but they were back on the rise again as soon as 2009, when they grew by nearly 20 per cent, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association.

Meanwhile, Canadian household debt set a new record last year. On average, the debt burden of Canadian families stands at 153 per cent of their disposable income, according to Statistics Canada. That's almost as much debt as American households had at the peak of their bubble.

The ratio of home prices to rents reflects returns that people can expect from homeownership–in terms of either rents earned by landlords or saved by owner-occupiers. Based on this measure, The Economistfigures the Canadian market is overvalued by over 70 per cent. Last month, Merrill Lynch wrote in a report that our housing market is afflicted by "overvaluation, speculation and over supply." No wonder a recentinternational survey of housing affordability found Vancouver to be the second-least affordable city in the world!

The scary part is that, by most accounts, 2012 is going to be the year when housing prices start heading south. The housing market is already showing signs of weakness. Despite a rebound in December, housing starts fell in the last quarter of 2011. And in some smaller markets on the west coast, condo prices have already declined 15 per cent, according to Merrill Lynch. The bank predicts that prices nationwide will slip by five per cent this year in the best-case scenario. A spike in unemployment could trigger a 10 per cent price drop.

Meantime, the economy is slowing, unemployment has been on the rise since September and it will probably continue to climb as Ottawa reins in public spending. CIBC noted this week that job creation hasvirtually stalled in the second half of 2011, and a growing number of Canadians are resorting to self-employment, where they're likely to earn 10-15 per cent less than full-time employees. "The job market is currently weaker than any non- recessionary period," the bank noted. The reason this is frightening is that, even if uncertainty about the global economy forces the Bank of Canada to keep rates at current lows, Canadian households have no room to take on additional debt. Many will probably struggle to keep up with what they already owe.

If it's any consolation, we won't be going down by ourselves. Canada's pop will be part of a much bigger deflation of Western housing markets. The U.S., and Ireland were merely the beginning, says theEconomist. The U.K. is getting there, and the next victims could include Australia, Belgium, France, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden–and, of course, us.

No, it won't be "housemageddon."

The good news is that, in all likelihood, our bubble won't go KABOOM! Instead, we seem to be in for a painful but not devastating pop. That's because only certain parts of Canada are in a bubble. Overcrowded markets in B.C. and Ontario may be close to busting, but many other areas of the country remain very affordable. The very same survey that ranked Vancouver most-unaffordable-city after Hong Kong rates Canada the third most affordable country, after the U.S. and Ireland.

Secondly, even in areas where there is a bubble, not all sectors of the market are equally inflated. Concerns about overvaluation and oversupply mostly regard the condo market, which has been the main engine driving the boom. Construction of single-family homes, on the other hand, "has already landed softly below its long-run average," Merrill Lynch notes.

Most importantly, however, Canada's pop won't bring down the entire financial system, as it did in the U.S. That's primarily because subprime mortgages are virtually non-existent in Canada, and government guarantees on mortgage insurance act as a buffer protecting the banking sector from housing market downturns. A whopping 75 per cent of mortgages in Canada are fully insured by Ottawa, according to the Financial Stability Board. Also, at the height of the crisis, the U.S. was grappling with severe unemployment, which kept fuelling the housing bust as more and more households became unable to afford mortgage payments. Though job creation is softening in Canada, there's little reason to believe joblessness will rise to America's level. Even economist Nouriel Roubini–famously dubbed Dr. Doom for accurately predicting the great recession–doesn't think Canada is headed for disaster. He predicts a 10-per cent correction, but not a U.S. style meltdown.

Besides, Ottawa is keeping a close eye on the market. The government already cut the maximum length on federally insured mortgages from 35 to 30 years in early 2011, and Flaherty may have more of the same in mind–along with other cooling measures that aren't tied to interest rates.

Most likely, then, the Canadian market will let the air out gradually. As inelegant as that sounds, it's good news.

Senior Immigration Canada manager pleads not guilty in bribery scheme

2012-01-24T10:36:00.000-07:00

Senior Immigration Canada manager pleads not guilty in bribery scheme:

Secretly recorded telephone calls and undercover police surveillance will paint a portrait of a senior Citizenship and Immigration Canada manager taking cash in exchange for preferential treatment on permanent residency applications, a prosecutor said Monday on the first day of a trial into an alleged bribes-for-status scheme.

Assistant Crown attorney Mike Boyce said Diane Serre teamed up with Issam Dakik to take thousands of dollars from mostly Arab immigrants in exchange for fast-tracking their applications. Dakik would meet with the applicants and collect the money before contacting Serre who would use her influence as a manager and supervisor in Citizenship and Immigration Canada's Catherine Street office, said Boyce.

Serre, 41, pleaded not guilty to 28 charges Monday, including multiple allegations of fraud against the government and breach of trust of a public official. She is also charged with one count of bribery.

Dakik portrayed himself as someone who had inside information, Boyce added.

Dakik, who has pleaded guilty to his role in the scheme, along with credit card fraud, was sentenced to two years and nine months in prison in 2006. At the time, Dakik admitted he paid Serre a portion of the proceeds of the scheme.

The scheme allegedly began in January 2003 and continued until December 2004, when Serre and Dakik were arrested by RCMP in an operation dubbed "Project Argon."

Nine applicants made the illegal cash payments, which the RC-MP said at the time of Serre's arrest ranged from between $4,000 and $25,000.

In an opening address, Boyce outlined Crown evidence that will be presented over the six-week trial, including wiretap evidence that the prosecutor said proved that Serre was Dakik's "insider" at Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

Police surveillance observed visits to Dakik's home by Serre that corresponded with wiretapped telephone calls to some of the applicants - calls where Dakik would often either put the applicants on hold or could be heard consulting with someone else in the room.

Boyce alleged when an undercover police agent approached Dakik, he was told the first $300 he paid would go to "the lawyer." Bills with the same serial numbers were recovered two weeks later from Serre's bedroom, said the prosecution.

Among the allegations is that Serre also handed over sensitive Citizenship and Immigration Canada documents to Dakik and made phone calls to outside government agencies, including CSIS, to see if some of the steps of the application process could be expedited.

Not all of Serre's actions would be improper when viewed in isolation, said Boyce, but when viewed in the context of Serre's relationship with Dakik, they equated to a breach of trust.

"She accepted or agreed to accept a benefit for her assistance in processing these claims," Boyce told Ontario Superior Court Justice Catherine Aitken.

Boyce said the Crown intends to prove Serre not only committed a breach of trust by taking money, but by the very fact she agreed to give preferential treatment to the claimants at all.

"Just through acts of giving preferential treatment to those files would be a breach of trust by Ms. Serre," he said.

The nine applicants who paid Dakik are expected to be called as witnesses this week and next. Their evidence will include tape-recorded conversations and agreements they made with Dakik. Dakik is expected to take the witness stand in about two weeks, where prosecutors expect to confront him with the wiretaps and other surveillance.

The Crown will also introduce evidence that will show when Serre or others searched for the applicants' electronic files. Occasionally Serre would search the files within a day of discussing them with Dakik, Boyce alleged.

The prosecution spent much of the first day introducing many of the exhibits seized from searches of Citizenship and Immigration Canada office and Serre and Dakik's homes.

The trial continues Tuesday.

Kyiv Post. Independence. Community. Trust - Ukraine abroad - Ria Novosti: Femen bares breasts over Indian visa crackdown

2012-01-18T20:39:00.000-07:00

Kyiv Post. Independence. Community. Trust - Ukraine abroad - Ria Novosti: Femen bares breasts over Indian visa crackdown:

Deaf Boy's Treatment Not Enough for Visa Officer

2012-01-16T17:34:00.001-07:00

By Guidy Mamann, J.D.

Should a family be denied permanent residence to Canada because they have a young boy who is deaf, even after the child has been fitted with a cochlear implant?

This is the question the Federal Court of Canada was recently asked to address after the Canadian consulate in Buffalo rejected the application of Ronilo Perez, an engineer from the Philippines.

Perez came to Edmonton in March 2007 as a temporary foreign worker and went to work for WorleyParsons, a huge multinational engineering firm with 35,000 employees in 43 countries.

In June 2008, Perez was joined in Alberta by his wife and four children. Shortly after their arrival, their young son, Carlos, was diagnosed with deafness in both ears. In May 2009, Carlos was fitted with cochlear implants.

Perez applied and was selected for permanent residence by Alberta under its Provincial Nominee Program. However, foreigners selected by a Canadian province must also pass medical and background clearances administered by our federal immigration department.

The intent of Canada's medical inadmissibility provisions is to avoid a negative impact on Canada's publicly funded health and social service systems. If an applicant, or any of his/her dependents, is expected to cause an excessive demand on our medical or social services, the entire family is prohibited from immigrating to Canada.

The Canadian consulate wrote to Perez disclosing its concerns about Carlos and gave him 60 days to address these concerns. Perez responded with a letter from Carlos' doctor stating that Carlos will not be a burden to health, education or social services in Alberta and that the most expensive part of his treatment -- the cost of surgery and the devices -- has already been incurred. She confirmed that Carlos had made progress since the surgery and that he would be able to attend a regular classroom setting with minimal support from a teacher's assistant.

She also stated that Carlos was in a position to be a functional and contributing member of society.

Further, the principals of a local elementary school confirmed that Carlos would be welcome in their junior kindergarten program and Alberta's Minister of Education supported the family's application for permanent residence.

As well, WorleyParsons confirmed that Perez earns $129,000 per year and is covered by the company's comprehensive benefit plan which includes extensive support for his son's medical condition.

In spite of this evidence the visa officer, J. Seyler, concluded that Carlos will, in fact, need specialized educational support for several years and found Carlos medically inadmissible. As requested by Perez, the officer also considered a request to otherwise admit the family on humanitarian and compassionate grounds since Perez claimed that cochlear implants are rare in the Philippines and that Carlos would face hardship there. The officer rejected this request and refused the visa application.

On appeal to the Federal Court, Justice Yves de Montigny found that the officer did not assess Carlos as an individual, but rather as a member of a class of persons, i.e. deaf people. The judge applied the reasoning of a previous decision of the Supreme Court of Canada which held that a health impairment must be assessed on an individualized basis. "It is impossible, for example to determine the 'nature,' 'severity' or probable 'duration' of a health impairment without doing so in relation to a given individual."

The court found that the officer was wrong in failing to look at Carlos' specific circumstances but right in rejecting the humanitarian request since no reliable evidence was submitted as to what programs and facilities are available for Carlos in the Philippines. Accordingly, the court overturned the officer's decision which will now force the visa post to reconsider its conclusions.

While there may still be a happy ending for the Perez family, this case underscores why it is impossible to say "generally" whether or not a specific health impairment, i.e. diabetes, blindness, deafness, etc. renders a person medically inadmissible to Canada.

The answer must always be answered with a specific individual's circumstances in mind.

Guidy Mamann, J.D. practises law in Toronto at Mamann, Sandaluk & Kingwell and is certified by the Law Society of Upper Canada as an immigration specialist.

Canada's tightening immigration policy may be felt in US - Sacramento Living - Sacramento Food and Wine, Home, Health | Sacramento Bee

2012-01-16T17:14:00.000-07:00

Canada's tightening immigration policy may be felt in US

VANCOUVER, Canada -- For years, Canada has had one of the most generous immigration policies in the world, welcoming tens of thousands of asylum applicants who claim to be fleeing persecution in their homelands.

But Canada's Conservative government has begun rolling up the welcome mat, stepping up efforts to track down and deport thousands of asylum-seekers whose applications have been denied.

The clampdown is likely to be felt not just across Canada, but in the United States.

Fresh from the revelation that Los Angeles arson suspect Harry Burkhart traveled to the U.S. from Vancouver sometime after losing his nearly three-year bid for refugee status, immigration analysts here warn that America could become a new destination for thousands of asylum applicants soon to be pushed out of the pipeline in Canada.

"This is about to become a staging inventory for potential illicit entry into the United States," said Richard Kurland, an immigration policy analyst and attorney in Vancouver.

The most dramatic change is set to take effect at the end of June, with a $540 million "balanced refugee reform" program designed to speed up the asylum review process and start slicing through a backlog of more than 42,000 refugee cases, many of which have been awaiting a decision for years.

The tough new timelines call for asylum applicants to be given a hearing within 90 days or even less for refugees from some countries, with most appeals heard within an additional 120 days, accompanied by stepped-up enforcement to eject those who fail to prove they would be persecuted if sent home.

U.S. officials say that asylum claimants who are denied refugee protection in Canada will not be automatically turned away at the U.S. border, despite a 2004 agreement between the countries that bars new arrivals in either from entering to claim asylum. That pact was put in place to halt the flow of asylum-seekers from America, with its comparatively tough immigration policies, into Canada, where winning asylum had been easier.

The agreement was intended to target new arrivals, not those who had already gone through Canada's asylum process and faced potential deportation, said Mike Milne, spokesman for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection office in Seattle, which supervises the western U.S.-Canada border.

"Anybody seeking asylum or claiming a credible fear of persecution gets to articulate their case to an asylum officer. We would take them into detention and they would have the same right as anyone seeking asylum to a hearing," Milne said.

Canadian officials say that's far from clear, and suggest it's more likely that anyone showing up at the U.S. border after failing to win asylum would be quickly returned to Canada - and then deported - under the 2004 agreement. "Canada and the U.S. have a strong record of cooperation with respect to migrant, refugee and asylum issues and the management of our shared border," said Nancy Caron, spokeswoman for Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the nation's chief border enforcement agency.

In any event, U.S. officials say they do not anticipate a massive increase - at least in those seeking to cross the border through legal channels - because they expect that Canada will allow some failed applicants to stay under other exemptions and will deport as many as possible of those deemed not at risk of persecution in their home countries.

But with Canada typically granting about 40 percent of its asylum petitions, the prospect of moving more rapidly through 42,000 pending cases and the more than 124,000 already targeted for deportation, analysts say, is bound to make migration patterns much more unpredictable.

"If you deprive a large number of people of asylum options, they're going to look for the next place to go, in large numbers," Kurland said. "So it is utterly incomprehensible to not figure out that come June-July 2012, when the new rules kick in, there will be a drive to seek sanctuary somewhere else, such as the largest neighbor in North America."

In at least one case, that may already have happened: Officials in both the U.S. and Canada, citing privacy laws, have refused to say when or how Burkhart and his mother, Dorothee, traveled to the U.S., though it is likely they arrived as tourists with the aid of their German passports.

Most failed asylum applicants in Canada hold passports from nations that would require them to have a visa to enter the U.S. But Kurland said even the Burkharts, though they wouldn't have needed a visa, should have triggered an alert for U.S. immigration authorities after having been rejected for asylum in Canada.

"If they can't catch two obvious refugee claimants who spent years in Canada in the refugee system, how can we trust them to deal with the potential of thousands of folks turned away from Canada because of the new changes?" he said.

Lack of funding until now has prevented the Canadian Border Services Agency from making much headway against the more than 124,000 immigrants targeted for deportation, most of them failed asylum claimants. At least 44,000 have ignored orders to leave and are facing arrest.

"Once all avenues of appeal have been exhausted, persons are expected to abide by our laws and leave Canada. It is extremely challenging, since most people facing removal have no desire to comply," said Renee Ribout, spokeswoman for the border services agency.

Refugee advocates, meanwhile, worry that the stepped-up timelines enshrined in the new law, while purportedly designed to help immigrants by giving them a speedier decision, could hurt more than they help.

The 90-day deadline for holding hearings gives applicants little time to find lawyers and prepare the complex paperwork required to build their case files, which often number hundreds of pages and must delve into the complex political and social situations that may have put the applicants at risk in their homelands.

"They're responding to a real problem, that the process is taking too long, but there's a balance in the middle - you need to give people enough time," said Janet Dench, executive director of the nonprofit group Canadian Council for Refugees.

"We're primarily concerned about women who've survived sexual violence, (as well as) gays and lesbians, victims of torture," she said. "A very fast process will actually compromise the possibilities of protection for some of these most vulnerable groups."

Europe: an exodus | World news | guardian.co.uk

2012-01-16T11:29:00.000-07:00

Europe: an exodus | World news | guardian.co.uk:

Europe: an exodus

As the financial midwinter sweeps across Europe, tens of thousands of people are seeking new lives in the southern hemisphere. Read the stories of people who have fled to Argentina, Australia, Brazil and the US

New super visa is 'super disappointing' - Winnipeg Free Press

2012-01-15T18:33:00.000-07:00

New super visa is 'super disappointing' - Winnipeg Free Press:

For many Canadians waiting to bring parents overseas for a visit, a government promise to speed up the process with a new "super visa" is a "super disappointment," critics say.

"There are so many, so many requirements, you're prevented from coming in. And you have to have a lot of money," said Fred DeVilla, who works in the insurance industry and is a prominent member of the Filipino community.

Moratorium on family reunification

THE federal government has slapped a two-year moratorium on immigration applications from parents and grandparents. To make up for that restriction, it created a 10-year "super visa" allowing parents and grandparents of permanent residents to enter Canada multiple times as visitors and stay for up to two years at a time -- if they and their families can get the health insurance and meet income requirements.

The federal government requires that one year of $100,000 in health coverage for those 55 and older has to be purchased up front, he said. It costs at least $1,200 a year and there's no monthly payment plan. If your parent stays for just a few months, there are no refunds, DeVilla said.

The 10-year super visa was announced last month. At the same time, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney froze for two years sponsorships for parents wanting to immigrate to Canada. The super visa was supposed to take just eight weeks to process and give the feds time to deal with a lengthy backlog of sponsorship applications.

"There was a huge amount of excitement and no one, including myself, thought we'd get blindsided," said Winnipeg North MP Kevin Lamoureux. The Liberal immigration critic later learned about the cost involved -- an average $1,500 per parent, per year.

It was a "sucker punch" by the federal government that hailed super visas as a fast-track plan to bring parents and grandparents for a visit, he said. It softened the blow of Kenney's unprecedented freeze on sponsoring parents to immigrate and isn't going to help bring families together as promised, Lamoureux said. "There will be hundreds, ultimately thousands, who will not be able to get it" across Canada, he said.

"Not only for Winnipeg North but for anyone who had any hope of getting a parent or both to come under the super visa, he's taken away their hope," Lamoureux said.

The MP said he is starting a petition demanding changes to the super visa. In the past, visiting parents have been OK with $25,000 in medical coverage that costs a few hundred dollars, he said. The super visa demands too much, he said.

DeVilla said you don't get much with $100,000 coverage. "The medical insurance covers nothing but emergencies," said DeVilla. "It's only good for when you have an emergency like a stroke and you get into the hospital then," said DeVilla, who hosts a monthly breakfast meeting for the Filipino community. At a recent meeting they wanted to know why the federal government is demanding so much.

On Tuesday, the director of Citizenship and Immigration in Winnipeg couldn't comment on the politics but explained the policy. The department looked at what other countries require for medical coverage and the average cost of general health-care services and came up with the $100,000 requirement, John Nychek said.

"It was determined $100,000 would be fair for the applicant and the Canadian taxpayer."

On top of paying for the insurance, the host family has to meet super visa income requirements. A family of four has to make $45,000 a year, whether they live in high-priced Vancouver or low-cost Winnipeg.

"It's based on a national average," Nychek said. The same test is applied for sponsoring people. Having different income requirements for different regions would be difficult, he said.

Lamoureux said that inflexibility is hurting homesick new Canadians. "They miss their mom, they miss their dad.... It can be lonely." They're scraping by in low-paying jobs and saving for their parents to come for a visit.

"We're pricing it out of their reach," Lamoureux said.

Montreal man crosses U.S. border with iPad image of passport

2012-01-13T17:44:00.000-07:00

Montreal man crosses U.S. border with iPad image of passport:

A Montreal man managed to cross the U.S. border with a scanned image of his passport on his iPad.

Photographer Martin Reisch said if iPad creator Steve Jobs was still alive he would have something to say about that.

"He'd probably say: 'Here's something to work on for the future.' Maybe have some kind of digital certification or encryption to let people travel like this," Reisch said.

Although he's sure the U.S. border guard made an exception for him, Reisch is glad his story is being repeated by the likes of the BBC, the Washington Post and the Huffington Post.

"I hope the biggest thing to come out of this is that it becomes a catalyst to change the rules," he said.

On Friday, Reisch was driving down Highway 55 to visit friends in Vermont, when 30 minutes from the Stanstead crossing, he remembered that he left his passport at home.

He thought of turning around when he remembered that he had a scanned copy of his passport on Dropbox, an online file storage service. It was a backup he kept in case he lost his passport while travelling.

"When I explained my story to the American guard, he looked kind of indifferent. He was a pretty serious border guy," Reisch said.

The officer took his tablet computer and went inside the border office. "I guess he looked me up in the computer and saw I'm not a criminal or a terrorist or anything.

"He didn't say much besides 'Merry Christmas.' "

Scanned copies of passports are not accepted forms of ID to cross the American border by land, according to the Canada Border Services Agency. Under the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, Canadians must present a passport, a NEXUS card, a Free and Secure Trade (FAST) card, an enhanced driver's licence, or a Secure Certificate of Indian Status.

When crossing back into Canada, Reisch was received with more enthusiasm.

"(The Canadian guard) was a really young guy. We had a cool chat about iPhones and technology. He was really interested and didn't make a big deal that he was letting me through," Reisch said.

Fisher: Canada should target talented, unemployed Europeans

2012-01-11T12:02:00.000-07:00

Fisher: Canada should target talented, unemployed Europeans:

'via Blog this'

99 stupid things the government spent your money on - Canada - Macleans.ca

2012-01-06T21:47:00.000-07:00

99 stupid things the government spent your money on - Canada - Macleans.ca: Canada’s finances may be the envy of the world, but the bar is awfully low these days. Whether it’s Ottawa, the provinces or municipalities, governments across the country face horrendous deficits. We must tighten our belts, say the politicians. Austerity and cutbacks are the order of the day.

Only, you wouldn’t know it looking at this list. What follows is but a slice of the silly, wasteful, craven and often outright stupid ways governments at all levels spent taxpayers’ money over the last year. To find our 99 items, Maclean’s scoured press releases and auditor generals’ reports, contacted watchdog groups like the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, and waded through news reports, looking for examples where the money was either spent or announced in 2011. We also included a handful of egregious instances of waste that only came to light in the past 12 months, even if the actual cash was doled out in previous years.

Not everyone will agree with all these items being on the list. Some will justify handouts to companies and sports teams as necessary to “promote economic activity,” or they’ll say a camping program for new immigrants was a nice thing to do. Sure, it would be great if we could afford everything, but at a time when government spending is under the knife, when services and jobs are being cut, it’s clear many of those with their hands on the public purse have yet to come to terms with Canada’s new fiscal reality.

Here is a sample of questionable spending on subsidies and infrastructure . Check us out tomorrow to see more stupid things your government did with your money .

BIG MONEY PLAYERS — He shoots, he scores another subsidy

1 Bailouts on ice: Abbotsford, B.C., dished out $1.3 million to the owners of the Abbotsford Heat AHL hockey team as part of a 10-year agreement guaranteeing the money-losing team that it won’t actually suffer any financial losses. The problem is that nobody buys tickets. They might as well. One way or the other the people of Abbotsford are going to pay.

2 Snow job: In 2011 the federal government unleashed a blizzard of funds on Quebec snowmobile clubs—nine groups received a windfall of at least $1.5 million. Over the past three years Stephen Harper’s government has pumped $6 million into Quebec snowmobile clubs. Not to be outdone, the province of Ontario set aside $500,000 for loop trails of its own.

3 Putt putt: Residents of London, Ont., who don’t golf are still picking up more than a few rounds for those who do. Since 2007, two of the city’s three taxpayer-owned courses lost more than $620,000 amid a glut of public and private courses in the region.

4 Broken arrow: What do you do with an unused curling rink in a Prairie community of 250, namely, Viscount, Sask.? If you’re the stimulus-happy federal government, you offer up $9,000 to convert it into an “upgraded, energy efficient” archery centre.

5 Sand trap: The City of Windsor spent $1 million to rebuild sand traps at the Roseland Golf and Curling Club, which the city owns.

6 Offside: Vancouver taxpayers paid more than $2 million for the Canucks’ Stanley Cup run and riot. Last we checked, the Canucks were a wildly profitable private company (playoff ticket sales earned the team $44 million) that doesn’t need taxpayers to subsidize a party for its fans.

7 Ottawa put $5 million toward marketing and celebrating the 2012 Grey Cup in Toronto.

8 B.C. paid $550,000 for a Grey Cup party in Vancouver.

9 Hydro Ottawa paid $28,450 for Senators hockey tickets while trying to raise rates to cover increasing “business costs.”

10 Auditors in Winnipeg found six semi-private golf clubs pay just $1 a year to lease public land, even as city-owned courses racked up $8 million in debt.

11 The City of Ottawa spent $21,000 on a five-minute video on how to use bike lanes.

PAVED WITH GOLD — Cashing in on the infrastructure boom

12 A bridge elsewhere: New Brunswick taxpayers must cough up $4 million to fix a bridge 3,600 km away. The province guaranteed $70 million worth of loans for Miramichi-based Atcon Group, the general contractor for the $182-million Deh Cho Bridge project in the Northwest Territories. Then Atcon was removed from the project and went into receivership. An audit said the province must repair work done by Atcon.

13 Gearing down: P.E.I. spent $330,000 building a parking lot for trucks for times when the Confederation Bridge is closed due to stormy weather, but it never gets used because it’s in the middle of nowhere. During a windstorm in October when the bridge was closed for 36 hours, only three trucks used the lot. The rest parked on the road.

14 The watchers: Infrastructure in Quebec is so shabby that the government paid $170,000 per month for guards to keep heavy trucks off Montreal’s Mercier Bridge 24 hours a day.

15 A bridge too far: Ottawa is spending $1.16 million to design a pedestrian bridge over a busy highway, even though no decision has been made on whether the bridge is actually needed. (It depends on future plans for a nearby stadium.) The province is widening the highway and wants to know the proposed bridge’s dimensions, in case it ever gets built.

16 Quebec paid $1.2 million to send transport officials overseas to study the latest in engineering technology, including trips to Burkina Faso and Algeria.

17 In its rush to qualify for federal stimulus dollars, the City of Ottawa spent $1.8 million to buy land it would have eventually gotten for free under a “right-of-way” arrangement with the landowner.

18 The feds forked out $268,000 for a footbridge in Forestville, Que.

Foreign students boost Ottawa economy - Ottawa - CBC News

2012-01-05T08:02:00.000-07:00

Foreign students boost Ottawa economy

Each international student expected to spend about $30,000 including admission

Foreign students boost Ottawa economy - Ottawa - CBC News: "The number of international students who come to Ottawa to earn their high school diploma has skyrocketed, injecting money into both the local and national economy.

There are about 480 foreign students this school year at the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board compared to just 50 in 2000. The students come from all over the world but the majority find their way from China and Japan.

That rising number translates into an approximate $30,000 boost to the local economy, according to the head of Ottawa's international student program.

International students in the OCDSB
2011-12 479
2010-11 349
2008-09 301
2007-08 303
2000-01 50
In Canada in 2008, more than 180,000 international students fuelled a $6.5 billion industry, which still lags behind the U.K., Australia and the U.S.

The big winner, according to one Ottawa principal and the school board, are the schools where international students attend."

'via Blog this'

Ordeal of Indian duo in China ends

2012-01-04T15:01:00.000-07:00

Ordeal of Indian duo in China ends:

The fortnight-long ordeal of two Indian business professionals in the Yiwu city of China ended on Wednesday after the communist country’s envoy in New Delhi was summoned twice during the day—first by officials of the Ministry of External Affairs to the South Block, and then again by External Affairs Minister S M Krishna himself to his residence.

U.S. Singles out India by Denying L1 Visas

2012-01-03T19:27:00.000-07:00

U.S. Singles out India by Denying L1 Visas:

Bangalore: Looks like U.S. has decided to single out India by declining L1 visas for Indian professionals while professional from other parts of the world are given L1 visas. The L1 visa denial rate is more for India than any other country. Software giants in India- Infosys and TCS whose biggest clients are in U.S. are complaining to the industry lobbyist, Nasscom about the difficulty and how it is upsetting the businesses.

L1 Visas which are known as short term work visas for professionals went down by 28 percent at 25,898 in 2011, whereas the quota for professionals from other countries rose by 15 percent. "This shows an enormous gap in visas issued as well as approval/denial rates between posts in India and the rest of the world, raising policy questions as to whether this great disparity is the result of a conscious policy at US posts in India," the National Foundation for American Policy wrote in its report.

Every year Indian software companies send about 25,000-35,000 Indians to U.S. on work assignments. About 40 percent of the visas which is given to professionals come under L1 visas. Professionals, who are highly skilled in their field, have immense knowledge about their work and who carry the tag of Project manager is given L1 visas.

The U.S. government showing discrimination to India has been justified by pulling up the issue of an American employee of Infosys who accused the company for misusing the short term work B1 visa for doing some software coding where as the visa had to be used only for client meetings. The $70 billion Indian IT sector is under complete scrutiny as immigration rules have become more stringent and the fees for H1 and L1 visas have been increased exceptionally.

IT servicing sector has been the biggest back bone for Indian economy and major revenue is churned from it. Banking on the booming servicing business, there are many home grown companies now. With the competition getting stiffer between the mid size and the giants, every visa denial is a pinch to their business.

"When the going gets tough, the tough gets going" is what all companies are adapting to. Finding newer solutions to visa problems, the IT firms have decided to use technologies such as telepresence to compensate for the presence of an expert at the customer's site.

Plight of a Nepali at Indian Transit

2011-12-30T07:25:00.000-07:00

Plight of a Nepali at Indian Transit:

'via Blog this'

US Embassy Operations in India (OIG)

2011-12-16T19:22:00.000-07:00

A. COUNTRY CONDITIONS
---------------
1. India-wide consular operations are among the busiest in the world. In FY-2008, Mission India processed more than 756,000 non-immigrant visa applications and 27,000 immigrant visa applications. While the majority of applicants from India are bona fide travelers and migrants, the volume of fraudulent applications is still significant. Some states, such as Gujarat and Punjab, are traditional sources of migration out of India and fraudulent applications from these areas are more common than from other regions of India. The state of Andhra Pradesh, and in particular its capital of Hyderabad, has been identified as a large center of documentary fraud which affects all India posts.

2. The world economic crisis affected the travel environment in India in FY-2008 and FY-2009. The domestic civilian aviation industry struggled to manage costs amidst slower traffic and rapid expansion, with even the traditionally most successful airlines looking for alliances and partnerships. Discretionary travel - including international travel -- was off and affected Mission India NIV demand. Economic observers in India predict that the global slowdown will reduce India's GDP growth from about 9.0 percent to around 6.5 percent this fiscal year and 5.5-6 percent next fiscal year (starting April 1). While U.S., Indian, and multinational businesses with strong ties to the U.S. economy have slowed down their expansion plans, they are continuing to hire - albeit at a slower pace.

3. Despite this difficult economic climate, demand for visa appointments from the intending immigrant population in northern India has remained strong. An opinion poll published in the popular Times of India in January 2007 noted that 37 percent of the 1.1 billion Indians would emigrate if they had the chance. Many Indians have tried to migrate using non-immigrant visas, and a greater number of Indian nationals apply for employment-based H and L visas than any other nationality worldwide. Mission India processes more H and L visas than any other country in the world, more than 30 percent of the world total in FY-2008. Although H and L visa applications were down slightly in FY-2009 due to the worldwide economic environment, Mission India still processed 120,320 H and L visa applications in the first three quarters of FY-2009, including 60,725 in Chennai alone. Mission India processed 192,332 H and L visa adjudications in FY-2008 and 190,087 in FY-2007. Chennai, Mumbai and New Delhi have been the three busiest H-1B visa processing posts in the world for the past five fiscal years, and we project that India posts will comprise the top four in the world now that the new Consulate General in Hyderabad is adjudicating visas.
CHENNAI 00000306 002 OF 017

4. In FY-2009, the non-immigrant visa classes most often targeted for fraud were B1/B2 business travelers/tourists, H-1B temporary workers, F1 student visas, and P3 culturally unique artists. Since the implementation of the new petition requirement for R-1 religious workers, Mission India has seen very few fraudulent R-1 cases. The most commonly targeted immigrant visa classes were IR-1s and CR 1s in Delhi and F-2B and F-2A visas in Mumbai and Chennai. During the six month period from March through August 2009, Mission India's consular sections identified a total of 3,596 cases of suspected visa fraud (Chennai - 1,237, New Delhi - 949, Mumbai - 809, Hyderabad - 523, Kolkata - 78).

5. Most of India's fraudulent applicants come from specific and easily defined regional areas within each consular district. These states have some of the most mobile populations in India and the largest concentrations of expatriate communities overseas, including in the United States. In New Delhi, cases originating from the Punjab comprise the majority of its IV and fraud caseloads, while the same can be said in Mumbai with Gujarat. Chennai and Hyderabad's fraud workload comes principally from Andhra Pradesh.

--------------- B. NON-IMMIGRANT VISA FRAUD ---------------
6. Fraudulent NIV applications make up a small portion of the total NIV cases but constitute the vast majority of cases referred to FPU. During the reporting period, Mission India identified 3,083 total cases of possible NIV fraud. Just over half of those cases resulted in a finding of confirmed fraud (Chennai - 1,182 cases , 60 percent confirmed fraud rate of completed investigations; New Delhi - 685, 34 percent; Mumbai - 615, 56 percent; Hyderabad - 523, Kolkata - 78, 30 percent).

7. B1/B2 visa fraud is the most commonplace. Regionally-based fraud rings throughout the country, but especially in Hyderabad, continue to produce fraudulent documents for visa application and travel purposes. Some visa ""consultants"" and travel agents specialize in fraudulent experience letters and fake document packages, which include passport copies of false relatives, bogus financial documents, and affidavits of support.

8. In the last six months the number of reported B1/B2 fraud cases throughout the Mission has nearly doubled from 1,089 to 2,121. The increase is mostly due to an increased use of the ""suspicious docs"" function in the NIV system, although several posts have increased their fraud detection in B1/B2 cases. If an applicant admits to submitting a fraudulent document package, Chennai uses extensive text searches to identify additional cases with the same fraudulent details. New Delhi uncovered an extensive network of fraudulent Lions Club conference attendees (ref C). Mumbai recently discovered a scam involving unqualified children being misrepresented as attending different schools in an attempt to boost their financial credibility as Space Camp attendees (ref D). As a result, Mumbai now requires signed affidavits by chaperones and has physically canceled the visas of several large camp groups. In FY-2008, Mumbai confirmed an overstay rate of less than one percent for male B1/B2
CHENNAI 00000306 003 OF 017 applicants between ages 20 and 35 (ref E).

--------------- H-1B Visa Fraud ---------------

8. H-1B fraud is one of the top two visa categories for fraud throughout Mission India. All posts regularly encounter inflated or fabricated educational and employment qualifications. The vast majority of these documents come from Hyderabad. In the 18 months prior to the start-up of consular operations in Hyderabad, FPU Chennai investigated 150 companies in Hyderabad, 77 percent of which turned out to be fraudulent or highly suspect (ref F). Most of those cases slated for site visits were to verify the experience letters for H-1B applicants who did not meet minimum educational qualifications.

9. The state of Andhra Pradesh, and Hyderabad in particular, has long been the hub for fraudulent document vendors in India. Hyderabadi applicants comprised over one-third of Chennai's total visa workload in FY-2008, but well over half of the FPU workload. In its first three months of adjudications, investigations by Consulate General Hyderabad have already led to the arrests of several document vendors, to be reported septel. FPU Mumbai has identified several Hyderabad-based fraud schemes whereby Hyderabadi applicants claimed to work for fictitious companies in Pune in order to apply in Mumbai's consular district and avoid Chennai. During recent site visits in Bangalore (ref G), FPU Chennai encountered several fictitious companies staffed by Hyderabadis. The Hyderabadis claimed that they had opened shell companies in Bangalore because ""everyone knows Hyderabad has fraud and Bangalore is reputable.""

10. Mission India continues to be at the forefront of H and L adjudications and training. Over the last three years, Mission India has hosted successful country-wide and international H and L conferences to harmonize adjudication techniques and fraud prevention strategies. In the last two months of FY-2009 alone, Chennai hosted and conducted H and L training for officers and LES Fraud Assistants from Kuala Lumpur, Colombo, Auckland, Shanghai, Hyderabad, New Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata. Numerous other posts communicate regularly with Mission India on problematic H and L cases. In April 2008, Mission India's Country Fraud Prevention Coordinator attended a KCC conference on ""The Future of H and L Processing,"" and in May 2008 Chennai hosted a worldwide H and L fraud conference (ref H) attended by DHS, KCC, CA/VO, CA/FPP, DS and multiple posts that adjudicate large numbers of Indian H-1B applicants. Presentations from that conference are available on the intranet at http://intranet.ca.state.gov/ fraud/resources/niv/hl/20107.aspx. At the end of FY-2007, Mission India hosted a countrywide H and L fraud conference in New Delhi (ref I) and hosted another in September 2009. 11. FPU Mumbai identified a recent trend of ""mix-and-match"" couples where multiple H-4 spouses pretended to be married to the same H-1B spouse resident in the United States. These applicants were to pay upon issuance approximately $70,000 to the smuggler that arranged their documentation.

--------------- Religious Workers CHENNAI 00000306 004 OF 017 ---------------
13. Prior to the USCIS requirement that R-1 applications be petition-based, India detected considerable fraud among applicants for R-1 and R-2 visas traveling to the United States for religious purposes. During the last two years, most R-1 fraud was detected amongst Tibetan refugees, Sikh raagis, and Hindu priests. Mission R-1 fraud includes both fraudulent beneficiaries and fictitious inviting parties. Since DHS began requiring petitions for R-1 applicants in November, R-1 fraud referrals have almost completely dried up. Since DHS requires 100 percent on-site verification of petitioners, however, many potential R-1 applicants now apply for B1/B2 visas in an attempt to avoid closer scrutiny.

14. Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata have all recently reported on R-1 fraud trends (refs J, K and L). Mumbai noted that following numerous FPU site visits in the states of Gujarat and Maharashtra in which none of the purported Sikhs were legitimate religious workers, CY-2008 R-1 visa refusals have climbed to nearly 70 percent. Mumbai and Kolkata noted similar findings that Sikhs and Tibetan monks had the highest percentage of confirmed fraud during this period. Kolkata confirmed that 85 percent of R-1 Buddhist monks from the Northern District of West Bengal did not belong to the monasteries as they claimed. Most of these fake priests were from Nepal or from the south Indian state of Karnataka. FPU Kolkata observed that Buddhist priests and monks from this region all speak Hindi, and Buddhist monks who claim to speak only Tibetan are not from West Bengal. A recent Mission-wide study of stateless B1/B2 applicants, most of whom were purportedly Tibetan monks, confirmed an overstay rate of over fifty percent.

15. Coordination between the FPUs throughout Mission India has been highly effective in preventing fraud in many religious worker visa cases. An astute catch by the FPM in Kolkata caught several fraudulent R-1 applicants applying the same week in Mumbai and New Delhi. Based on an A/RSO-I investigation in New Delhi that uncovered fake stamps for an organization in Michigan, Chennai arranged the arrest of three fake Sikhs, and the Kolkata FPM used Watch Phrase to alert U.S. Mission New Zealand about its applicants connected to the same Michigan organization. These cases are now under investigation by DS. Technology tools, such as Watch Phrase and Text Search, have proven invaluable in combating R-1 fraud.

------------- Student Visas -------------
16. Many student applicants, even legitimate ones, are taken in by document vendors. They present fraudulent packages of bank statements and land documents in their interviews, and they are guided by advertising and news articles, such as the one in Hyderabad which declared, ""Study Part-Time, Work Full-Time"" on an F-1 student visa. In May, police arrested a document vendor in Hyderabad who provided fraudulent financial records for nearly 100 visa applicants, including many well qualified students. In June 2008, Chennai conducted an open house for local journalists to dispel the myths surrounding the visa process and to encourage CHENNAI 00000306 005 OF 017 students in particular not to rely on visa facilitators. CA/FPP has been instrumental in identifying schools that have a bad track record of students not maintaining status once in the United States. Mumbai confirmed a very low overstay rate in its recent Summer Work and Travel validation study (ref M).

--------------- Performer Visas ---------------
17. Chennai, Mumbai and New Delhi have all been active in combating fraud of cultural performers and reporting on P3 fraud trends (Refs N, O, and P). The highest rate of fraud is in New Delhi, which has developed a mandatory FPU prescreening program for these types of cases. Its study validated an overall refusal rate of 56 percent and confirmed an overstay rate of five percent. Mumbai found that while P3 holders did not overstay their visas, several did report being mistreated and underpaid.

18. An investigation by the Chennai FPU in 2008 uncovered a visa fraud racket through which famous Tamil film actors and industry associates assisted mala fide applicants to obtain B1/B2 visas, purportedly to scout movie locations (ref Q). Over two hundred applicants applied for visas under this scheme, and 95 were issued. Thirty-eight of those applicants are confirmed overstays who are currently illegally present in the United States. FPU revoked the visas of 56 other individuals, mostly Tamil film stars and industry associates, for their direct role in this visa scheme. The case generated significant press attention throughout India and appeared on all of the major news networks, thereby creating a very high-profile anti-fraud awareness campaign.

--------------- C. IMMIGRANT VISA FRAUD ---------------
20. During the reporting period, Mission India identified 513 potential cases of IV fraud (New Delhi - 264, 30 percent confirmed fraud rate; Mumbai - 194, 32 percent; Chennai - 55, 30 percent). Kolkata and Hyderabad, which do not process IVs, assisted with several site visits in their respective consular districts. Although all posts face similar fraud trends (i.e. fraudulent relationships, fake civil documents, etc.) and have almost identical confirmed fraud rates, the volume of IV cases in New Delhi and Mumbai is significantly larger than that of Chennai.
21. The F and CR categories are particularly troublesome throughout Mission India, and posts see false family relationships and fictitious marriages and divorces every day. The Indian custom of arranged marriages makes adjudicating IR and CR cases particularly difficult, as the husband and wife often do not meet until just before their marriage. Many of the IV fraud referrals in Mumbai are CR-1 or F-21 cases stemming from ""arranged"" marriages between U.S. citizens or LPRs and Indian nationals. Thus, much of the FPUs' time is dedicated to determining the legitimacy of the family relationships that sustain the claim to immigrant status.

CHENNAI 00000306 006 OF 017

22. New Delhi FPU investigates cases through a combination of Lexis-Nexis and PIERS checks on the petitioner side, and CCD checks, voters ID checks and calls to villagers. The majority of Post's IV fraud originates in Punjab state. Over the past year New Delhi FPU has broken numerous cases in which the beneficiary provided a false Voter's ID by searching the official voter registration on-line at http://www.ceopunjab.nic.in/. This site indicates who lives in the voter's house, their ages and marital status and/or father's name. Local police accepted three such cases of Voter's ID fraud for investigation. Calls are still the unit's most valuable resource. Using the online phone lists, the FPU can locate phone numbers in the area in which the applicant lives and call those neighbors for information about the beneficiary and sometimes petitioner. This is more effective in rural areas; city residents are less informed/less willing to talk about their neighbors.

23. Posts also frequently encounter misrepresentations of marital status in order to benefit from later ""current processing dates"" (e.g. falsely claiming to be single by denying the applicant has a spouse and children in order to qualify for F1 classification) and misrepresentations of the age of children in order to qualify as part of the family eligible to immigrate. Chennai has seen the largest number of these cases originating from the state of Kerala (ref R).

--------------- D. DIVERSITY VISA FRAUD ---------------
24. Although Indians are generally ineligible to participate in the Diversity Visa program, Kolkata conducted five DV investigations for Nepalese nationals. All five cases were confirmed fraudulent.
--------------- E. ACS AND U.S. PASSPORT FRAUD ---------------
25. Although passport and CRBA-related fraud exists, few cases have been reported. During the rating period, New Delhi and Mumbai reported 42 fraud checks, 39 of which were for DNA. Only one of these cases resulted in a confirmed fraud finding. The rise in DNA verifications in Mumbai is primarily due to fraud concerns in surrogacy cases. Mumbai, New Delhi and Hyderabad have all noted increasing numbers of surrogacy cases, to be reported septel.

--------------- F. ADOPTION FRAUD ---------------
26. During the reporting period, no posts referred any adoption cases for review. Recent media accounts have focused attention on reportedly fraudulent adoptions in India by Australian parents. Other countries have also expressed concerns about cases stemming from questionable orphanages in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Indian authorities are investigating these claims (Ref S).

--------------- G. Use of DNA Testing CHENNAI 00000306 007 OF 017 ---------------
27. Mission India does not currently have any fraud concerns with DNA testing. Guidance for all posts is to utilize DNA testing as a last resort, and most cases are resolved through interviews, phone calls and site visits. During the rating period, Mission India conducted DNA testing in 91 cases, and in only five Mumbai IV cases was fraud confirmed. This does not include DNA tests on behalf of DHS, or cases for which DNA was recommended but the applicant did not submit a sample.

--------------- H. Asylum and Other DHS Benefits Fraud ---------------
28. All posts now refer FDNS requests to FDNS HQ for appropriate dissemination. Since those cases should be routed to the USCIS, ICE and CBP representatives at Embassy New Delhi, the number of DHS referrals has decreased significantly in the past six months to only 32 cases (Mumbai 22, Chennai - 6, Hyderabad - 2, New Delhi - 2). Twenty-three of those requests were for DNA. DHS New Delhi processes DNA cases only in the Delhi consular district.
--------------- I. Alien Smuggling, Trafficking, Organized Crime, Terrorist Travel ---------------
29. Alien smuggling from and through India using fraudulent travel documents is one of the most serious challenges facing posts in the region. Smuggling ranges from individual document vendors to sophisticated criminal organizations that move hundreds of people to the U.S. each year. Delhi and Mumbai have become key transit points for illegal migrants proceeding to the U.S. from India. DS/CR/VPAU, in consultation with DRSO/I New Delhi, and the Austrian, Canadian, British, and New Zealand High Commissions continue to monitor third-country nationals transiting New Delhi with counterfeit documents. Individuals of numerous nationalities, including Armenians, Iraqis, Moroccans, Georgian, Bangladeshi, Congolese, Nepalese, and Sri Lankans have been intercepted attempting to transit New Delhi with fraudulent documents. Other Indian airports have also been reporting similar patterns. From 10/2008 to 04/2009, there were 32 encounters/off-loads involving Nepalese/Tibetans via New Delhi enroute to JFK alone.

30. Trafficking in persons (TIP) remains an area of concern. India is a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor. Internal trafficking of women and girls for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced marriage is prevalent. The GOI estimates 90 percent of India's sex trafficking is internal, although estimates of the number of trafficking victims vary widely and are generally unreliable. Recent years have seen an increase in trafficking to medium-sized cities and satellite towns of large cities. India is also a destination for women and girls from Nepal and Bangladesh trafficked for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation.

--------------- J. DS Criminal Fraud Investigations ---------------
CHENNAI 00000306 008 OF 017
31. The single greatest development in combating fraud in India has been expansion of the RSO-I program and the close relationship between A/RSO-Is and FPMs throughout Mission India. All posts have an A/RSO-I, and since FY-2008, the I-program in India has facilitated the arrests of over 380 mala fide applicants and vendors. All of the RSO-Is and FPMs attended the Mission-wide fraud conferences at the end of FY-2007 and FY-2009 and the H and L Conference in Chennai in May 2008. All RSO-Is and FPMs are included in a common email group that is used daily, and the D/RSO-I and Country Coordinator for Fraud Prevention Programs plan their quarterly trips to each post in consultation with one another.

32. As the A/RSO-I/FPU program expands in India to move beyond arrest statistics and personnel growth, the program has inevitably encountered challenges in another stage of criminal prosecutions; court trials. Permission to testify in foreign courts must be sought and obtained according to international treaty standards and stringent FAM regulations. Seeking such permission has been an infrequent requirement since most officers are long gone by the time cases reach their court dates. However, these summons are anticipated to occur much more frequently now, particularly given the high volume of arrests in FY-2008. In a recent case, ARSO/I Mumbai obtained such approval after much guidance and consultation with D/RSO-I and L/DL and was able to testify in January 2009 in a large-scale smuggling case involving H4 visa fraud. A procedure has since been established to facilitate future summons delivery, immunity, and testimonial issues.

33. ARSO/Is have also sought to address the ""transferred officer"" syndrome, by encouraging the use of FSNI's as complainants in fraud cases brought to local law enforcement for investigation; a practice in use by other ARSO/I-FPU programs in Indonesia and Colombia. Based on initiatives by ARSO/Is in India, L/DL recently made an important decision to allow FSNs to sign and file the initial police reports with Indian law enforcement. By the time these cases reach the courts, there is a much greater likelihood that the FSNs on the report will still be available to act as witnesses than there is for the ARSO/I. This will help ensure that cases generated by ARSO/I and FPU efforts will complete the full cycle of crime detection, investigation, and prosecution.

34. Finally, as a result of an increasing amount of pressure both from the U.S. government and from other diplomatic missions, primarily the U.K., Canada, Australia, Germany, and New Zealand, Indian law enforcement is slowly beginning to address smuggling and trafficking issues in India. Recently, ARSO/I Mumbai met with the Joint Commissioner of Police to discuss alien smuggling schemes. The meeting resulted in the creation of a Special Cell for Human Trafficking and Smuggling within the Mumbai Crime Branch. The result is that cases referred from the US Consulate will now be worked by trained investigators as opposed to local constables who do not have the training or experience to deal with complex document fraud cases.

--------------- K. Indian Passport, Identity Documents, and Civil Registry ---------------

CHENNAI 00000306 009 OF 017
35. Indian Passport fraud is a significant and continuously worrisome fraud challenge. For all of the security features and improvements in quality control of current Indian passports, quality and issuance control are lax and penalties are so inadequate that virtually anyone can obtain a genuinely issued, but fraudulent passport with near impunity.

36. The design of the Indian passport incorporates many good security features that would normally lead to a more favorable rating of this document's vulnerability. The problem lies in production inconsistency and vulnerable source documents. Quality control is lax at production locations. Thus, genuine passports sometimes are partially or completely missing security features. Genuine passports issued on the same day at the same place can look entirely different - a different batch but the numbers are sequentially close.

37. The only documentation required for a passport is proof of birth and proof of residency. Easily reproduced school records can suffice for the former, while a bank statement or utility bill can be used to ""prove"" the latter. Although police are supposed to verify the information on each application by visiting the applicant's neighborhood and interviewing neighbors, such checks are often cursory at best. In most cases, police officials will only check warrant records and then hand over a clean record to passport authorities. Notwithstanding these problems, the fact the application process requires a police check is positive.

38. Ironically, another positive is the cumbersome Indian bureaucracy. The application process for a passport can be extremely time consuming and laborious. Anyone with an urgent desire for a fraudulent Indian passport may thus pursue an alternative to acquiring a legitimate passport with fake source documents. Finally, Indian passports are issued through regional offices. One benefit of this is that individuals applying outside of their 'normal' region would attract additional attention and scrutiny.

39. Fraudulent civil documentation is common in India, both in terms of documents that have been fabricated outright, and documents issued improperly. Posts see a myriad of fraudulent documents, including fake civil registry documents, counterfeit entry/exit stamps and third-country visas, employment letters, sponsorship and financial documents, bogus degrees and entrance examination scores, and altered marriage and site photographs. Visa consultants sell such documents to applicants who seek their advice about how to qualify for visas. Peddlers of fraudulent documents abound and operate quite openly in major Indian cities and even some of the smaller towns. Government officials are not above fraudulent issuances either. Virtually all birth certificates, death certificates, and marriage registration documents can be purchased from corrupt local government officials or brokers.

--------------- L. Cooperation with Host Government Authorities ---------------
CHENNAI 00000306 010 OF 017
40. All posts have increased efforts to work more closely with Indian authorities in a number of areas of common interest, such as making Indian documents more secure, establishing fraud prevention strategies, verification of civil registry information, and the apprehension of criminals. Airport police and immigration authorities in Mumbai have been aggressive in detaining individuals who DHS deported for fraudulent documents. Law enforcement in New Delhi has been actively involved in arresting visa vendors but has not taken a general interest in arresting persons denied boarding at the airport for presenting fraudulent documents, in part due to the absence of a U.S. presence at the airport.

41. In Mumbai, the consulate looks forward to further cooperation with the newly established Anti Human Trafficking and Smuggling Cell (AHTSC) of the Mumbai Police Crime Branch. This new unit has already uncovered a racket where women posed as the wives of Air India employees using photo-substituted passports. To date, nine arrests have been reported in connection with this case.

42. In Chennai, law enforcement officials investigate cases involving Chennai applicants but are hesitant to do so with applicants from other states. The opening of Consulate General Hyderabad has greatly improved interaction with local government officials. The Chairman of the Stat" "e Board of Education in Andhra Pradesh has been instrumental in developing and maintaining the integrity of OLIVE, the Online Verification system for high priority educational degrees in the state. A similar program, MARTINI, has been set up in the state of Karnataka.

--------------- M. Areas of Particular Concern ---------------
43. Mission India appreciates the considerable support it has received from the Department in combating visa fraud. All Mission FPUs are now better equipped, and most will soon have appropriate offices from which to operate. The Chennai and Kolkata FPUs have completed their physical expansion, while phase one of the New Delhi reconstruction project was completed in March. All of consular section Mumbai eagerly awaits the completion of a new consulate compound, currently scheduled for FY2010. Consulate General Hyderabad officially began visa processing in March.

44. The possibility of submitting large validation studies for entry/exit checks with the USVISIT program has significantly enhanced Mission India validation studies. During the reporting period, Mission India conducted validation studies for referrals (ref T), non-English applicants (refs U and V), and C1/D applicants (refs W and X).

Interested in reading more ?

Visa temple holds prayer for rupee rise - Hindustan Times

2011-12-15T07:43:00.000-07:00

Visa temple holds prayer for rupee rise - Hindustan Times:

Is the Next Steve Jobs on a Plane Back to India? | Inc.com

2011-12-14T19:43:00.000-07:00

Is the Next Steve Jobs on a Plane Back to India? | Inc.com:

"Just a few weeks ago, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration services announced that that it has reached its cap of 65,000 H-1B visas for highly skilled immigrants for fiscal year 2012. For the time being the agency is no longer taking applications from employers for engineers, PhDs, researchers and the like to stay in the country. As usual, the visas were issued mostly to employees at high-tech companies, with Microsoft, IBM and Infosys Systems claiming the most."

'via Blog this'

Wealthy immigrants can invest way to visas | Seattle Times Newspaper

2011-12-11T21:55:00.000-07:00

Wealthy immigrants can invest way to visas | Seattle Times Newspaper:

As his son moved through high school, Xiaohong Mu began researching the immigration policies of Western countries where he believed his boy would get the best education.

The owner of a petroleum-engineering firm in the southwest Chinese city of Chengdu, Mu considered Australia and Canada before settling on the United States.

America, he believes, will not only prepare his son for future success, but he also thinks he can find new business opportunities here.

Mu and his family will move to Seattle this month under a little-known but increasingly popular visa program reserved for foreigners who invest at least $500,000 in an American enterprise.

It's a source of money that cash-starved developers across the U.S. are using to help fund any number of new projects — from ski resorts in Vermont to utility-line extensions for a new BMW plant in Moses Lake.

About $48 million in these investor funds will help finance the state of Washington's $4.6 billion replacement of the Highway 520 floating bridge.

The relative obscurity of the so-called EB-5 visa program has allowed it to escape scrutiny at a time debate over immigration in this country has raged.

As developers struggle to get traditional sources of funding for their projects, use of EB-5 capital is expanding and expected to total $1.2 billion nationally for 2011, up from $845 million last year.

The financiers are wealthy foreigners — primarily the Chinese — who see an opportunity to gain permanent U.S. residency without the long wait and complicated processing associated with family and work-related visas — if they can qualify for those visas at all.

"There's a kind of gold rush going on right now — developers trying to get projects going and a huge group of Chinese with money," said James Palmer, economic-development manager at the state Department of Commerce.

While the state is not directly involved in operating the EB-5 visa program, Palmer has made himself an expert of sorts, fielding frequent calls from area developers and would-be investors around the globe seeking information about the program. "It's a marriage made in heaven," he said.

Mu's investment is visible to anyone who has attended a game at Safeco Field: the second phase of a $155 million office complex going up just south of the stadium in Sodo.

"The first priority is securing the green card," Mu said through an interpreter. "Financial return of the capital is second."

Russian citizen Svetlana Anikeeva, along with her husband, invested $500,000 in an earlier phase of the same project. Now living in Redmond on a conditional green card she received about 16 months ago, Anikeeva can't help but feel a sense of pride when she drives past the building that her investment helped make possible.

"I tell people that being born in the U.S. itself is worth at least $500,000," she said.

Small-scale program

Capped at just 10,000 visas a year nationwide, the EB-5 visa program is relatively small, but offers one of the quickest paths to legal residency.

Overseen by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, it is one of several visa-for-cash programs worldwide, including one in Canada.

Congress established the U.S. program 20 years ago to allow foreign investors from any country who could prove the lawful source of their money to obtain conditional green cards for themselves and immediate family members. For the green cards to become permanent, each investment must have created at least 10 new, full-time jobs for legal U.S. residents by the end of two years.

Typically, foreigners invest $500,000 through entities known as regional centers — usually development companies such as American Life, which owns the Sodo office complex that Mu and Anikeeva invested in.

These centers may also operate as investment companies, like the Washington Regional Center, which used EB-5 funds from 95 Chinese investors to purchase state bonds for the 520 bridge project.

The investors have virtually no direct management involvement in the centers, which are authorized by Citizen and Immigration Services. The investors may live wherever they want in the U.S., regardless of the location of the project.

In 2007, there were just under 800 visa applicants and 11 regional centers nationwide. By the end of fiscal 2011, nearly five times that many foreigners had applied and 179 centers were operating — 11 in Washington state.

And new regional centers are coming onboard every day.

A virtual cottage industry has sprung up among marketing agents overseas who promote the centers while peddling U.S. residency to the wealthy.

The marketing frenzy is particularly prolific in China, where Mu said he is bombarded daily with sales pitches.

"There's no privacy protection here," he said. "If people know you have money, they'll contact you. Every day I still get calls, emails and text messages."

The program isn't without risk, and the U.S. government makes no guarantee to investors they'll get their money back and prohibits regional centers from making upfront promises about return of capital.

In the past, projects have failed and investors have lost their money. What's more, foreigners who've been allowed into the country through the program on a conditional green card face deportation if a project they invested in fails to meet the job-creation requirement after two years.

"Despite its many benefits and increasing popularity, the EB-5 program still presents serious risks," said Elizabeth Peng, a Mercer Island immigration attorney.

"I tell investors this is money they should be willing to lose, that if they can't afford the risk they shouldn't do it."

Doesn't mind risk

Svetlana Anikeeva understood the risks when she and her husband plunked down much of their savings two years ago in exchange for the chance to live in the U.S.

Since her first visit to America as an exchange student in 1995, Anikeeva said she knew this is where she wanted to live. Other types of visas were not available to her and her husband, who owns a car business in Japan. The EB-5, she said, was the perfect solution for the couple and their 11-year-old daughter.

She receives a monthly statement from American Life on the progress of the project and distributions of about $200.

"For us this was not a business opportunity, it's an immigration opportunity," Anikeeva said.

Immigration attorney-turned-developer Henry Liebman, chief executive of American Life, has raised about $700 million from more than 1,000 EB-5 investors and created about 15,000 jobs over the last dozen years.

In Sodo and across the U.S., his company — one of the country's oldest regional centers — has developed about 40 commercial projects by pooling foreign investments with other funding.

"It's not a huge source of capital, but it's still significant," Liebman said. "It's money that wouldn't otherwise be available in a time of limited liquidity."

Test ahead in Congress

The regional center EB-5 program, which has always operated as a pilot, is set to expire in September unless Congress renews it, as it has in the past.

At least two bills have been introduced to make it permanent, including one by U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Lake Stevens.

David North, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that advocates immigration enforcement, called it a "silly little program" with "extremely little effect" on the nation's economy.

Compared to total foreign investment in the U.S., he said, "it's pennies. If you talk to serious venture capitalists, they'll laugh at the idea of getting money in half-million chunks."

Seattle attorney Steve Miller said he steers clients away from the EB-5 program — both the regional-center track or a much smaller one that allows investors to set up and directly operate their own companies in the U.S. He says there are enough concerns to raise a "significant red flag."

Miller, for example, is working to remove conditions from the green card of a client who first obtained it more than 10 years ago.

That case dates back to the late 1990s, when uncertainty plagued the program. During that time, the then-Immigration and Naturalization Service discovered fraud, some of it resulting from ambiguity over the agency's own policies.

Some developers were taking investors' money without delivering projects and the jobs they promised, and some investors got green cards without making their full investments. As a result, hundreds of foreigners and their family members from that period still do not have permanent green cards.

Between the late 1990s and mid-2000s, participation in the program slowed. While the government has since clarified its policies regarding the program, Miller said he tries to explore other avenues for high-income clients willing to operate businesses in the U.S.

Wave of Chinese

As the number of wealthy Chinese has increased, so has their participation in the visa program. More than 40 percent of program investors are from China — far higher on the West Coast.

A recent study by China Merchants Bank and Bain & Co., a consulting firm, found almost 60 percent of China's "high net-worth individuals" — those with at least $1.5 million in assets — are either considering or completing emigration through investment programs.

Five years ago, it was Koreans, Taiwanese or people from across Europe, said Kim Foster, with the Aero-Space Port International Group, which established Washington's first regional center in Grant County.

Mercer Island immigration attorney Cletus Weber said his firm's Chinese clients tend to fall mostly into one of two categories: parents like Mu who want to move to the U.S. so their children can get a better education, or college students whose parents hand them $500,000 so they can set themselves up in the U.S.

Said his partner, attorney Peng: "As U.S. permanent residents, they have more doors open to them than if they came as foreign students."

Uganda's Chinese, Indian, Somali Immigrants on the run [50175972] | African news, analysis and opinion – The Africa Report.com

2011-11-23T20:20:00.000-07:00

Uganda's Chinese, Indian, Somali Immigrants on the run [50175972] | African news, analysis and opinion – The Africa Report.com: "Uganda has threatened to boot out foreigners involved in small scale business arguing that this market was meant for locals only."

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Criminals hack Aust High Commission in India - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

2011-11-21T08:31:00.000-07:00

Criminals hack Aust High Commission in India - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation):

MARK COLVIN: Crooks have targeted the Australian High Commission in New Delhi in an employment scam.

Criminals posing as Australian immigration officials have tried to extort thousands of dollars in bribes from people seeking jobs as visa officers.

The High Commission has investigated the matter and says its staff are not involved.

A victim of the scam has been left shattered and jobless and says Australian officials have treated him like garbage.

South Asia correspondent Sally Sara reports.

SALLY SARA: It began with a simple job application but led to the trail of an elaborate fraud.

Vijay Joshi was working for a call centre in New Delhi. He met a man on a company training course who told him some jobs were coming up at the Australian High Commission.

Vijay Joshi lodged his application to become a senior visa officer on August 24th.

But somehow scam artists got his phone number and email address and started making contact, pretending to be Australian officials from the High Commission.

They sent a text message to Mr Joshi claiming they had fixed the selection process so he would get the job.

EXTRACT FROM TEXT MESSAGE: Everything has been done now. Interview is just formality.

SALLY SARA: They promised Mr Joshi would get a car, luxury house and even Australian citizenship when he took up the position.

EXTRACT FROM TEXT MESSAGE: So now you can go anytime, anywhere in Australia. From now you will be called as visa officer with all authorities. Congrats.

SALLY SARA: PM has obtained dozens of emails, letters and text messages sent by the scammers.

Members of the syndicate used the false names Lachlen Cotton and Nuvan Djikovic and claimed to be senior officials from the Australian High Commission's visa office.

They even sent a fake air ticket to Vijay Joshi, saying he would be flown to Mumbai for training.

EXTRACT FROM TEXT MESSAGE: So be ready to fly away to places and get some serious work and show us some talented skills.

SALLY SARA: But there was a catch. The fictitious Lachlen Cotton and Nuvan Djikovic wanted money.

Vijay Joshi says they demanded 200,000 Indian rupees, almost $AU 4,000, to guarantee the job at the High Commission.

VIJAY JOSHI: Yes he asked me. But I challenged him because I was sure that this was not true, this was not genuine.

SALLY SARA: Vijay Joshi didn't pay. Instead he started asking questions.

He contacted compliance officers from the Department of Immigration. They told Mr Joshi the messages he'd received were part of a scam.

VIJAY JOSHI: So they told me that this is all fake and you have been fooled.

SALLY SARA: The compliance team confirmed there were no staff members by the name of Nuvan Djikovic and Lachlen Cotton.

It's unclear whether the scammers were trying to clone the name of the real life Deputy High Commissioner Lachlan Strahan who had no involvement in the scam.

Vijay Joshi was devastated by the revelations. He'd already resigned from his previous job because he thought he was about to start work at the Australian High Commission.

VIJAY JOSHI: I left that job, I left my promotion, only for this job. I mean I was shattered. I mean I was completely destroyed.

SALLY SARA: Mr Joshi is angry that the Australian High Commission didn't inform him sooner that his job application had been unsuccessful. He says if he'd been informed he would have known earlier that the messages and promises from the scammers were fake.

VIJAY JOSHI: If they would have informed that you had been not selected I could not have been cheated by these people.

SALLY SARA: The con artists not only pretended to be Australian visa officials, they sent letters and emails with a forged copy of the High Commission logo.

A spokesman for the High Commission in Delhi released a statement to PM confirming the scam has been investigated.

STATEMENT FROM AUSTRALIAN HIGH COMMISSION: The Australian High Commission is aware of these allegations. A thorough internal investigation found there was no substance to the allegation that an employment scam was being run from within the Australian High Commission.

SALLY SARA: But that doesn't make sense to Vijay Joshi. He wants to know how the con artists were able to obtain his phone and email contacts when he lodged his job application with the High Commission.

The statement from the High Commission spokesman says those responsible for the scheme were outsiders, not staff members.

STATEMENT FROM AUSTRALIAN HIGH COMMISSION: The investigation found that a person unknown to the Australian High Commission had been using the name of the High Commission to scam unsuccessful applicants in recruitment exercises for positions with the visa office at the Australian High Commission.

SALLY SARA: After reporting the scam to Australian officials Vijay Joshi applied for another job at the High Commission. On November 4th he was selected to take a written test but was unsuccessful.

The High Commission says the process was fair. But Mr Joshi fears he was knocked back because he was a whistle blower.

VIJAY JOSHI: And I have been thrown like a garbage.

SALLY SARA: Vijay Joshi is now jobless and frustrated.

Three of his colleagues were also tricked by the con artists.

He says the Australian Government should take action against the ring leader of the racket.

VIJAY JOSHI: He should be punished so that he cannot ask more people to give money and he will fix a job for them. But they have not taken any action.

SALLY SARA: Vijay Joshi has reported the matter to the commissioner of Delhi police but the case is yet to be formally registered.

Those responsible for the job scam are still at large.

This is Sally Sara reporting for PM.

God men and greed for money

2011-11-20T10:51:00.000-07:00

US: Indian spiritual guru in immigration fraud - India Global News - IBNLive:

New York: An Indian spiritual guru has been found guilty by a federal jury of selling religious worker visas to Indians for over $ 30,000 each to enable them to enter the US fraudulently.

Sagarsen Haldar, 31, also known as Gopal Hari Das, identified himself as the president of a Hindu temple Gaudiya Vaisnava Society (GVS) in Milwaukee.

A federal jury in the Eastern District of Wisconsin found Haldar guilty of conspiring to commit immigration fraud, under which he fraudulently obtained and sold religious worker visas to Indian nationals. He will be sentenced on February 24.

According to evidence at the trial, Haldar conspired to sponsor more than two dozen Indian nationals to enter the US under the R-1 visas.

The R-1 applications falsely stated that the individuals were religious workers who planned to be priests and perform religious work at the GVS temple.

However, the Indian nationals had no religious training or experience and had no intention of working as priests once they arrived in the US.

Haldar charged the Indian nationals as much as $ 30,000 each for giving them the visas. They made substantial cash payments to Haldar and his associates in India and paid the balance to Haldar once they arrived in the United States by working at convenience stores and other Milwaukee-area locations.

"We are extremely gratified with the jury's guilty verdict in this case," said Gary Hartwig, special agent in charge of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations.

"Visa fraud represents a vulnerability that could be exploited by criminals or others who wish to do us harm," Hartwig said.

The investigation into the matter began in June 2008 after ICE received information from US Citizenship and Immigration Services' Benefit Fraud Unit that the temple had filed numerous petitions for R-1 religious workers from India.

Subsequent investigation revealed that Haldar used the GVS temple as a front for an elaborate religious visa fraud scheme.

Haldar was charged in June 2010 after Homeland Security Investigations agents arrested him at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport as he arrived in the US from India.

In his luggage, Haldar had identification documents - including passports and other Indian identification papers - bearing the names and photographs of other Indian nationals.

Chandigarh Police arrest two for tourist visa fraud

2011-11-20T10:48:00.000-07:00

The special investigation team (SIT) investigating immigration frauds, found that Vikram Sharma, an ex-tropper, and Vinay Chadha, who owned Atlantic Overseas Consultancy in Sector 32 here, used to obtain information and documents of innocent residents and illegally use these for forging papers of their clients seeking to go abroad.

Both have been booked for fraud, cheating and other offences under the Indian Penal Code (IPC). They have been sent on a two day police remand by a local court here Sunday, an official said.

'The accused took the passport of an applicant and then searched on internet for a Chandigarh resident with similar name and initials. After this, they generated all necessary documents like bank statement, employer certificate and property documents in the name of the visa applicant by using the name and address of the actual resident of Chandigarh,' a police spokesman said.

Police have identified 10-12 such fake addresses.

'The persons, whose residence proof were used by the accused, have denied to have applied for tourist visa. The SIT team is investigating the role of a printing press where the fake documents were printed,' the spokesman said.

The arrested people were earlier working for an institute for management and technology in Punjab's Hoshiarpur district, police said.

Vikram Sharma earlier served as a sub-inspector with the Central Industrial Security Force for six years, police said.

'They charged Rs.5-8 lakh for each tourist visa. Both the accused used to keep their all documents with them and give their own mobile numbers to the concerned embassies with the motive to keep all things secret,' police said.

'They used seven to eight mobiles phones, registered in the name of the others,' the spokesman said.

The SIT is also investigating into a possible role of officials of a local branch of the HDFC Bank in the accused's illegal operation.

'The team has recovered one Tata Safari SUV, passports, scanner, laptops, letter pad, fake bank statements, fake school certificates, fake statements and certificates of companies and other documents,' the spokesman said.

Are Indian Students Shunning America?

2011-11-15T15:09:00.000-07:00

More and more Chinese students are heading to the U.S. for higher education, but the number of Indian students studying there is dropping. In the 2010-2011 academic year, around 103,900 Indian students enrolled at American universities, a 1% decline from the previous year, a new report shows.

: Manan Vatsyayana/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images; A new report shows that the number of Indian students studying in the U.S. has declined.

This contrasts sharply with the soaring number of Chinese students, which increased by over 23% from the previous year to a little over 157,500, according to Open Doors, an annual report jointly released by the Institute of International Education, a nonprofit, and the U.S. State Department.

More In Education

This doesn't mean Indian students have lost interest in U.S. schools. They still make up around 14% of the international student pie in the U.S., just second behind their Chinese counterparts. Many in India hope that studying abroad will give them better educational qualifications. By international standards, Indian universities still lag: none made it in a recent ranking of the world's top 200, not even the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. Besides the U.S., the U.K. and Australia are also popular destinations among Indian students.

For much of the past decade, most international students studying in the U.S. came from India. But China has been topping the list for the last two years, and the gap looks set to widen.

The failure of U.S. institutes to significantly boost their number of Indian students points at a rather basic problem: few in India can afford to study abroad. The data suggests this isn't changing – while in China, a fellow BRIC country with a faster-growing economy, it is.

This is partly why U.S. universities are eyeing Indian students on their home turf. They have been lobbying the Indian government to allow foreign universities to set up branches in India, a country with a large English-speaking population. This, they hope, will also encourage more Indian students to enroll at the undergraduate level. At the moment, only 13.5% of Indian students in the U.S. are undergraduates, the report shows.

There were no surprises when it came to the fields of study taken up by Indian students in the U.S. A whopping 36.9% of them were enrolled in engineering – a lot more than for students from any other place of origin –, and another 15% in business/management, a subject popular across nationalities. Humanities, which has a less professional bent, was by far the least popular, with only 0.6% of Indian students enrolled in this field.

One of the study's most interesting findings was that the number of American students who are now coming to India is actually increasing. In the 2009-2010 academic year, the last year for which data is available, their number rose 44.4% from the previous year. But in absolute terms the figure is less impressive, amounting to a total of 3,884 U.S. students. This made India the 14^th most-popular destination abroad (China ranked 5^th) for American students.

The number of Indian students in the U.S. also dropped in 2005-2006, and a lot more significantly, just to rise again the following year. This suggests the recent slip in enrollments could be a one-off rather than the beginning of a downward trend.

You can follow Ms. Stancati on Twitter @margheritamvs. Follow India Real on Twitter @indiarealtime.

Trade pact with India is a step closer

2011-11-15T09:39:00.000-07:00

Trade pact with India is a step closer:

'Canada and India are on the verge of signing an agreement that would make it easier and more financially viable for thousands of Indian professionals to work here, and vice versa.

The agreement also eliminates a significant hurdle to free-trade talks between the two countries, which the Conservative government has pledged to complete by 2013.

The Agreement on Social Security has been in negotiations since 2009 and has been considered a key ask for the Indian side as Canada tries to cosy up with the emerging economic power.

Cabinet last month gave Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird permission to sign the agreement on behalf of the government, according to an order-in-council published on Oct. 27. Under the agreement, Indians working in Canada on temporary visas and making social security and pension contributions back to India would be exempt from making similar contributions here. The same will be true for Canadians working in India, who will only pay the Canadian government.

'We want more Indian students in Scotland'

2011-11-14T11:03:00.000-07:00

'We want more Indian students in Scotland':

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How many new immigrants Canada will accept in 2012 ?

2011-11-13T16:47:00.000-07:00

Economic Class:

Federal Skilled Workers 57,000
Federal Business 6,000
Canadian Experience Class 7,000
Live-in Caregivers 9,000
Quebec-selected Skilled Workers 33,400
Quebec-selected Business 2,600
Provincial and Territorial Nominees 42,000
Total Economic Class 157,000

Note: The economic class represents 61.6 per cent of all immigrants to Canada in 2012, compared to 61.8 per cent in 2011 and 64 per cent in 2010.

Family Class:

Spouses, partners, children 44,000
Parents and grandparents 25,000
Total Family Class 69,000

Note: The family class represents 25.5 per cent of all immigrants to Canada in 2012, compared to 24.6 per cent in 2011 and 23.8 per cent in 2010.

Refugee Class:

Government-assisted refugees 7,500
Privately sponsored refugees 5,500
Protected persons in Canada 8,500
Dependents of protected persons 4,500
Total Refugee Class 26,000

Note: Protected persons or refugees account for 9.8 per cent of all immigrants to Canada in 2012, compared to 10.3 per cent in 2011 and nine per cent i

China's Wealthy Consider Immigrating To US, Canada | Neon Tommy

2011-11-12T11:15:00.000-07:00

China's Wealthy Consider Immigrating To US, Canada | Neon Tommy: "China's Wealthy Consider Immigrating To US, Canada
Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Kay Chinn | November 11, 2011
Staff Reporter

(Wikimedia Commons)Nearly 60 percent of China’s wealthy reported they are considering immigration, according to a recent study by Bank of China and Hurun Research Institute.
The report classified Chinese citizens with more than 10 million yuan in investible assets, a little over 1.5 million USD, as “rich” to track the trend. Roughly one-third of those labeled as such have overseas investments amounting to 19 percent total assets."

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RCMP to probe immigration program - New Brunswick - CBC News

2011-11-09T15:45:00.000-07:00

RCMP to probe immigration program - New Brunswick - CBC News: "The provincial attorney-general has asked the RCMP to investigate parts of the New Brunswick government's immigration program.

But Paul Harpelle, spokesman for Attorney-General Marie-Claude Blais, won't say what part of the Provincial Nominee Program is being investigated.

"What I can confirm is that on Monday, Nov. 7, the deputy attorney-general referred several complaints to the RCMP regarding the Provincial Nominee Program," he said, declining to discuss the nature of the complaints.

"Of course, as a result of filing these complaints and the investigation that will follow, we have no further comment at this time.""

'via Blog this'

Workshop on visa fraud

2011-11-09T12:47:00.001-07:00

Chandigarh, November 8

A workshop on immigration visa fraud was organised in association with the CII, Sector 31, on the second day of the Chandigarh Police Week here today.

There was a discussion was on the current scenario in general visa rules and regulations, crime and cheating by means of illegal emigration and migration and the role of invigilating bodies set up in countries like the UK and Canada to keep a check on such frauds.

The role of intermediaries should be discouraged and direct applications preferred, it was suggested. The session highlighted the fact that half the immigrants from India to Canada were from the region. It was stated that major frauds involved regular visas, student visas, bank statements and English tests.

The Chandigarh Police had started registering cases against illegal consultancy agencies for issuing fake advertisements with false promises in newspapers. It had registered 90 cases in the past 10 years under the Immigration Act. During the current year, 32 cases had been registered, of which 11 were against Healthyway Immigration.

Chandigarh SSP Naunihal Singh called for more effective imposition of prohibitory orders under Section 144 of the CrPC to make it mandatory for all immigration consultancy agencies to furnish complete information to the local police at the start of business.

"In compliance with this order, 134 immigration companies have furnished information," he added.

Punjabis in Surrey

2011-10-14T12:50:00.000-06:00

South Asia in Surrey: "n Surrey's South Asian enclave - which stretches from Newton to Bear Creek Park, from Strawberry Hill to Kennedy Heights - dozens of Indian restaurants blend in among the many White Spots and Tim Hortons.

It's a place where men in turbans and women in pastel robes are regularly found walking among the omnipresent realestate signs, which promote realtors with names such as Singh, Grewal and Sanghera."

'via Blog this'

Italian American Sikh female taxi driver in NYC

2011-10-11T13:24:00.000-06:00

BBC News - Life as an Italian American Sikh female taxi driver in NYC: "Life as an Italian American Sikh female taxi driver in NYC"

'via Blog this'Publish Post

Exporting jobs: Gurgaon grief | The Economist

2011-10-07T11:39:00.000-06:00

Exporting jobs: Gurgaon grief | The Economist:

"Wages in Gurgaon are a small fraction of those of a back-office clerk in Newcastle or New York. That lowers costs for consumers. But it also raises anxiety among workers about low pay and a drain of jobs to cheaper locations. The range of tasks that can be outsourced and offshored is constantly expanding."

The Unthinkable Is Poised to Happen, Economist Warns

2011-10-06T12:57:00.001-06:00

Wednesday, 17 Aug 2011 02:07 PM

By Katrina Turner

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The Aftershock Survival Summit is a gripping, no-nonsense presentation that's quickly becoming a financial beacon in an economic tsunami.

Featuring an exclusive interview with famed economist and best-selling author Robert Wiedemer, this disturbing presentation exposes harsh economic truths along with a dire financial warning — a prophetic message that's spreading across America like wildfire.

But it's not just the grim predictions that are causing the sensation; rather, it's the comprehensive blueprint for economic survival that's really commanding global attention.

It offers realistic, step-by-step solutions that the average hard-working American can easily follow; millions have already heeded its warnings and are rapidly sharing the Aftershock Survival Summit throughout the Internet. To see it for yourself, simply click here.

The overwhelming amount of feedback to publicize the presentation, initially screened for a private audience, came with consequences as various online networks repeatedly shut it down and affiliates refused to house the content.

"People were sitting up and taking notice, and they begged us to make the Aftershock Survival Summit public so they could easily share it," said Newsmax Financial Publisher Aaron DeHoog, "but unfortunately, it kept getting pulled."

The controversy stems from direct allegations that the people in Washington have failed miserably. They include former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and current Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, tasked with preventing financial meltdowns and keeping the nation's economy strong through monetary and credit policies.

At one point, Wiedemer even calls out Ben Bernanke, saying that his "money from heaven will be the path to hell."

This wasn't the first time Wiedemer's predictions hit a nerve. In 2006, he and his team of economists accurately predicted the four-bubble meltdown in the housing, stock, private debt, and consumer spending markets that almost sunk America.

Regardless of his warnings and survival advice, Bernanke and Greenspan were not about to support Wiedemer publicly, nor were the mainstream media.

As the warnings went unheeded, and America suffered the consequences, Wiedemer penned his latest prophetic work, "Aftershock: Protect Yourself and Profit in the Next Global Financial Meltdown."

Once again his contrarian views ruffled feathers and just before the book was publicly released, the publisher yanked the final chapter, deeming it too controversial for newsstand and online outlets such as Amazon.com.

Despite appearances, "Aftershock" is not a book with the singular intention of scaring people, explains DeHoog. "The true value lies in the sound economic survival guidance that people can act on immediately. I was able to read the original version with the 'unpublished chapter,' and I think it's the most crucial in the entire book. After contacting Wiedemer, we [Newsmax] were granted permission to share it with our readers. In fact, viewers of the Aftershock Survival Summit are able to claim a free copy of it."

In the Aftershock Survival Summit, Wiedemer reveals what the publisher didn't want you to see. Citing the unthinkable, he provides disturbing evidence and financial charts forecasting 50% unemployment, a 90% stock market collapse, and 100% annual inflation.

"I doubted some of his predictions at first. But then Robert showed me the charts that provided evidence for such disturbing claims," DeHoog commented.

Editors Note: The Aftershock Survival Summit shows the exact same charts. See them for yourself.

And, Wiedemer isn't alone in his predictions. Jim Rogers, the best-selling financial author and co-founder of the Quantum Fund, warns, "The S&P's recent downgrade didn't go far enough, as Washington probably doesn't even deserve the AA+ rating."

And House Speaker John Boehner affirms, "The effect of adding nearly a trillion dollars to our national debt — money borrowed mostly from foreign investors — caused a further erosion of economic confidence in America, and increased uncertainty for millions of private-sector job creators."

As Wiedemer's warnings and predictions about money loss, market dives, unemployment, and inflation steadily prove to be accurate, the Aftershock Survival Summit is fast becoming the quintessential financial guide for the 21st century, garnering praise from millions.

Russell H., a financial market adviser from Wichita, Kan., says Aftershock 2012 "scared the hell out of me. It was a great wake-up call."

Susan G. from Montgomery, Ala., called it "eye-opening, and mind-boggling."

Richard B. from Apison, Tenn., reflects, "It gave me the courage to make a move which, had I not made, would have left me behind the 'eight ball.'"

Don E. from Edgewater, Fla., said, "It caused me not only to think . . . but to act."

Even financial giants are sitting up and taking notice.

The Dow Jones' MarketWatch said, "Aftershock will teach you how to protect yourself against an increasingly hostile Wall Street-Corporate-America-Washington conspiracy undermining average stock market investors. This is your bible, read it, get into action, and be a winner."

And, the S&P calls Wiedemer's work "a compelling argument for a chilling conclusion. [His] track record demands our attention."

Considering the lowered U.S. debt rating, the volatility of the stock market, and global uncertainty, Wiedemer's track record proves why his warnings are critical.

According to DeHoog, that's why Newsmax agreed to air the Aftershock Survival Summit as long as possible to make it available to as many as possible. He warns, "Watch it, and get the tools you need to prosper no matter what happens in our economy."

Editor's Note: For a limited time, Newsmax is showing the Aftershock Survival Summit and supplying viewers with free copies of the new, updated "Aftershock" book including the final, unpublished chapter. Go here to view it now.

Read more: Aftershock Survival Summit Predicts the Unthinkable
Important: Can you afford to Retire? Shocking Poll Results

UK immigration rules shocks India

2011-10-04T14:44:00.000-06:00

UK immigration rules shocks India: "UK immigration rules shocks India
Oct 04, 2011 8.00 PM

New immigration rules in the UK may see Indian returning to their homeland once their work visa expires. Earlier non-EU professionals working in the UK were allowed to settle in the country if they had completed five years of stay. Now the David Cameron government has decided to put an end to this law.

Home Secretary Theresa May announced in a Conservative party conference in Manchester that non-EU professionals have to leave the country once their work visa expires thereby curtailing the chance of settling down in the country. May also added that immigrants committing crime will be immediately deported.

Immigration Minister Damian Green stated that students who have genuine interest to study only will be allowed a student’s visa and those who come on student visa with an intention to work will not be tolerated."

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Mother apologizes for entering Canada 'through the woods'

2011-10-04T14:23:00.000-06:00

Mother apologizes for entering Canada 'through the woods': "A mother arrested in Alberta for allegedly abducting her daughter from Idaho two years ago told immigration officials she didn't believe she was breaking any laws when she entered Canada "through the woods."

Megan Ethne Y'Tara attributed her actions to her "sincere and deeply held religious belief that it was my God-given right to travel freely throughout the Earth."

"If I was mistaken in that, I do apologize for trespassing," Y'Tara told an Immigration and Refugee Board adjudicator Monday in a hearing conducted via telephone.

Adjudicator Leeann King ordered Y'Tara deported from Canada for a year, noting while the woman is in a "sad situation," she had no funds or support and didn't believe in the legality of borders.

However, the 46-year-old mother must first obtain a U.S. passport since she said hers was destroyed in a fire last year.

Y'Tara, who is being held at the Edmonton remand centre, is scheduled for a detention review hearing Friday.

Her 10-year-old daughter has since been reunited with the girl's father in the U.S., according to RCMP."

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America: Land of the Smuggled

2011-10-04T14:20:00.000-06:00

America: Land of the Smuggled :: Hudson New York:

Human smuggling takes place when a foreigner willfully and clandestinely enters another country illegally, with the goal of staying. This is often done by paying another person, or an organization, to help get inside the border. (Human smuggling should not be confused with human trafficking: people who are brought into a country forcefully by someone, against their will.)

Human smuggling has become a huge problem in Western nations. Endless ink has been spilled about illegal immigration. The outrage of law-abiding citizens is justified: each year hundreds of thousands of illegals enter the country; it is estimated that more than 10 million people are now living in the U.S. illegally, not to mention their children. Many of these people are smuggled across the Mexican border as part of the multi-billion dollar annual human smuggling industry; it is estimated that as many as 90% of people crossing the border have paid a smuggler to help get them enter the U.S..

Canada, for example, even though it has a generous immigration and refugee program, well-known internationally, has a particular problem with human smuggling by boat. To crack down on this illegal behaviour, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has proposed a law to create a new criminal offense for mass human smuggling. It would increase fines for boat owners to $1-million, and impose mandatory jail sentences of 10 years for smugglers who endanger the lives of passengers for profit. The law would also take a direct hit at the smuggling syndicates, who currently receive payments of up to five-digits for every person they ship into the country.

Canada has recently taken strong action against illegal immigrants. As discussed in a previous column, it has started publishing online the names of suspected war criminals living in Canada in an attempt to track them down and have them deported. The move has earned Canada the scorn of Amnesty International.

Why doesn't America follow suit?

The major concern against cracking down on smugglers, in Canada, at least, is that people who are genuine refugees, trying to escape persecution, from brutal regimes could be negatively impacted. It will not happen: Canada is extremely open to refugees seeking asylum, and no one wants to change that. This does not mean that abuse and fraud should not be curtailed.

Illegal immigration is not only a sensitive economic issue for many Americans; on top of that, human smuggling also opens the door to the Mexican and other foreign drug cartels, enabling them to expand their command and control into the U.S.. Smugglers do not simply profit from human cargo – drug deals are almost always a part of this process, thereby creating even further criminal profit.

Law enforcement agencies are still failing to deal adequately with the problem. The Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arm – the agency charged with investigating and enforcing border control – even has, as part of its official strategy, the pursuit of "legislation to increase penalties against organized smugglers."

They are right. Smuggling rings are the problem, and need to be forcefully dealt with. For a prototype for such legislation, it would help to look to Canada, which has lately become a fount of good ideas and sound public policy.

All Western countries are attractive places to foreigners: Who doesn't want to live in a country overflowing with opportunity, generous social programs, and that respects human rights and the rule of law? Foreigners, however, should be able to come in with respect for that law, to avoid rewarding those who have not been honest.

Granted, immigration and refugee policy is, further, a difficult and delicate political matter; but if the Canadian government has the wherewithal to deal with it in some serious legislation, America might benefit by taking off its kid gloves and doing something about it, too.

Removal order challenged

2011-09-27T11:00:00.000-06:00

CanLII - 2011 FC 971 (CanLII): "The applicants contest the legality of a decision made on January 7, 2011, by the Immigration Appeal Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (the tribunal) dismissing their appeal and upholding the removal orders. In a nutshell, the tribunal found that the applicants were not truthful when they attempted to enter Canada as visitors in November 2008, that the removal orders were validly made, and that there were insufficient humanitarian and compassionate considerations to warrant quashing the removal orders"

Marital Intent ?

2011-09-27T10:40:00.000-06:00

CanLII - 2011 FC 1060 (CanLII):

Is the marriage was entered into in bad faith ?

2011-09-27T10:17:00.000-06:00

CanLII - 2011 FC 1060 (CanLII):

Is the marriage was entered into in bad faith ?

Long-term unemployment | The Economist

2011-09-19T11:07:00.000-06:00

Long-term unemployment | The Economist:

Unemployed Americans looking to Canada for jobs

2011-09-15T15:16:00.001-06:00

U.S. workers appeal to northern neighbour as home job front worsens

BY AMY CHUNG, POSTMEDIA NEWS SEPTEMBER 15, 2011 10:34 AM

More Americans are knocking on Canada's door for jobs as their economy worsens and unemployment rates rise.

Photograph by: Bloomberg, Bloomberg

More Americans are knocking on Canada's door for jobs as their economy worsens and unemployment rates rise.

In July, the unemployment rate in the U.S. stood at 9.1 per cent versus 7.3 per cent in Canada.

Numbers from Immigration Canada show that the number of Americans applying for temporary work visas has doubled since 2008 when the global recession hit. In 2010, the ministry received 4,109 applications versus 2,115 in 2008.

On Monday, U.S. President Barack Obama urged Congress to quickly pass a $447-billion jobs bill to stimulate an ailing labour market.

"This is a bill that will put people back to work all across the country.

This is a bill that will help our economy in a moment of national crisis," Obama said.

"This is a bill that Congress needs to pass. No games. No politics. No delays."

The U.S. Census Bureau said the number of Americans living below the poverty line rose to a record 46 million last year, with the national poverty rate climbing for a third consecutive year to 15.1 per cent in 2010.

Americans are the second largest group of temporary workers in Canada, behind Filipinos. As of December 2010, there were 32,615 Americans with permanent residence status in Canada.

Janette Luu, a Toronto-based television journalist from Fort Wayne,

Ind., said she migrated to Canada five years ago to work in a bigger city.

"I came up to Toronto for a visit and sent resume tapes and emailed TV stations and they were receptive, which was impressive because Toronto is pretty big city and when you said I'm an American journalist, they seemed interested or wanted to meet," said Luu.

However, her job hunt wasn't always easy since employers had to prove they could not find any suitable Canadian to do the job before hiring international talent.

Despite living in Canada for five years, Luu was considered "not really Canadian" enough for some employers.

"I may pronounce 'process' as 'prawcess' sometimes, but otherwise, how would viewers know I'm American? Toronto is so diverse and most people are from somewhere else to begin with," said Luu.

Windsor-based immigration lawyer Drew Porter, who has dealt with a lot of employment cases because of the shared Detroit border, said Americans need to obtain an offer of employment before a work permit is issued. Under NAFTA, there are certain occupations, including engineers and accountants, that are exempt from going through a Labour Market Opinion, a prerequisite for foreign nationals to be hired in Canada. These candidates can automatically secure a work permit at the border once they show proof of employment.

However, candidates who don't fall under the NAFTA list of occupations usually hit a wall since they need an offer of employment to get a work visa.

For Luu's American friends who thought about coming to Toronto for work, they say they love the city but the "paperwork was too complicated" since it could be a burden for the employer.

"If you're under NAFTA, it's not a burden for the employer, but for those who fall between the cracks an LMO could be onerous," Porter said.

"Both countries show intent to protect their labour force but with the aging population and certain skill trades in deficit positions . my reading is there is going to be a need for foreign nationals to come to Canada to fill certain voids," said Porter.