Fraudsters and Human Traffickers Love “Sunny Days” Trudeau
Part 3 of a Report Written by David Richardson,
Retired Senior Immigration Examining Officer
When I was working with the RCMP Immigration out of St. Catharines, Ontario, we received a call from the border crossing (POE—-Port of Entry) at Queenston, Ontario. A Canadian who had been in the U.S. and was returning to Canada had seen three young men get out of a car on the Canadian side of a bridge as they entered Canada. The Canadian thought this looked very suspicious and told the Customs Officer what he had seen.
An Iranian (who held an American Green Card and who was living in Ohio) had driven the three young men (all Iranians who were attending school in Virginia) onto the bridge and up to the Canadian border.
When the car driven by the Iranian Green Card holder arrived at the initial customs inspection, it was sent to the main building for further inspection. Immigration Officers really had only one option as far as detaining the three men as there is only one holding cell available, and not enough staff on hand to monitor them separately. Queenston is more or less a commercial port, lots of trucks in relation to cars. Immigration had at best three officers, most often two at the POE at any one time. Therefore, they would not be able to do their job and watch three prisoners simultaneously. This proved to be a very negative thing for the Canadian Immigration Officers because when the three young men got together, they fabricated a story to explain why they had gotten out of the car.
The three students’ story was as follows. They were going to Toronto to visit a friend. They realized on the bridge that they didn’t have the visas required to enter Canada, so they got out of the car and were going to walk back to the U.S. However, they had left their Iranian passports in the car, and needed to get them in order to return to the U.S.. They saw their driver being pulled over by Canadian Customs and they were hoping they could get their passports back before he left.
Our interrogation of the U.S. Green Card holder began with the RCMP trying to determine what was going on, but the Green Card holder requested legal counsel. This is where the power of the Immigration Officer at the POE (PORT OF ENTRY) comes into force. At the POE, anyone seeking entry must by law answer all questions put to them by the Officer. Those trying to enter Canada do not have a right to Legal Counsel during the process.
So I began by telling him of his predicament. He was a Green Card holder, and if I were to inform USINS (U.S. IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE) about what he had been up to, his Green Card status might be in jeopardy.
During the search of the Green Card holder’s car, Customs found three Iranian Passports with U.S. Student Visas. The Green Card holder then told us a much different story about the three young Iranian students. According to him, it was common knowledge on University and College campuses in the U.S. that foreign student visa holders could go to Canada and make a refugee claim to get supplemental income while they were going to school in the U.S.. Since the claim process takes so long, it would mean the three Iranian students could collect Canadian welfare for at least three years in the U.S. before they had to attend any refugee hearings in Canada.
In other words, the three students had gotten out of the car in order to make a refugee claim, not to go back to the U.S. !!! Their plan was to have the Iranian Green Card holder get past Canadian Customs and then have him wait up the road for the three Iranian students to finish making their fraudulent refugee claim. Later, the Iranian Green Card holder would return the passports to the students. As I stated in a previous case, 95% of those who make refugee claims in Canada are undocumented. By not having Iranian passports with them, the three students were using the same tactic as almost all those who make refugee claims in Canada use.
We wrote up the four and shipped them back to the U.S. after giving USINS a heads up about what this group were up to. This case about the Iranian students demonstrates how once a visa is issued (in this case to the Green Card holder) , that’s it. You are here, and no one seems to care if you leave or stay. Also, no one cares whether or not you meet the requirements under which the visa was issued. Most importantly, this case happened after 9/11 and demonstrates, how after 9/11, while the government was assuring Canadians that they were beefing up Border security, they were actually laying off staff and refusing to allow us to investigate obvious fraud !!!
NEXT CASE : TWO CHINESE GIRLS DEMONSTRATE THE SCALE OF CHINESE FRAUD IN CANADA
We were called to the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls. USINS (U.S. Immigration) had refused entry to two Chinese females on board a tour bus destined for New York City. The USINS Officer had noticed that the Canadian Citizenship Cards in the girls’ possession were fraudulent. (Differentiating between fake and genuine documents is something Canada Immigration is not too good at, by the way.) There is a whole industry in the Jane/Finch area in Toronto that specializes in Fraudulent Documents : anything from Driver’s Licenses to SIN (Social Insurance Number) cards to Citizenship cards. The quality of the product is good enough to pass most inspections, but USINS takes their Job a little more seriously than their Canadian counterpart, I’m afraid, and spotted enough discrepancies to refuse the girls entry to the U.S.
In talking to the girls, we were able to determine that they had entered Canada in Vancouver three days prior and made a refugee claim there. Then, as far as we could tell, they flew directly on to Toronto where they were met by someone who provided the documents and the seats on the bus to their final destination in New York City—-all in a very short time. Obviously something very elaborate was going on here and many more Chinese were probably doing the same thing.
We detained the girls and sent them to an adjudicator for a hearing. We took the uncommon step of attending the hearing to let the adjudicator know that we needed these girls to be held in custody while we investigated further. The adjudicator agreed and ordered the girls to pay a $5000 bond. (a large amount in the overall scheme of things).
The next day, we went to the detention center to question the girls further —-only to find that someone had provided a promissory note for the bond and that the girls had been released to a Chinese representative of a Toronto Immigration NGO (Non-Governmental Organization). As a condition of release, they were required to make themselves available for questioning.
The next day, we drove to Toronto to the address of the bond provider where the girls were supposed to be residing. When we got there, we discovered that the girls were long gone. And apparently we could do nothing about it.
Not willing to leave it at that, I decided to go after the bond holder. I had never done this before. I didn’t realize that a promissory note had to be paid only if the conditions were not met. Since conditions had not been met, I asked Citizenship and Immigration (CIC) management what the procedure was for collecting on a promissory note. They did not know. I contacted CIC Headquarters Legal Department for the information. No response. Apparently the government does not require those who agree to pay for a bond to meet the requirements of the bond.
This is why, from this point on, we never sent any other offender to adjudication. It was pointless. This to us was a classic case of human trafficking. The whole thing was so smooth, and if it hadn’t been for the Skill of the USINS, the girls were gone. We were left to wonder just how often others avoided getting caught. As it turned out, due to our inane system, the girls got to their final destination anyway. This was one more example of Canadian Immigration officers becoming completely frustrated in their efforts to stop fraud.
