Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank the committee for inviting me to speak.
My name is Sidney Frank, and I am program manager of the visa office in New Delhi and area director for the South Asia region. I will talk today about challenges faced by visa offices in India in combatting fraud, and what we are doing about it.
As India's economy continues to grow at record levels, the number of genuine visitors to Canada is also increasing. Nevertheless, for those who have not benefited from this growth, there is a strong incentive to seek better economic opportunities abroad in countries such as Canada. As many do not meet our requirements for obtaining a visa, fraud and misrepresentation are endemic.
In support of temporary resident applications, we have received fraudulent bank statements, bank loans, letters of employment, letters of invitation, language test results, and letters of acceptance from Canadian schools, to name a few. Due to widespread corruption in India, authentic documentation can easily be obtained through fraud, and the collusion of officials and employers makes verifications a considerable challenge.
In the permanent resident program, common examples of fraud include misrepresentation of employment experience for economic category applicants, fraudulent arranged employment offers for federal skilled workers, marriages of convenience and the inclusion of ineligible dependents in the applications of sponsored parents.
Marriage fraud is highly organized and can involve the payment of as much as $50,000. Applicants have been known to memorize an officer's interview questions and subsequently post them on Internet websites dealing with immigration to Canada.
We refused 15% of sponsored spouses during the first nine months of 2011. All officers are trained to screen applications and know how to identify fraud. The visa office in New Delhi has a dedicated anti-fraud unit, with one CBSA anti-fraud officer, and five local staff who conduct telephone verifications, document verifications, and site visits. We welcome the addition of a new anti-fraud position in Chandigarh, which we anticipate will be staffed this summer.
The anti-fraud unit in New Delhi identified a significant amount of fraud through the telephone verifications it undertook in 2011. In targeted field investigations in the Punjab in 2011, fraud was also identified in a significant number of cases of varying types, including provincial nominees.
While some of the fraud is perpetrated by applicants on their own initiative, unscrupulous consultants exploit the desire to migrate to Canada and actively dupe people into submitting applications with fraudulent documentation. The consultants commonly will submit applications with similar misrepresentation in bulk, without declaring that they are representing the applicants. The commonalities in the fraudulent documentation present clear evidence that one source is behind all the applications. But since the consultant is not declared, it is impossible to identify and trace them.
We are also combatting fraud through education and communications. In March 2010, CIC released an overseas campaign on crooked consultants that received widespread media attention in the Punjab. Canadian missions in India work with their close international partners, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, to get the warning messages out to the community.
In spite of high levels of fraud, roughly 75% of all temporary resident visa applications submitted in New Delhi are approved. In the first nine months of 2011, about half of the visitor applicants received in Chandigarh were accepted. This is a continuous improvement since the office first opened in 2004 when the refusal rate was 38%.
In conclusion, we are hopeful that our efforts are leading to a reduction in the number of fraudulent applications we receive in India. This would lead to a welcome and continued increase in our acceptance rates.
Thank you for your time. I will be pleased to answer any questions the committee may have.