Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 8th, 2012

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We'll call the meeting to order. This is the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, meeting number 26, on Thursday, March 8, 2012. We are televised. The orders of the day are pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), a study on “Standing on Guard for Thee: Ensuring that Canada's Immigration System is Secure”.

Once again that clock is wrong. It is now 3:32 p.m. Second, the issue has been resolved, so we will not be going in camera to discuss committee business.

Our first witnesses are from the Department of Citizenship and Immigration. We have Sharon Chomyn, who is the director general of the international region. We have Sidney Frank. I'm sorry we have a hand-drawn nameplate for you because they were calling you Frank Sidney. Mr. Frank is the immigration program manager for New Delhi, India. It's an interesting coincidence that you're here instead of there. We appreciate you being here, the two of you.

Ms. Chomyn is going first.

[Sharon Chomyn, Director General, International Region, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.

My name is Sharon Chomyn, and I am the director general of the international region. I'm pleased to appear before you today to talk about the security of Canada's immigration system and the important role our visa offices play in managing access to Canada.

When CIC decision-makers review a visa application, they look at both eligibility and admissibility. Eligibility is the question of whether people will respect the conditions of their stay if a visa is given. Admissibility is the question of whether people can or cannot enter Canada for reasons related to criminality, security, or health, or for other reasons related to the part of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that deals with inadmissibility. Now, although these two elements are often related, I will speak to eligibility first.

Mr. Chair, perhaps the most challenging types of application for officers are the temporary resident applications from close family members of Canadian citizens or permanent residents. These applicants have a compelling reason to visit, but they might not have as compelling a reason to return home once they've been here. They might have enough money to pay for a ticket to come to Canada, but the expenditure might be disproportionately high, given their overall financial situation. They might have strong family ties in their home country, but these ties might be overshadowed by the same economic push factors that motivate their countrymen to emigrate. While their relatives in Canada support these visits in writing, they may not be aware of actual intentions. Will the visitors return or will they seek to remain here to work or study without authorization, or seek to access other benefits in Canada? In the end, the visa officer must be satisfied that the applicants will respect the conditions of their visa in order to be able to issue a visa.

In cases of refusal, applicants are informed in writing as to which of the criteria they failed to meet. We understand that some applicants who have been refused a visa feel the officer has made an error or has misunderstood their intentions or their situation. If we provided more detailed reasons to all refused applicants, it would take up valuable and limited resources, and result in much longer visa processing times for everyone. Instead we try to focus our limited resources on processing applications as quickly as possible.

Mr. Chair, visa officers also assess admissibility. They are at the front end of the security screening process abroad, where they play an important role in safeguarding the health and security of Canadians.

I will take the next few minutes to describe their work in this regard.

These officers screen all applications based largely on their knowledge of country conditions and guidance provided by our security partners. To reach a decision, officers will weigh security and criminality considerations with other aspects of the legislation. CIC places a high value on this core service and continues to take steps to enhance screening and to maintain program integrity, while facilitating travel.

CIC has identified a number of priorities related to program integrity. Fraud presents an ongoing challenge. It undermines the integrity of Canada's immigration system, costs taxpayers money, and penalizes honest applicants by slowing down the processing of genuine applications. A number of departmental anti-fraud activities have been undertaken with the aim of preventing and detecting marriages of convenience and fraud by immigration representatives. Visa officers abroad are trained to scrutinize applications for fraud and to prevent abuse of all CIC programs.

CIC has a long tradition of responding to a range of challenges while balancing various priorities. Our programs play a critical role in facilitating family visits and supporting Canada's international competitiveness in the areas of tourism, labour mobility, and international student recruitment. We are constantly looking for ways to better leverage our resources and to improve client service. The global case management system, or GCMS, is already helping CIC move toward an increasingly centralized and integrated business model.

In keeping with Canada's commitment to improve client service for applicants, CIC is also increasing the number of visa application centres, or VACs. Client service agents at the VACs help ensure applications are complete. This helps applicants and CIC by reducing delays and refusals resulting from incomplete applications. This network of VACs will also provide the platform for biometric collection capabilities, which can help visa officers establish the identity of applicants with greater confidence at the outset. Biometrics will also protect the integrity of Canada's immigration system by helping prevent known criminals, failed refugee claimants, and deportees from using a different identity to obtain a visa.

These are just a few examples of our efforts to modernize and explore strategies to manage the immigration system. We want Canada to continue to be a destination of choice for talent, innovation, investment, and opportunity, while finding the right balance so as to protect the health, safety, and security of Canadians.

I will now let my colleague, Sid Frank from New Delhi, provide his perspective.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Go ahead, sir. Thank you.

[Sidney Frank, Immigration Program Manager, New Delhi, India, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

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.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Ms. Chomyn and Mr. Frank, thank you for your presentation. The committee members will have some questions.

Mr. Menegakis.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I want to thank our witnesses for coming here again—coming back again, Ms. Chomyn.

It's interesting to hear of the challenges we face in trying to ascertain how secure each application is to approve a person to come to this country, and the process it takes. It's one thing to hear about it in our constituency offices and on the news, and talk about it around here; it's another thing to have to live with it every single day and make that pretty serious decision.

One of the things we've been discussing quite extensively in this study—we've embarked on the study of security, as you know—is the issue of biometrics. I'd like to ask you a question about that. How will biometrics help the government keep away anyone who is deemed inadmissible to Canada?

[Sharon Chomyn]

Biometrics has proven itself over the years since it has been implemented by some of our partner countries. It's a way of anchoring an identity by matching certain biometric information, such as a photograph, fingerprints, or an iris scan, to biographical information like name, date of birth, etc., so identity can be established the first time an individual seeks to apply for a visa or enter Canada.

If that person is issued a visa, when they appear at the port of entry determination can be made whether the person who appears is the same person who was actually issued the visa. Identification can be run against databases to check for impersonation, or to see whether the individual has actually appeared before with a different identity.

Those are a couple of examples of how the integrity of the process and the security of Canada can be protected through the use of biometrics.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

It sounds like it would be an improvement over the current system, which is fingerprinting and photo, I guess.

Do you agree with that?

[Sharon Chomyn]

It certainly allows information to be manipulated electronically, and to be shared across the network and accessible at many locations at the same time.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Is that accessible across our own internal network, or could we match it against some of our partners?

[Sharon Chomyn]

There are possibilities for sharing information. There are certain elements of information that are shared now with other countries, most notably among the Five Country Conference partners: Canada, U.S., U.K., New Zealand, and Australia.

I'm sure there are other possibilities that can be explored in the future.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

With time, yes.

I have a question on the electronic travel authorization. Can you help us by explaining how the ETA will prevent people who are inadmissible from coming to Canada? How does that help us?

[Sharon Chomyn]

I have to admit that I'm not fully briefed on that initiative. I do know that in other countries where it's been used, and I'd assume it would be a similar sort of process in Canada, it's a way of establishing and verifying someone's identity before they get onto an aircraft or before they arrive at a port of entry. Then, if there are some concerns, that individual can be referred to a visa office, or their file or application can be looked at in more detail. Any concerns or issues can be resolved before the individual appears at Canada's border.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Do you think it's fair to assume—and you may not be able to answer this, because as you said, you're not that familiar with this particular file—that the entry-exit will help us prevent the people who are inadmissible to Canada from entering again?

[Sharon Chomyn]

The more confidence an official can have in the identity of an individual in front of them—confidence in knowing who that person is, in knowing that person's background and whether there is criminality in their past—and the more accessible that information is, the more reliable it is, the better the screening that can be done and the easier it will be to prevent these individuals from appearing at a port of entry or somehow entering Canada improperly.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

We've heard of some media reports on cases in which a failed refugee claimant has been deported from Canada and then has re-entered Canada.

[Sharon Chomyn]

Yes.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

I'm wondering how that's possible, given the current system of fingerprinting.

[Sharon Chomyn]

An individual who appears at a port of entry in Canada is not fingerprinted. They may be fingerprinted at the time of deportation, for example, but as the system is currently built, those fingerprints aren't collected on re-entry.

As to how this has happened in the past, I'm not engaged in that kind of activity, so I don't know all of the details, but I do know that people have used photo-substituted passports, for example, and appeared at a port of entry with a new identity. Altered documents can be quite sophisticated in nature, and the fraud can be quite difficult to detect. Something like biometrics, especially linked to a reliable database such as might be kept by the RCMP, really increases the integrity of the system.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

That makes a lot of sense.

Do I still have some time?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You have about a minute.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Oh, that's wonderful.

I have a few quick questions.

First, for each of the last five years, how many people have been found inadmissible to Canada before or at their entry into the country? Do you have those statistics?

[Sharon Chomyn]

I don't have them with me today, but I'm sure we can get those for you.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Please provide them to the clerk, if you could, so that the chair can distribute them.

On that note, for each of the last five years, how many people have been found inadmissible to Canada after they have already entered Canada? Perhaps you can give us those statistics as well.

[Sharon Chomyn]

Mr. Chair, I'd be happy to do that.