A refugee board member recently intimated to me that the Five Eyes intelligence sharing between five developed English speaking countries has been used to detect the presence of, and citizenship status of, foreign nationals visiting the USA. This surprises some refugee claimants, who come to Canada without a travel document such as a passport, presuming that the travel history captured in their passport will be lost along with the absent passport. The Five Eyes can catch travel history and thereby nullify their claim; similarly, I have seen a Pakistani’s successful refugee status get revoked when he failed to disclose his presence in the USA (such presence making his refugee story implausible and hence ‘vacated’).
Persons presenting themselves to Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board as citizens of North Korea have been discovered to actually be from South Korea. The method by which this was discovered was the information sharing between the USA and Canada – evidence of those alleged North Korean’s fingerprints tendered upon entering the USA, along with a corresponding passport from South Korea – clear evidence of lying about being North Korean.
Starting in December 2013, biometrics become mandatory for more countries: applicants seeking a visitor visa to Canada will have to travel to a licensed agent of Canada’s immigration department (i.e. the VAC), or a local Canadian visa to provide an in-person fingerprint and photograph for $85.00 for a biometric scan. Once captured, it can be compared to CIC’s and the RCMP’s database; such a fingerprint may reveal the applicant for a visitor visa came to Canada previously under a different name, and was deported from Canada; this would render the visitor visa application refused on, among other things, misrepresentation.
Along the same lines of information sharing, recent CIC forms were amended during November 2013 indicating that the persons who sign an immigration form are consenting to give their information to the Canada Revenue Agency; this seems more to enhance the integrity of Canada’s tax collecting system over Canada’s immigration system given that CIC as of January 2014 is imposing a 30% increase in required income to sponsor parents – giving sponsors an incentive to embellish their income to meet the requirements imposed by Canada’s Immigration Department, leading to a potential ‘Gotcha!’ by the CRA when the CRA discovers this a higher disclosed income in a CIC form.
The public’s response to increasing scrutiny is lackadaisical, despite breaches of security within the Canadian government; this is likely due to the government’s emphasis on biometrics’ utility in protecting Canada against terrorists and other criminals. One can see, however that although cost effective for the government, such measures tend to make it easier to detect misrepresentations when applying for a visa to Canada; self-filing daredevils may wish take note of this; perhaps even better, consult me before being labelled by CIC as ‘misrepresenting’ on an application, and being slapped with a two year ban from entering Canada (in some cases effectively an eternal ban from entering Canada).
Call a Toronto Immigration Lawyer for any Canadian immigration issues or concerns you may have – Dial 416-447-6118 now!
