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http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/581362

Dozens dupe Indian airline, enter Canada

BRENT FOSTER FOR THE TORONTO STAR
Agents offer visa assistance in a market in Chandigarh, Punjab. India's Jet Airways failed to detect doctored passports on dozens of Toronto-bound travellers who are now claiming refugee status here, officials say. Email story
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Canada threatens ban as travellers with fake ID seek refugee status

Feb 03, 2009 04:30 AM
Comments on this story (29)
Rick Westhead
SOUTH ASIA BUREAU

NEW DELHI – Transport Canada officials recently warned India's largest privately owned commercial airline it would be barred from operating flights to Canada if its reservation agents didn't do a better job detecting passengers travelling on bogus passports.

Agents for Citizenship and Immigration Canada and the Canada Border Service Agency have discovered dozens of Jet Airways passengers arriving at Toronto's Pearson International Airport with fake travel documents in recent months, five sources familiar with the matter told the Star.

After pressure from Canadian officials, Jet has reassigned responsibility for passenger security checks to its security division from its customer service department.

\"We want to root out this menace as much as anyone,\" said Ragini Chopra, a Jet spokesperson.

In most cases, a person with an extensive international travel history applied for and received a legitimate Canadian visa.

The photo page of their Indian passport was then replaced with a doctored one and used by a different person.

It's unclear how many people were involved in the scam, but Canadian immigration officials believe several dozen have slipped into the country with the fake Indian passports in the past year.

\"In some cases, the forgeries were extremely professional,\" said Raja Segran, Jet's vice-president for European operations.

\"In one case we weren't sure about one passport and asked a professional to look at it in Brussels. He said it looked genuine and the passenger carried on to Toronto, where it turned out that the passport was a forgery.\"

Starting this week, Jet's employees in Brussels will receive training to ferret out fake documents, Segran said. Jet flights to Canada lay over in Belgium, with daily departures to Toronto.

Passengers involved in the scam have applied for refugee status after their arrival in Toronto, and remain in Canada.

Under Canadian immigration law, most people who arrive at a port of entry are entitled to make a claim for refugee status.

Investigators involved in rooting out the scam said reservations for Canadian hotels were made over the Internet and a printout was produced to show border agents in Toronto.

\"The hotels were a good tipoff,\" one immigration investigator told the Star. \"The reservations were all at hotels on the airport strip in Mississauga.

\"If you're spending all that money to travel around the world and come to Canada in November, why would you book a reservation for two weeks on the airport strip?\"

Border agents detected the first fake Indian passport they believe was connected to the scheme in February 2008.

After a lull of activity, more fake passports began to show up in September and continued through December.

Canadian officials say the fraud was crude enough that Jet reservation agents should have detected it.

Legitimate Indian passports feature a line in microprinting that reads \"Indian Passport Control\" across the photo page.

On some of the doctored passports, the line was little more than a smudge.

Privacy laws have also made it hard to track scam organizers through credit cards.

The only credit card information investigators have for those who booked the sham hotel rooms in Canada is the last four digits of a credit-card number. Hotel chains turned down a government request for help, citing privacy legislation, an investigator said.

A Best Western spokesperson said a hotel in Mississauga \"co-operated fully and promptly\" with the Canada Border Services Agency's investigation.

Investigators' attempts to contact original passport holders to whom the visas were granted have failed.

\"None of the contact numbers have worked,\" said one source.

Even as authorities seem to have solved the problem with Jet, fraudsters are trying new tactics. Two weeks ago, a passenger with a fake Indian passport was stopped during a layover on a Toronto-bound Kuwait Airlines flight from Hyderabad, India, a source told the Star.

Recently, police in the town of Moga, Punjab, arrested two brothers who ran a travel agency for allegedly making a pair of passports with different names for a woman who sought to travel to Canada, the Hindustan Times reported.

It said Hakam Singh and Harmeet Singh are charged with cheating and forgery and are accused of preparing the passports for Kulwinder Kaur, a resident of a nearby village.

Kaur paid a broker 10,000 rupees ($255) for the passports, the newspaper reported.

Canadian authorities are considering adding biometric information to visas in an effort to head off attempts by fraudsters.

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http://www.montrealgazette.com/Life/India+crack+down+visa+fraud/1186099/story.html

India to crack down on visa fraud


By Norma Greenaway, Canwest News ServiceJanuary 16, 2009
StoryPhotos ( 1 )


Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said Friday that Canadian officials are experiencing a high rate of fraud among immigrants applying for visas.
Photograph by: Mike Carroccetto, Canwest News ServiceOTTAWA — Canadian officials in the Punjab capital of Chandigarh are being swamped with visa applications supported by everything from false job offers and university transcripts to fake wedding pictures and letters of support from Canadian MPs.


\"We are talking about a very, very high incidence (of fraud),\" Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said Friday in a teleconference call with reporters from New Delhi.


Kenney said he received a commitment from the chief minister of Punjab, Prakash Singh Badal, that local police authorities would crack down on what Kenney called a \"developing industry\" of document vendors and phony consultants exploiting large numbers of Punjabis wanting to go to Canada.


\"He clearly understood these document vendors and unscrupulous consultants are undermining the chances of legitimate visitors and immigrants to get to Canada,\" Kenney said.


Two of every three temporary visa applications are being rejected in Chandigarh, a high rate that Kenney blamed in large part on the fraudulent activities.


Canada, which started processing visa applications in Chandigarh in 2004, is the only country with a visa office there. About half of the Indo-Canadian community in Canada hails from Punjab.


\"The bottom line is that our visa people have to be very vigilant,\" Kenney said. \"We want legitimate law-abiding people who qualify to be visitors to immigrate with as little trouble as possible. Those who engage in this kind of fraud clog up the system.\"


While visiting Chandigarh earlier this week, Kenney said he saw some of the thousands of faked documents that had been submitted with visa applications. He said they included counterfeit letters from MPs, identification papers, employment offers, university transcripts and diplomas, funeral announcements and even pictures of false wedding ceremonies.


Kenney said unscrupulous consultants have been known to target a program, and then tailor the applications to that program. A recent example involved Canada's live-in caregiver program.


A surge of applications for the program in 2007 raised eyebrows at the office in Chandigarh, largely because they were from men, who are not the traditional caregivers in India. Officials subsequently discovered many applicants presented documents that said they graduated from caregiving schools that did not exist.


Kenney said there has been a lack of interest in the past on the part of the Indian authorities to pursue visa fraud, but that he expects much closer co-operation between Canadian officials and Chandigarh police in the future.

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Sunny Leone a true Canadian DESI now back in India !.

Brilliant !!

Because one could claim refugee status after setting foot, a lot of you might have seen immigration officers standing right at the door of the aircraft asking to see the passport. This seems more common in UK, but I have seen in Toronto as well. Also, Canada should issue visas that have the bearer's photo.

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Dimple2001

Read same news here with added bonus of reader comments

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/581362" target="_blank">http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/581362</a>

I did not know that it was an airlines duty to check the papers/authenticity of the passengers.

- Does it mean that other airlines are doing better when it comes to checking travelling documents?

- Does this fraud also occur on Air India?

Such news sure gives India a bad name

The agents at the counter check the visa/passport when u go for the checkin. That's common everywhere. I am surprised that Jet Air did not do its job.

On a sort of related note, an agent at Dorval (Montreal), appeared to be a desi or a pakistani (could not figure out), saw my OCI card. Started questioning Government of India's decision to issue OCI. I was not in a mood to take him on. Smiled and told him that he can drive to Ottawa and talk to the HC directly and make his case.

KM