Tag Archives: David Richardson

Government Covers Up Real Number of Illegals–Part 2 of an Immigration Officer’s report on Canada’s Department of Immigration

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Government Covers Up Real Number of Illegals–Part 2 of an Immigration Officer’s report on Canada’s Department of Immigration

By David Richardson, Retired Senior Immigration Officer

After working at  the Fort Erie Port of Entry (POE) for several years, I took  a secondment to the Removals Department at the Main Immigration Office in Niagara Falls. The Removals Officer’s responsibility was to make sure that failed  refugee claimants and deportees were returned to the country  from which they entered Canada. Since all our refugee  claimants came from the US, they were removed to Buffalo, New York.

We would receive from the  Immigration and Refugee Board the detailed files of failed  claimants. These people had already been in Canada for 3 to  5 years since they had to go through the appeals process as  well !!

Once the file was  reviewed ,we would schedule a removal date and inform the  claimant when they were to present themselves for removal.  We would try to schedule enough removals to fill the bus we  had for this purpose. We would notify USINS (United States  Immigration and Naturalization Service) when we would arrive  so that they would be able to process them back into the  US.

The “bus” we  used for removals was a 12 passenger van.  We scheduled  removals for twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays.  The number of people that showed up depended on whether there were families involved. Some families were as large as 7 or 8 people.  Any children born in Canada did not count.  On average I’d say 40 to 50 percent of families did not show up, while 75 to 80 percent of singles did not show.  These are conservative estimates because sometimes no one  would show and we would have to cancel.  Needless to say  the majority of time spent by a removals officer was in preparing deportation orders.

In the year and a half I worked in Removals, never once did all the scheduled removals show up for departure. Those that didn’t show, were issued a  Deportation Order, and they were to be detained and delivered to Immigration to be deported forthwith by any law  enforcement agency they came in contact with. This almost  never happened. They just disappeared.

When I made an inquiry as to what the department was doing about this, I was told the official response was that the claimant must have made their own arrangements to leave. This was a cover-up and demonstrates the sloppiness in  government policy and the willingness of government to  tolerate fraud.

A  shocking fact is that the government keeps a running total  of “NO SHOWS”  for five years only. For example,  when I checked the figures for 1998, I found there were over 100,000 “NO SHOWS” for the five years ending in 1998. NO SHOWS are people ordered deported who did not report to be deported. However, when a year passed and the  government published the “NO SHOW” figures for 1999, they added the “NO SHOWS” to the 100,000, but then subtracted the number of “No Shows” for 1993. In other words, the “NO SHOW”  total remained constant and is an outright lie. It is definitely  not a measure of the total illegals residing in Canada at  any given time. This government practice had been going on  long before I worked for the Department and probably long  before even that Act.  The practice probably  continues today. Toronto is a very easy place to hide out  in and we know of many unscrupulous employers that take  advantage, but the government refuses to provide the  resources to root them out.

While “NO SHOWS” provide the bulk of illegals that I’m aware of, there are also illegals who got here on foreign student visas and on  work visas. As far as I know, these numbers are never counted in the “NO SHOWS” list.  The  department just assumes these people leave when their visa  expires.  But that does not happen. For example, we know  that there was a problem with work visas, especially for strippers from Eastern Europe, of which there were many in a  small place like  Niagara Falls.  I can only guess what the figures would be for very large cities like Toronto or Montreal.

It upset Immigration Officers  to no end to know  that the public was being kept in the dark as to how many “NO SHOWS”, “ILLEGAL  WORKERS” and “ILLEGAL VISITORS” were in Canada. Job-seeking Canadians were obviously having to  compete with these “NO SHOWS” and  “ILLEGALS” for work, but the government did very little to  ease the frustrations and suffering of Canadians. In fact,  idiotic politicians in Toronto, Hamilton and Vancouver  declared their cities to be “SANCTUARY CITIES” so  that these illegals could continue to abuse honest  Canadians.  And these politicians actually were proud of  what they had done !!!

Enforcement Officer

My next position was as an Enforcement Officer at the main office in Niagara Falls. The nature of this job  was investigating Immigration violations IN-Land. An Immigration Officer at the Port of Entry (POE) has far more  legal authority than an In-land Officer. Under the  Immigration Act, and Criminal Code as it was at that time,  the RCMP was the agency responsible for laying charges under  the Act.
Immigration would investigate. If we had a case, we would inform the RCMP and  they would lay the charges and make the arrest.

The RCMP was also responsible  for criminal charges at the Port of Entry.  At this time, a new Area Manager had arrived in Ontario South. He was disturbed at  the lack of co-operation between the RCMP and Immigration.  He contacted the RCMP Office in St. Catharines and made  arrangements with the Sargent in charge to form a Unit  exclusively to deal with Immigration Issues. I was seconded  to this Unit that consisted of a lieutenant, two Officers  and myself.

Cases

One day, we got a call from  the Queenston (Ontario)-Lewiston (New York) Port Of Entry  that they had detained an American woman from West Virginia. When we arrived at the POE we discovered that the day before, she had been refused entry at Toronto’s Pearson  Airport. The Senior Immigration Examining Officer  there had discovered that the woman had made a refugee claim in Canada the previous year. She said she  was coming back to Canada to attend a hearing. Immigration officers assumed that if a person makes a  refugee claim here that they will stay here until their  claim is evaluated. However, in questioning the woman, we discovered she was working as a Toll Collector on the thru-way in West Virginia and was going through a messy divorce. She told us  her Pastor had recommended she make a refugee claim in Canada to procure another source of income (welfare) !!  In  other words, she had no intention of becoming a refugee in  Canada. She was looking for extra cash and she had heard through the grapevine that she could easily defraud Canada’s refugee system and provincial Welfare Department in order to get that cash. We warned her about  the fraud she was committing and deported her on the  spot.

As a follow up, I  contacted the Welfare office in Toronto to inform them of  the fraud and requested that all welfare payments cease to  that woman. I was told by the Welfare Office that they couldn’t do that without interviewing the recipient. I  told them that that would not be possible as she was not  allowed to enter Canada. I was told,  “Too bad.  That’s the procedure.” I then contacted the Ministry of Social Services to complain. They told me they would look into it. I never heard back.  I concluded that  the Welfare Office never did anything, that refugee cheats are very aware of this negligence, that refugee cheats had taken advantage of this and that they continue to take  advantage. As far as trying to estimate the cost to the  province, I would need to know what the rate of welfare is, and I don’t.  But I suspect it is large and I’m  pretty sure if the public were aware, there’d be a huge backlash.

One of the main  reasons I eventually left government service was that in all good conscience, I could not tolerate another day of 35% of my  pay going to support these fraudulent government practices.  Political correctness has destroyed my Country.

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Senior Immigration Officer Cites Fraud and Incompetence in Refugee System–Part 1

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Senior Immigration Officer Cites Fraud and Incompetence in Refugee System–Part 1

By David Richardson, Retired Senior Immigration Examining Officer

I began my work for Canada’s Department of Immigration as a Senior Immigration Examining Officer (SIEO) at the Fort Erie Point of Entry (POE) at the Peace Bridge.
 
 
Inline image 1

 
 
 


After some initial problems, I was elected to act as their Union Rep. About eight months later, I was elected to be the Immigration Rep in Southern Ontario for the Canadian Employment and Immigration Union, Ontario Council, where I then became the president of that council.

Management sent me to get the training I needed for the job : two weeks in Vancouver for SIEO training, and 3 weeks in Regina at the RCMP Depot for Use of Force Training. I felt satisfied that I was able to do the job. However, that job was not exactly what I thought it would be.

Fort Erie, Ontario is opposite Buffalo, New York. The Peace Bridge joins the two cities. In the 1990’s, Fort Erie processed 4000 to 5000 refugee claims a year. The process was convoluted and resulted in a major industry being developed on both sides of the border to handle it. Churches, refugee holding facilities, immigration consultants, lawyers, NGO’s, and translators were all part of the process. The Immigration Officer was responsible for the identification and documentation of the claimants. The resulting forms and documents and schedules provided to the claimant included healthcare and welfare and transportation to Toronto where their refugee claim would be finalized.

The process at the border could take three to four hours as many claimants came as families. There were two Officers working with translators working two claims a shift, days and evenings. The process as a whole, from claim to determination of status could take up to three years or more. And if an individual was found not to be eligible for refugee status, they would be sent back to Buffalo, where after three months, they could start all over again !! This sounds hard to believe, but it was a fact.

The Port of Entry Process

The refugee claimant would arrive from Buffalo, New York via specialized Taxi service paid by Canada. Information about name, the country of origin and language preference would be recorded so that a translator could be booked and an appointment made for the client to formally make their claim. They would then be returned to Buffalo, to await their appointment.

This was the process in 1995—-before an agreement was made with the U.S. which resulted in non-American claimants being ineligible to make claims in Canada if they were in the U.S.

When the claimant arrived for their appointment, they were photographed and fingerprinted and brought to an interview room where the translator was present and the interview would commence. We had a form made up to get the required information to begin the claim. Readers may be shocked to read the following :

The information from all applicants was almost always exactly the same, no matter where the applicants came from. Obviously, they had received coaching in how to lie at the holding center in Buffalo. From the very beginning, fraud and lies like the following prevailed :

(1) Almost all claimants said they had flown into New York City in the company of an  agent, who for a fee of $10,000 to $15,000 a person, would bring them through US Immigration. The Agent would then take their passports and return to the country of origin. On arrival in New York, the vast majority (95%) of applicants / claimants had no documents to prove that they were really from the country they claimed to be from.

(2) They would take a bus to Buffalo to the Church that housed and prepared them to make their claim. (Obviously they had duped the Churches into accepting their lies / stories.)

(3) All claimed they were being persecuted for clan membership or religious affiliation or abuse of some nature. We soon learned that we couldn’t believe a word they said. (As a side note, photographs and fingerprints were not the norm for a long period of time, but were introduced because it was found that claimants would make a claim in Fort Erie with one group of children, return to the US and return with a whole new family and make another claim in Niagara Falls. This enabled them to collect much more in welfare payments when they got to Canada.)

(4) Another interesting thing was that the interpreters would tell us that the claimant was lying to us, but we could do nothing about it as it was the refugee board’s job to determine veracity of claims.

(5) We would fill out the forms with the names that they gave us, print out the claim form, give them forms to get medicals, and eligibility for welfare and childcare. Then up the road they went.

(6) The fraud we saw was extremely shameless very early  in many cases.  For example, Pakistanis, who had succeeded in getting refugee status in the US, were coming to Canada to make a refugee claim here in order to get extra welfare cash from Canada.  They found it harder to commit this fraud in the US because the US requires fingerprints on ID cards and the US has card readers that scan  information.  We tried to get one of these readers at the Fort Erie Port of Entry, but our Immigration Department refused.

(7) The really disturbing thing is that these claimants are not the pathetic cases you see on TV. These people can afford to pay a great deal of money to get here, and were most likely the upper middle class in their country. In other words, they were economic migrants and it disturbed the translators to no end that these people were getting away with so much fraud from the very start.
________________________
www.ImmigrationWatchCanada.org
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Senior Immigration Officer Cites Fraud and Incompetence in Refugee System–Part 1

Posted on by

Senior Immigration Officer Cites Fraud and Incompetence in Refugee System–Part 1

By David Richardson, Retired Senior Immigration Examining Officer

I began my work for Canada’s Department of Immigration as a Senior Immigration Examining Officer (SIEO) at the Fort Erie Point of Entry (POE) at the Peace Bridge.
 
 
Inline image 1

 
 
 


After some initial problems, I was elected to act as their Union Rep. About eight months later, I was elected to be the Immigration Rep in Southern Ontario for the Canadian Employment and Immigration Union, Ontario Council, where I then became the president of that council.

Management sent me to get the training I needed for the job : two weeks in Vancouver for SIEO training, and 3 weeks in Regina at the RCMP Depot for Use of Force Training. I felt satisfied that I was able to do the job. However, that job was not exactly what I thought it would be.

Fort Erie, Ontario is opposite Buffalo, New York. The Peace Bridge joins the two cities. In the 1990’s, Fort Erie processed 4000 to 5000 refugee claims a year. The process was convoluted and resulted in a major industry being developed on both sides of the border to handle it. Churches, refugee holding facilities, immigration consultants, lawyers, NGO’s, and translators were all part of the process. The Immigration Officer was responsible for the identification and documentation of the claimants. The resulting forms and documents and schedules provided to the claimant included healthcare and welfare and transportation to Toronto where their refugee claim would be finalized.

The process at the border could take three to four hours as many claimants came as families. There were two Officers working with translators working two claims a shift, days and evenings. The process as a whole, from claim to determination of status could take up to three years or more. And if an individual was found not to be eligible for refugee status, they would be sent back to Buffalo, where after three months, they could start all over again !! This sounds hard to believe, but it was a fact.

The Port of Entry Process

The refugee claimant would arrive from Buffalo, New York via specialized Taxi service paid by Canada. Information about name, the country of origin and language preference would be recorded so that a translator could be booked and an appointment made for the client to formally make their claim. They would then be returned to Buffalo, to await their appointment.

This was the process in 1995—-before an agreement was made with the U.S. which resulted in non-American claimants being ineligible to make claims in Canada if they were in the U.S.

When the claimant arrived for their appointment, they were photographed and fingerprinted and brought to an interview room where the translator was present and the interview would commence. We had a form made up to get the required information to begin the claim. Readers may be shocked to read the following :

The information from all applicants was almost always exactly the same, no matter where the applicants came from. Obviously, they had received coaching in how to lie at the holding center in Buffalo. From the very beginning, fraud and lies like the following prevailed :

(1) Almost all claimants said they had flown into New York City in the company of an  agent, who for a fee of $10,000 to $15,000 a person, would bring them through US Immigration. The Agent would then take their passports and return to the country of origin. On arrival in New York, the vast majority (95%) of applicants / claimants had no documents to prove that they were really from the country they claimed to be from.

(2) They would take a bus to Buffalo to the Church that housed and prepared them to make their claim. (Obviously they had duped the Churches into accepting their lies / stories.)

(3) All claimed they were being persecuted for clan membership or religious affiliation or abuse of some nature. We soon learned that we couldn’t believe a word they said. (As a side note, photographs and fingerprints were not the norm for a long period of time, but were introduced because it was found that claimants would make a claim in Fort Erie with one group of children, return to the US and return with a whole new family and make another claim in Niagara Falls. This enabled them to collect much more in welfare payments when they got to Canada.)

(4) Another interesting thing was that the interpreters would tell us that the claimant was lying to us, but we could do nothing about it as it was the refugee board’s job to determine veracity of claims.

(5) We would fill out the forms with the names that they gave us, print out the claim form, give them forms to get medicals, and eligibility for welfare and childcare. Then up the road they went.

(6) The fraud we saw was extremely shameless very early  in many cases.  For example, Pakistanis, who had succeeded in getting refugee status in the US, were coming to Canada to make a refugee claim here in order to get extra welfare cash from Canada.  They found it harder to commit this fraud in the US because the US requires fingerprints on ID cards and the US has card readers that scan  information.  We tried to get one of these readers at the Fort Erie Port of Entry, but our Immigration Department refused.

(7) The really disturbing thing is that these claimants are not the pathetic cases you see on TV. These people can afford to pay a great deal of money to get here, and were most likely the upper middle class in their country. In other words, they were economic migrants and it disturbed the translators to no end that these people were getting away with so much fraud from the very start.
________________________
www.ImmigrationWatchCanada.org
Category: Uncategorized | Tags: ,