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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