How China’s ‘crooked consultants’ help the rich enter Canada
He [the Globe and Mail's invented persona] has the required minimum of $1.6-million in assets. What he doesn’t have are the documents Canadian immigration officials want: neither banking and pay statements to show that his wealth has accumulated gradually and legitimately nor proof that he has paid taxes on it. He also doesn’t have the necessary two years’ experience in managing employees.
In China, however, manufacturing a personal history that will satisfy Immigration Canada is no problem for almost anyone willing to pay
An estimated 400 firms based in China offer their services to prospective immigrants. Of the 22 approached by The Globe’s fictitious client, no fewer than 18 advised fabricating documents to produce the required background.
Although many suggested he ask someone who owns a company to create the income and tax documentation, eight said they could produce the papers themselves. Two even offered to have a Canadian company speed the process by hiring the applicant, if only on paper.
The minister acknowledged that embassy officials struggle with the sheer volume of applications from China – which accounted for more than 32,000 of the 45,000 the program received in total last year.Interesting, the consultants blame the system itself for being too choosy and competitive.
But a veteran consultant who divides his time between China and Canada argues that honesty has become a handicap. He said the investor system is now so rife with fraudulent applications that anyone who fails to add some “polish” almost certainly winds up at the back of the line.
- According to the state-run China Daily newspaper, about 2,000 of the applicants [in 2009] were from China and they transferred nearly $1-billion into Canadian banks.Leveraged at 20:1, that's enough to cause some serious house price inflation.
1 comment:
Some people in the article's comments were mentioning that a high acceptance standard means only those with forged documents will qualify; those who told the truth have no hope of meeting the acceptance standards.
Voters want everyone to have a fair shake. If more press surrounding corruption and forged immigration documents starts emerging it's hard to imagine the government sitting idle.
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