Feds to revoke thousands of citizenships in historic sweep

BY TOBI COHEN, POSTMEDIA NEWS DECEMBER 9, 2011

 

 

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In what's being dubbed the biggest citizenship fraud sweep in Canadian history, the federal government is set to crack down on 4,700 more people believed to have obtained citizenship or permanent resident status illegally. Pictured, Jason Kenny, federal minister of immigration, speaks to the Chamber of Commerce in Calgary.

Photograph by: Grant Black, Calgary Herald

OTTAWA — In what's being dubbed the biggest citizenship fraud sweep in Canadian history, the federal government is set to crack down on 4,700 more people believed to have obtained citizenship or permanent resident status illegally.

The announcement comes six months after the government moved to strip 1,800 people of their Canadian citizenship or permanent resident status for the same reasons. Up until this year, Canada had revoked just 67 citizenships since the Citizenship Act came into force in 1947.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is expected to make the announcement that "Canadian citizenship is not for sale" on Friday, Postmedia News has learned.

He will unveil the details in Montreal where Nizar Zakka — an immigration consultant suspected of fraud — was arrested in 2009. Zakka is suspected of providing would-be Lebanese immigrants with false evidence — indicating that they were living in Quebec when they were not — to support their cases for permanent residency.

He's also accused of filing or contributing to the filing of 861 false tax returns for at least 380 clients between 2004 and 2007. The returns allegedly were then used to claim refunds for child care and property taxes as well as the provincial sales-tax credit.

The bulk of the citizenship fraud cases are said to be linked to Zakka as well as Halifax immigration consultant Hassan Al-Awaid, who was charged in March with more than 50 citizenship fraud-related offences.

The cases are also tied to a third consultant from Mississauga, Ont., west of Toronto, who remains under investigation, according to a government source who noted the others were brought to light thanks to the new citizenship fraud tip line.

Unveiled in September, the tip line already has fielded 5,366 calls.

Letters are currently being sent to the 6,500 people from 100 countries indicating that Canada is revoking their citizenship or permanent resident status due to fraud.

This comes following a lengthy investigation by the RCMP and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration.

Alleged fraudsters, the majority of whom are not currently living in Canada, have up to 60 days to appeal the decision in Federal Court before cabinet moves to void their passports and strip them of all rights and privileges.

According to Citizenship and Immigration, to maintain permanent resident status a person must reside in Canada for at least two years within a five-year period. Permanent residents seeking citizenship must show proof that they've lived in Canada for at least three of the last four years before applying.

At the time of Al-Awaid's arrest, Kenney said he was suspected of helping people "create the appearance they were residing in Canada in order to keep their permanent resident status, and ultimately attempt to acquire citizenship."

He said investigators had linked Al-Awaid to 1,100 applicants and their dependents, 76 of whom had obtained Canadian citizenship.

He noted that many people were prevented from "fraudulently obtaining citizenship" as a result of the investigation.

The government has been taking action against citizenship fraud for some time. The Cracking Down on Crooked Consultants Act, which imposes tough new penalties for immigration consultants convicted of fraud, including fines and/or prison, is now law in Canada.

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Lorne Gunter: Time to crack down on fraudulent immigrants

Canadians are generous people, but have no tolerance or patience for people who don’t play by the rules and who lie or cheat to become a Canadian citizen. The government will apply the full strength of Canadian law to those who have obtained citizenship fraudulently.”

With those blunt words, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced Friday in Montreal that his department and the RCMP have gathered evidence on as many as 6,500 new citizens or permanent residents who acquired their immigration status fraudulently. Mr. Kenney intends to strip them of their status and deport them, if they are in the country. He added, “Canadian citizenship is not for sale.”

Mr. Kenney and the police allege that paid immigration consultants have been helping people pretend to meet the residency requirements needed to obtain citizenship or permanent-resident status. Before being accepted, an applicant must have lived full-time in Canada for three of the previous four years. To maintain their status, they must show proof they have lived here at least two out of every five years thereafter. Unscrupulous consultants, Mr. Kenney suspects, have been helping thousands of applicants produce fake evidence that they have been living in Canada.

Many of the case of suspected fraud revolve around two consultants, Nizar Zakka of Montreal, who was arrested in 2009, and Hassan Al-Awaid of Halifax, who was charged last March. Mr. Zakka is suspected of providing would-be immigrants with false evidence that they were living in Quebec. He was also accused of helping file nearly 900 false tax returns, allegedly so absentee citizens could qualify for tax credits for child care, property tax and provincial sales tax.

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• Thousands to be stripped of Canadian citizenship in historic fraud sweep

Not surprisingly, many of Mr. Zakka’s allegedly fraudulent clients are Lebanese who are suspected of never having lived in Canada long enough to acquire citizenship legitimately. Why is not surprising to me that so many Lebanese are suspected? Because of the way so many suddenly remembered their devotion to Canada when war broke out in their country between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.

When the bullets began whizzing and the bombs and missiles began falling, hundreds of Canadian “citizens” who hadn’t lived here for a decade or more pulled their passports out of the drawers they’d stuffed them in and started waving them around like “Get out of Hell free” cards demanding Ottawa rescue them (at Ottawa’s expense).

Many of these Canadians of convenience had come here in the 1980s and 1990s, during Lebanon’s long civil war, only long enough to obtain citizenship, then the minute they qualified and the fighting back home subsided, they beetled off to Lebanon never again to live in Canada or contribute to Canadian society. Yet once they were caught in the crossfire between Israel and radical Islamists, they insisted Ottawa send ships and planes to ferry them to safety. Then they complained the rescue wasn’t happening fast enough and, finally, were indignant about the conditions on the ships that were sent.

That’s the kind of insincere citizen Mr. Kenney is targeting. He is right that Canadians are a generous lot. We already accept more immigrants per capita than any other developed nation – more than 250,000 a year, heading towards 300,000 a year over the coming decade. So it does not make us mean-spirited or xenophobic to revoke the citizenship or permanent-resident status of a few thousand applicants who, in his words, lied and cheated to get into Canada. Indeed, doing so preserves the value of Canadian citizenship not only for people born here, but also for those new Canadians who took the time to go through the proper procedures to come here legally – a process that can take up to seven years.

For far too long, Ottawa has been cavalier about granting citizenship, refugee status and permanent residency. It hasn’t screened visa applications adequately. It has accepted at face value too many bogus stories about persecution back home. It has made little effort to deport people ordered expelled by the courts, including hundreds of violent criminals. It has seldom prosecuted people smugglers and has permitted people granted refugee status to travel freely back and forth between Canada and the homelands in which they insisted their lives were in danger. Ottawa has even done a poor job of encouraging new Canadians to adopt this nation’s values. No longer.

Under Mr. Kenney and the Tories, the visa-screening process is to be beefed up, the refugee determination system is being streamlined to help better sort true refugees from sob-story applicants, the immigration consultant industry is being cleaned up and citizenship training has been changed to emphasize the importance in Canada of the rule of law, equality between the sexes and social tolerance. This is not proof of bigotry and vindictiveness by the Tories. Rather it is, finally, a recognition that if Canadian citizenship is to mean anything, it cannot be given away like Halloween candy.

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