Minister “floored” by scale of fraud in India; more than half the applications at one immigration mission rejected
In the northwestern Indian city of Chandigarh, Canadian immigration officers have a “Wall of Shame” plastered with fake documents people have submitted in their attempts to get visas to this country. These days, they’re deep-sixing 56 per cent of the nearly 20,000 applications they get each year. It’s a measure of the challenge Ottawa faces in trying reach our immigration targets while selecting applicants who meet the country’s needs. The going rate for forgers in India runs as high as $15,000, and visa fakery has become a minor industry, forcing understaffed Canadian missions to be hyper-vigilant when sorting through submissions. The result is a logjam that interferes with legitimate travel, causing some business people to give up on Canada.