Friday, August 27, 1999

Diane Francis
National Post

Organized crime groups in China are providing false documentation to people interested in obtaining student visas as a backdoor way to illegally enter Canada, according to a source and an internal report from Citizenship and Immigration obtained by the National Post.

The report, called "Chinese Student Visas: Evidence of Organized Fraud," shows that two-thirds of the applications recently investigated involved "systematic, organized fraud."

"I'm not aware of the exact report, but two-thirds organized fraud? That sounds reasonable," said Susan Gregson, an Immigration Canada program manager, in a telephone interview yesterday from Beijing.

"In a disturbingly high number of cases we have checked we find that the parents are not working where they say they are working or it's a rundown place that simply couldn't give them the income they are allegedly earning."

She said applications in Beijing for visas are skyrocketing. They are up by 179% this year, she said. By the end of July, 5,210 people had applied for student visas in Canada, compared with only 1,865 for the same seven-month period in 1998. In 1994 only 900 applied.

The number of granted visas has also jumped for the first seven months of this year to 2,273 compared to 1,733 for all of 1998. There were 689 granted in 1997.

This means refusals have also soared, and this was because applicants and their families had "irregular" documents or did not have the funds they said they had, or needed, to attend four years of school here.

"We examine the bona fides, the student, a letter of acceptance from a Canadian institution. Do they have the money to be a student in Canada?" Ms. Gregson said. "Tuition fees, books and living expenses can cost $20,000 a year, depending on where and what institution is involved.

"Although market reforms have created a number of rich people here, and the population is comparatively richer than 15 or 20 years ago, there's only a small fraction of the population who could afford this," she said.

The pressure to study abroad is due to the fact that there's a shortage of places in China's universities. Many families have only one child and are willing to sacrifice their entire savings to send them abroad, she added.

"In the application we have to be satisfied the family has the funds. With salary levels much lower, we have to wonder how $20,000 a year for four or five years can be afforded. And some people have been coming up with documentation that is not reliable," she said.

"False documentation is so easily available here. There has grown up a whole industry of immigration agents who provide, as part of their service, fraudulent documents. This is the minority of cases we believe, but I don't have the resources to check out every application," she added.

Once in Canada, nobody tracks the whereabouts of the students or what they are doing, said the source.

The Beijing office loses track after a visa is granted, Ms. Gregson said.

"I can't get the figures and once they have gone there is no file anymore," she said. "I get no feedback, but I'm aware of 33 who have done that [applied as refugees]."

Many others apply for permanent landed immigrant status -- not the intention of a student visa.

In fact, some university officials in Canada have been complaining that foreign visa students paying higher tuitions are able to get landed immigrant status after a short time, which means their tuition rates suddenly drop to those charged Canadian residents. Once they are immigrants they also get health benefits.

Between 1992 and 1996, the Canadian Bureau for International Education said there was a 16% decline in the number of international students at Canadian universities and a 28% increase in landed immigrants, formerly visa students.

"The recent boats are not unexpected and have been going for quite some time," said Ms. Gregson, a participant in high-level meetings with Chinese officials who warned Canada about illegal smuggling from Fujian province due to Canada's generous refugee and immigration process.

"We are trying to work with the Chinese government," Ms. Gregson said. "But people-smuggling is an increasingly lucrative business. It's an international problem and requires an international solution," she said.