Category: Canada

Canada: Immigrant rips off Canadian taxpayers, hundreds around the world benefit

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

No, this isn’t the standard rip-off, it was a clever one on a large scale that went on for a decade.   It’s an old story now (from last week), but still worth reporting. (Hat tip: Janet)

From the National Post:

TORONTO — The RCMP has arrested a Quebec immigration consultant accused of providing Canadian citizenship documents to hundreds of people in the Middle East so they could collect benefits and tax refunds from Ottawa.
Ahmad El-Akhal, 62, was arrested Thursday morning following a 2-1/2-year investigation by the RCMP’s Immigration and Passport and Commercial Crimes sections. His wife was also arrested as well as a suspected accomplice in Mississauga.

The alleged fraud ring is accused of securing immigrant status and citizenship for more than 300 residents of Lebanon and other Middle East countries and then helping them bilk the Canadian government of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“Once they received documents this guy would fill out the tax returns and documents to get benefits back in the names of these people,” said RCMP Sgt. Marc LaPorte. “They were getting tax refunds, Goods and Services Tax rebates, child credit tax benefits, so the whole gamut.”

It took Canadian officials nearly a decade to figure out that something was wrong when hundreds of immigrants gave 29 addresses on documents.

The alleged crimes go back as far as 1999. The investigation began in 2008 after Citizenship and Immigration Canada noticed that 320 permanent residence applicants had given the same 29 home addresses in Canada.

Wealth redistribution anyone?

I swear there are some really smart Muslims who know every trick in the book (heck, they write the book!) on how to rip-off the infidel.

Canada: Huntley to fight deportation to South Africa

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Brandon Huntley is a white man from South Africa who was granted asylum in Canada and then the decision was overturned recently by a Judge, here.

He is apparently appealing the case, here.

South African refugee seeker Brandon Huntley will appeal a decision by the Canadian Government to withdraw his right to remain in that country.

Earlier this year, a Canadian court granted the Cape Town man refugee status but later revoked its decision. His lawyer said Canadian immigration authorities were pressured by the South African government to reverse its decision.

But his lawyer on Monday said Huntley was not backing down after an appeal was lodged last week. His legal team will argue that the South African government made Canada look racist after it granted him asylum.

He was granted asylum on the basis that he was being persecuted by black people because of the high crime rate.

As I said previously, here, I think he has adequate evidence to re-open his case based on statements by a South African, rainbow nation, official who said that when returned to South Africa he will suffer the indignity of his false claims.  There was no follow-up comment from the official that assured Huntley that he will be protected by the government.  Sounded to me like an open invitation for open-season on Huntley.

In my opinion, Huntley committed the ultimate sin when he claimed racist persecution can be directed at whites too.  I imagine the UNHCR having fits over this case.

Canada: Ugandan refugee got rich by stealing coins every day

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is a really old story and I don’t know why it was published just today in Canada, but it’s definitely worth a read.

From the Edmonton Journal:

This city has spawned many cunning and crafty con artists, but few were as colourful as Salim Kara.

It was 14 years ago that the Ugandan refugee made headlines, but his crime shocked an entire city.
Kara stole nearly $2.4 million from Edmontonians — and he did it one coin at a time.

Hired in 1981 to repair light rail transit fare boxes, he began pilfering coins almost immediately. When loonies were introduced in 1987, he must have thought he hit the jackpot, boosting his take to $900 a day.

For 13 years, he stole, and despite a couple of audits and an incriminating videotape, he got away with it.

Neighbours wondered why a man who lived in a million dollar home in posh Whitemud Creek drove to work in a dilapidated 1977 Chev Malibu, a vehicle that was almost 17 years old when he was finally arrested in Sept. 27, 1994.

Read it all to see the African’s detailed scam and how he got away with it for so long.  I wonder what he is doing now, the article doesn’t say.

Canada: Gang member deported from Canada—to Somalia!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, apparently dropped right in the heart of Mogadishu!

Guess that will teach ’em!

From the Ottawa Citizen:

A 25-year-old street gang member, who came to Ottawa from Somalia at the age of nine, has been deported to that country in an operation praised by Public Safety Minister Vic Toews.

But the father of Omar Ahmed, a former Ridgemont High School student, is furious at the treatment of his son.

Abdi Farah told the Citizen that his son was dropped last week in the lawless Somali capital, Mogadishu, despite assurances he says he was given from Canadian officials that he would be flown to Bosaso, a city in the more stable state of Puntland.

A spokesman for the Canada Border Services Agency would neither confirm nor deny the story.

Omar Ahmed, the ghost

Ahmed has admitted being a member of a notorious Ottawa street gang, the Ledbury Banff Crips. He was known on the street as “Ghost.”

Ahmed has been convicted of a series of crimes, including possession of crack cocaine for the purpose of trafficking, assault, mischief and uttering threats.

According to an Ottawa police report, the LBC gang uses guns and other weapons to aggressively defend its turf for cocaine trafficking.

Readers this is a big deal, normally refugees are not returned to terrorist countries and I saw another story on this case indicating Amnesty International was now involved.  But, I was impressed that Canada must be getting really serious about refugees and other immigrants who commit crimes and the public is probably figuring—good get them off the street and deported.   Why should we pay for their incarceration in Canada, they must be asking.

The “ghost” is scared

“He was in a very critical condition,” Farah said. “They just left him in the airport.”

Farah said he has spoken with his son five times since he returned to Somalia. He’s now living with relatives in Galkayo, an area recently scarred by inter-clan violence.

“He’s OK, he’s a little bit scared,” said Farah.

Canada has more Somali criminals in the pipeline and ready to return to Africa.

Canadian official, Jason Kenney, zings Catholic Bishops

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

You go guy! The Catholic Sentinel reported two days ago on an exchange between the Canadian bishops and Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism on the issue of human smuggling.

I laughed because I cannot imagine any American politician slamming the powerful (with your taxpayer dollars) US Conference of Catholic Bishops as Kenney does here calling the bishops part of the “immigration industry!”   Alas, in Canada, and unlike the US, they are having the much needed knock-down-drag-em-out discussion on refugees and asylum seekers while we (and the media) sweep any discussion of reform under the rug.  [Note to our critics:  this is why we write this blog, to counter the glossing-over that is going on in most media circles and within our government about legal immigration problems.]

OTTAWA, Ontario — Jason Kenney, minister of citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism, has fired back at Canada’s bishops who criticized his recently introduced anti-human smuggling bill.

The views expressed by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops’ justice and peace commission in a Nov. 25 letter reflect a “long tradition of ideological bureaucrats who work for the bishops’ conference producing political letters signed by pastors who may not have specialized knowledge in certain areas of policy,” Kenney said in an interview.

The bishops’ intervention underscores the reason why “the church makes the detailed application of moral principles in public policy the prudential responsibility of legislators who have a technical knowledge of how to apply the principles,” he said.

The bishops warned that portions of the Preventing Human Smugglers From Abusing Canada’s Immigration System Act now before the House of Commons might contravene international and Canadian law concerning the rights of refugees.

The bishops reminded Kenney that national interests and security concerns should not trump human dignity.

“We believe that human smuggling undermines human dignity,” Kenney said. “It’s an industry of profiteers who sell people an illegal service to smuggle them to countries in the most dangerous way possible.

Fake grassroots coalitions in the immigration industry!

Kenney suggested that the bishops’ conference staff members who write letters on public policy issues or the bishops themselves bring their concerns to government officials rather than “cut and paste” arguments circulating in “fake grassroots coalitions” of “special interest groups in the immigration industry.”

Kenney also said the bishops’ conference has not said anything on the 20 percent increase in the resettlement of refugees even though the program is “hugely unpopular politically.”

Readers, when envisioning human traffickers, think about groups like the US federal refugee contractor, Church World Service, having one of its subcontractors arrested taking Haitians illegally across the Canadian border, here, in 2007.