Canadian Gurdwaras Committees gravely concerned with immigration fraud

July 9, 2020

The Honourable Marco Mendicino

Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship

365 Laurier Ave W

Ottawa, ON K1A 1L1

Dear Minister Mendicino,

The British Columbia Gurdwaras Council (BCGC) and Ontario Gurdwaras Committee (OGC) are gravely concerned with immigration fraud cases regarding religious workers being sponsored through illegal means and then being abandoned upon their arrival by registered societies which are profiting from this process. The sharp rise in cases coming forward in the public regarding potential immigrants paying tens of thousands of dollars to these societies in order to secure Work Permits is shocking and undermining the immigration process and laws in Canada.

Gurdwaras in Canada require the ongoing services of religious workers from Punjab and beyond to provide religious services within the communities they serve. There have been longstanding procedures in place to manage the movement of genuine Sikh religious workers in response to fraud. These procedures were designed with input from the various parties involved in this process (including Gurdwaras) to meet the needs for religious workers while ensuring the integrity of the immigration/visa process as well. In April 2012, new procedures were introduced to ensure that there was more control over the issuance of invitations by Gurdwaras in Canada to religious workers. This allowed the ability to track and maintain a record of the number of religious workers at any given Gurdwara in Canada at any given time. Since April 2012, the visa office in Chandigarh annually contacts Gurdwaras in Canada who had hosted religious workers the previous year to obtain updated information on their operations and registration as a charitable organization, as well as an estimate of the number of religious workers required for the coming year. While this process may have seen some early success, there are now hundreads (if not thousands) of registered non-profit societies and charitable societies that operate under false pre-tenses within Canada. It is these societies that are engaging with the immigration process and potential immigrants in fraud, blackmail, and threatening type behavior. This behavior cannot be allowed to continue and stricter measures must be put in place to ensure that innocent individuals do not become victims of immigration fraud and the perpetrators of these offences continue to financially gain from this illegal activity. We call upon the Minister of Immigration to meet with representatives of our organizations to discuss what recourse and action can be taken in this situation at the highest level. Potential immigrants to Canada are often fleeing poverty, state sponsored violence, genocide and oppression and to be further marginalized by this type of illegal and fraudulent behavior through individuals and societies in Canada is unacceptable.

Sincerely,

Moninder Singh, Spokesperson, BCGC

Amarjit Singh Mann, Spokesperson, OGC