They are called immigrant investors. They are at least millionaires in their origin countries. They come from countries such as Irak, Iran, Pakistan. Canada has welcomed 5000 of them in 2008. Close to 50% of them are playing the Canadian immigration system (and Canada knows exactly what’s going on).
In principle the immigrant investor program set up by the Immigration Dept about 20 years ago is very interesting although not very publicized. In a few words if you are rich enough you can “buy” your way to Canadian citizenship by investing some of your money ( 400 000$) in Canada. You can even finance your passport with a bank loan. Needless to say this program has become extremely successful abroad over the years.
But with success came a whole industry of intermediaries ready to game the system and take advantage of it. The majority of scams revolve around ways for immigrant investors to pretend like they live in Canada when in fact they have never set foot there. Just to clarify, in principle any class of immigrant needs to prove that they actually physically reside in Canada in order to benefit from citizenship.
If you are an immigrant investor and want to take advantage of the Canadian immigration dept, there are two ways to “pretend” like you live in Canada. If you have kids you rent out an apartment, you enrol them in college and they live your life for you. If they get contacted by an official they simply say that you are out. If you don’t have kids that you can use as accomplices, there are many “consultants” out there who will be happy to create and live your life in Canada. They will rent out an apartment with your name, they will get all your official papers. They will do the groceries and answer your phone pretending they are you.
The other way to game the Canadian immigration dept is to take advantage of the internal competition that is happening between different provinces to attract immigrant investors. That sometimes can lead to funny situations though. Prince Edward Island province decided to jump in the game two years ago and offered a faster processing time to all Immigrant Investors. All of a sudden, they had more than 200 hundred filthy rich applicants who, because of their love for Prince Edward Island, wanted to settle there with their families. It works because all you need is to express intent to settle there, you don’t actually need to prove that you did it.
It would be fun to see how many multimillionaires Yukon can attract once they start their business immigration scheme.
Anyways, I think it’s perfectly normal for Business Immigrants to try to game the system. What is not acceptable is that Canadian authorities are perfectly aware of what is going on behind the scenes. They even know the addresses of those “consultants” arranging those scams. It would be so simple to spot offenders by integrating the data taken from airports and departures.
A senior representative recently admitted that the only reason the authorities are not doing anything about it is because the system as it is now, generates way too much money for everybody involved. That’s all the financial intermediaries doing the consulting with Immigrant investors. All the banks financing the programs. And of course the Canadian government who made close to 1 Billion $$$ with this program last year.
Somebody wise told me once: “honesty comes with a high opportunity cost”. Obviously in this case honesty is worth less than 1 Billion $$$. For that much money, who can blame them?
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