#1. SUPER HIGH RATE OF REFUSAL GOES ON AT CHANDIGARH, NEW DELHI
Who’s to blame for the super high rate of refusal of visa and permits at the Canadian Consulate General at Chandigarh and the Canadian High Commission at New Delhi?
Part of it is definitely the extremely high level of fraud documents that Canadian officials have encountered at Chandigarh. And that can pose a real dilemma even for the most sympathetic immigration officers.
But, for sure, there seems to be an element of racism, too, at different levels – from the federal government itself to the officials posted at our missions abroad.
Only a thorough investigation can clear this up.
Certified Immigration Consultant Kuldeep Bansal of Overseas Immigration Services Inc. provided me with some statistics he got from an Access to Information Act request from Citizenship and Immigration Canada for the first quarter of this year – and the comparison of Chandigarh and New Delhi refusal figures with those of Singapore, Abu Dhabi and Manila are mind-blowing.
Take the refusals for work permits: at Chandigarh, there were 962 failed applications and only 181 that were approved. On the other hand, at Singapore, there were only 10 failed applications and 64 that were approved; at Abu Dhabi, there were only 113 failed applications as compared to 314 that were approved; and in Manila, there were 877 failed applications but 1,986 were approved.
There’s the same high rate of refusal in the case of student permits: at Chandigarh, there were 411 failed applications as compared to only 143 that were approved. In contrast, at Singapore, there were three failed applications and 17 that were approved; in Abu Dhabi, 64 applications were rejected, but 131 approved; and at Manila, there were 15 failed applications as compared to 47 that were approved.
In the Live-in Caregiver Program, there were 129 failed applications as compared to just 22 that were approved. However, at Singapore, the corresponding figures were 67 (failed) and 58 (passed), at Abu Dhabi, 42 (failed) and 58 (passed), and at Manila, 582 (failed) and 817 (passed).
In the Temporary Resident Visa category, at Chandigarh, while 1,939 applications being rejected, 1,821 being approved. On the other hand, the corresponding figures for Singapore were 27 (failed) and 398 (passed), for Abu Dhabi: 779 (failed) and 1,865 (passed), and for Manila: 1,765 (failed) and 6,321 (passed).
Indeed, there appears to be a heavy bias towards Manila for whatever reasons.
Is the Conservative government anti-Indian?
Last year in The VOICE of October 20, I wrote an article titled – “Fraud Documents Flood Canadian Consulate General in Chandigarh – Racists Find Excuse to Attack Office” - I carried details about the appalling rackets in Punjab.
However, at the same time, I pointed out: “These ignoramuses (those attacking the creation of the Chandigarh Consulate General) should also know that MOST immigrants to Canada are from Punjab and it was absolutely necessary to open a consulate general at Chandigarh because of the problems they had been facing going all the way to New Delhi, especially during the brutal summer months. All these factors were reported in The VOICE at the time. Indo-Canadians are also paying taxes and are as Canadian as white mainstream reporters. They have a right to services, too.
“My point is that if there are problems - and these were anticipated - you have to tackle them, not run away from them. I am sure our Canadian diplomats are not so incompetent.”
#2. VISA REFUSAL: CANADA AND INDIA SHOULD ESTABLISH SOME TRANSPARENCY
The recent news item in a newspaper in Punjab about a Congress Party MLA – Ajaib Singh Bhatti – being denied a visa to Canada has sparked off yet another round of debate about the contentious issue of visa denials by both Canada and India.
Level-headed Indo-Canadians suggest that both India and Canada should state clearly why a visa has been denied to someone, so that the person concerned knows what’s going on and can pursue the matter in a timely fashion to clear up any misunderstandings if need be.
There are no doubt idiots in the immigration, security and foreign departments and ministries in both countries who act like gods – they are arrogant control freaks. And these guys need to be tamed or kicked out. There should be transparency in order to avoid abuse of power.
There are, of course, many who want to abuse the system, but innocent people should not be made to suffer because of them.
Take the case I reported just last January about India refusing entry to Punjabi journalist Harkirat Singh Kular of Surrey’s Punjabi Guardian newspaper on January 6 at Delhi’s international airport after first issuing him a visa. Interestingly, he had been allowed entry to India on the very same visa twice before. He visited that country on his Indian passport in 1988, 1991 and 1992. Then he got a Canadian passport and went there in 1998, 2001, 2004 and last year.
When Kular asked the Indian authorities why he was being denied entry, they told him to get it all cleared up by the Indian Consulate General in Vancouver and that “people report about you from there.”
Kular told me this week that he still hasn’t been told why he can’t enter India.
As I wrote then: “This is a very serious matter and the Indian authorities must let Kular and the media know exactly why he was denied entry into India, because this treatment could be meted out to just anyone against whom any person lodged some frivolous or unsubstantiated allegations.”
But don’t expect thick-skinned, thick-skulled bureaucrats and spineless politicians in India and Canada to rectify matters anytime soon.
#3. INDO-CANADIAN INFLUENCE KEEPS GROWING IN SURREY, ABBOTSFORD
The tsunami response by young Indo-Canadians to Jazzy B’s performance at Surrey’s Fusion Festival two weeks ago seemed to unnerve many white guys in Surrey, I am told. The enthusiastic awakening to their own culture was so graphically displayed for all to witness. There was justifiable pride and a spectacular show of Indo-Canadian power – the right kind of power – in a city that has been notorious for its racism against Indo-Canadians in the past.
After all, there are now well over 100,000 Indo-Canadians, comprising more than 27 per cent of the total population, in Surrey – B.C.’s second largest city that is expected to be Numero Uno pretty soon. And the community is a prosperous one.
That is why Indo-Canadians MUST assert themselves at the civic level of politics and try and win more and more seats on the Council and the School Board. In a few years, we should even have an Indo-Canadian mayor. There is no dearth of suitable, talented candidates. But our guys seem more obsessed with being MLAs and MPs.
Meanwhile, a report by the Conference Board of Canada says Abbotsford – that has more than 23,000 Indo-Canadians, comprising more than 19 per cent of the total population - will probably have the highest growth rate among 14 small and mid-sized cities across Canada in 2008. That is reflected in the number of building permits that has increased by 75 per cent in the first six months of the year.
I think more of our guys – both men and women – should also go in for jobs in the police. We need more and more role models to inspire our youth and keep them far, far away from gangs and drugs.
#4. FEWER INDO-CANADIANS GETTING KILLED IN GANG VIOLENCE
It seems like only yesterday when almost everyone who was being shot dead in gang violence was an Indo-Canadian. Every time the police or the media announced that someone had been shot or killed, Indo-Canadians would prepare themselves for the worst.
To make matters worse, the highly biased coverage of negative news about Indo-Canadians by the white-controlled mainstream media – with the Vancouver Sun taking the notorious lead in this – made life a living hell for many of us, with non-Indo-Canadians asking us stupid questions that implied we were a community of criminals!
The VOICE’s continuous attacks on this type of coverage apparently put some sense into the heads of thee editors of the Vancouver Sun, whose dubious example the rest of mainstream media tended to follow (‘The blind leading the blind,’ as the Bible puts it!) The Vancouver Sun’s coverage has changed dramatically – and one sees more balanced coverage. In fact, one can actually enjoy reading it now!
And thank God, its reporters are now letting readers know that non-Indo-Canadian criminals are more prolific and powerful than Indo-Canadian criminals. Their coverage of gangs has been pretty good (apparently with lots of help from Sgt. Shinder Kirk of the integrated gang outfit.)
Just in the past few days, there were a string of shootings – all involving non-Indo-Canadians. We thought that the murder in southeast Vancouver on Monday night might be that of an Indo-Canadian because that’s where most Indo-Canadians reside. However, we breathed a gargantuan sigh of relief to learn it wasn’t one of ours!
The Province newspaper, reporting on that murder on Wednesday, carried a list of some of the victims of targeted shootings this year: only one Indo-Canadian name figured in the list of 13. The rest were either white guys or East Asians (Chinese or Vietnamese).
#5. WHITE RACISTS’ THREAT: CALGARY POLICE SLEEPING?
Just last week, we reported about the white racist group Aryan Guard, with about 25 members, was offering to pay the damage deposit on rent for anyone who wanted to go to Calgary to join them.
Now comes a report about a cowardly knife attack by a group of five white supremacists on a 20-year-old black woman at a Calgary LRT station!
What the hell are police in Calgary doing? Are their white boys sympathetic to the racists or are they racists themselves?
According to a Citytv report, the spineless racists armed with a “Rambo-style” knife shouted racial slurs at the lone defenseless woman.
The victim, Peta-Gay Smith, 20, said: “"I was so scared. It was the first time anyone had ever called me a nigger but that was the last thing on my mind, I was scared for my life, I'd never had anyone come at me like that."
Fortunately, a courageous bystander intervened and punched the armed goon before he could stab her.
Smith said: “I'd probably be dead if it wasn't for that." The poor woman ran away, crying and fearful that she might be attacked again by those scumbags. In fact, she was so petrified that she left for Ontario the next day.
WHAT A DISGRACE TO CALGARY!
Calgary police must be the highest paid cops in the world for snoozing on their job!
I remember warning Indo-Canadians about the danger of white racists back in the mid-1990s and many of our guys mocked me, accusing me of being sensational.
But these morons were shocked when white racists brutally stomped Surrey’s Guru Nanak Sikh Temple’s caretaker Nirmal Singh Gill to death in the temple’s parking lot in January, 1998.
Racism won’t go away by PRETENDING it doesn’t exist, you meatheads!
Indo-Canadians must not cower before these white racists – neither should we be racist towards others like some young idiots were in New Westminster last April.
#6. FBI: PUNJABI AND URDU ‘CRITICAL’ TO INVESTIGATIONS
This week, I came across an interesting press release from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) about their “language busters” or linguists.
9/11 seems to have really woken the Americans up to global and multicultural realities. Two South Asian languages – Punjabi and Urdu – are among the nine languages the FBI now considers as being “critical” to their investigations.
The FBI said: “The Bureau has 1,400 linguists who work in 114 locations domestically and overseas. We consider nine languages critical to our investigations—Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Korean, Punjabi, Russian, Spanish, Urdu, and Vietnamese. But FBI linguists may also be called upon to provide foreign language and cultural expertise in many more languages.”
Margaret Gulotta, who heads the FBI’s foreign language program, said: “Today’s linguists, experts in the cultural and historical aspects of their languages, have access to the same intelligence information that our agents and analysts have, which helps them put the data they are working with into an even more useful context, particularly in our counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations.”
The FBI said: “Since 9/11, we have had a huge influx of linguists, increasing our capability in all languages by 77 percent. And we’ll be hiring hundreds more over the next several years. … Another post-9/11 note: we have increased our language capability in Arabic by 310 percent among linguists and 90 percent among agents.”
- Rattan Mall
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