. Foreign immigration remains the principal growth factor, reflected in the fact that less than half of all residents in the Vancouver area speak English at home. The application process for Canadian documents, including passports and local birth certificates, is fairly well-controlled. Post has not seen cases of fake Canadian permanent resident card, which has similar security features to the U.S. legal permanent resident card. However, local authorities recently acknowledged that counterfeiting is becoming a major problem in the province and post has seen cases of individuals obtaining British Columbia identification cards when they were not entitled to them. ¶4. (U) NIV FRAUD. Vancouver and Calgary detected fraud most notably in the H1B category. ¶5. (U) Although visitor visa (B1/B2) fraud appears less organized and less complicated, there continues to be incidences where applicants try to cover up prior orders of removal or unlawful presence in the U.S. They do so by changing names or other identifying information after leaving the U.S. and entering Canada either as immigrants or asylum claimants. Usually, these applicants have only recently arrived in Canada to seek legal status after residing unlawfully in the U.S. for years. They will also present brand-new passports to hide their previous travel. If IAFIS and IDENT do not catch these applicants, their American regional accent or better-than-average English will reveal that they have been residing in the U.S. for a long time. ¶6. (U) Since Calgary and Vancouver rarely see first-time H1B applicants who are not landed immigrants in Canada, there are usually no concerns about an applicant's skill or experience. That being said, during this reporting period Vancouver witnessed a string of Turkish applicants applying for first-time H1B visas. In most of the cases, their education was from Turkey and the applicants had come to apply in Vancouver directly from the U.S., where they had been most often been studying ESL. While the H1B petitions were for teaching positions at charter schools in the United States, most applicants had no prior teaching experience and the schools were listed as related to Fethullah Gulen. Post was in contact with FPMs in Turkey for guidance in how to proceed with those cases. ¶7. (U) Most H1B fraud in Vancouver occurs when applicants come to renew their H1B visas and the consular officers discover that they are actually doing something other than working for their Petitioner, or they have not been paid what they should and we discover that they are being "benched". Vancouver has seen fewer fraudulent H1B cases in this reporting period. One possible reason for this is that post significantly reduced U.S.-based renewal appointments during the summer because of staffing shortages. Another reason is that Vancouver has been reviewing VANCOUVER 00000261 002.2 OF 004 H1B cases much more closely since last year. By monitoring H1B bulletin boards and chat rooms last year, Vancouver realized that it was being targeted as an "easier" post in which to apply.
NOW FOR SOME LINKS TO TURKISH CANADIAN SITES:
According to the Canada 2006 Census, there was 43,700 Turks living in Canada; the majority were concentrated in Toronto (14,970), Montreal (10,345), Vancouver (3,380), Ottawa (2,455), Hamilton (1,590), Calgary (1,305), and Edmonton (1,250).[1] However, the actual number of Turkish Canadians is believed to be considerably higher,[5] as ethnic Turks have also immigrated to Canada via Bulgaria, Cyprus, and the Republic of Macedonia.[5] Statistics on Bulgarian Turks, Turkish Cypriots, and Macedonian Turks present particular problems because it is unclear how many have immigrated to Canada; they are recorded by their citizenship (i.e. "Bulgarian", "Cypriot", and "Macedonian") rather than their ethnicity.
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