CANADA BEGINS BIOMETRIC DATA COLLECTION

Canada finally joins the 21st century...the US and Australia have been doing this for years....

Biometrics data collection: Canadian visa applicants from 29 countries will be fingerprinted - thestar.com

Biometrics data collection: Canadian visa applicants from 29 countries will be fingerprinted

Published on Friday December 07, 2012

Nicholas Keung Immigration Reporter

Starting in 2013, visitors to Canada from 29 countries and a territory must pay an extra $85 for Ottawa to collect their fingerprints and photos when they apply for visas. The countries are mostly from Asia, Africa and the Middle East, but the biometrics requirement will also extend to Haiti, Jamaica and Colombia. It is yet another measure Ottawa is imposing under the Protecting Canada’s Immigration System Act passed in June to tighten border entry into Canada. Earlier this week, Ottawa exercised its powers from the same law to designate five carloads of Romanian refugee claimants crossing the Quebec border as “irregular arrivals,” stripping them of the basic rights afforded to other asylum seekers. “Biometrics will strengthen and modernize Canada’s immigration system,” Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said Friday. “Our doors are open to legitimate travellers and, through the use of biometrics, we will also be able to protect the safety and security of Canadians.” According to the Canada Gazette, the countries were selected for their volumes or rates of visa refusals, removal orders, refugee claims, and nationals arriving without proper documentation or attempting to travel under false identities, as well as their relevance to Canada’s foreign and trade policy objectives. About 20 per cent of the 300,000 visa-required applicants — visitors, students or temporary foreign workers — would have to submit their biometric information in the first year. Children, the elderly and diplomats are exempt. The applicants must present themselves at a biometric collection service point, a third-party visa application centre contracted by Ottawa, to provide “all available fingerprints and have a photograph taken.” Their fingerprints would be sent to the RCMP for storage and checked against the fingerprint records of refugee claimants, previous deportees, persons with Canadian criminal records and previous temporary resident applicants before a visa decision is made. Border guards would then check the biometrics information again at the border. The $85 fee is expected to recover 50 per cent of the operational cost. A cost-benefit analysis estimated the plan would save the federal and provincial governments $106 million over 10 years from “reduced negative refugee claims, fewer removals and detentions.” Those affected by the new rules include: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Bangladesh, Burma, Cambodia, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Laos, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Vietnam and Yemen.

BIOMETRICS FOR PERMANENT RESIDENTS COMING SOON

A sensible idea to combat impersonation and to ensure compliance with the residency obligation. This is a serious problem. I know of cases in which people impersonated residents and even filed tax returns in their name, while the resident was abroad.


Feds to consider biometrics for permanent residents to combat fraud


Feds to consider biometrics for permanent residents to combat fraud


By Tobi Cohen, Postmedia News
April 26, 2012


OTTAWA — Immigration Minister Jason Kenney says he supports extending biometric ID requirements to permanent residents and would consider amending his current omnibus immigration bill to make it happen.

"I think in principle, we should be doing everything we reasonably can to identify visitors or immigrants and ensure they don't represent a threat to Canada's safety, so biometrics is the best technical tool at our disposal and I think in principle, that it should be applied to not just temporary but also permanent residents," Kenney said Thursday after testifying before a Commons committee reviewing Bill C-31, the Protecting Canada's Immigration Act.

After hinting at it during the meeting, he confirmed the government was "considering" amending the bill to ensure it covers permanent residents.

Right now, the provision that would grant Citizenship and Immigration the legal authority to collect fingerprints and digital photographs starting next year only applies to those entering Canada on a visitor visa, work permit or study visa.

Kenney was on the hot seat Thursday as Commons committee members grilled him on his controversial refugee bill for the first time.

Bill C-31 seeks to deport so-called "bogus" refugee claimants more quickly, clamp down on human smugglers and require certain visa holders to turn over biometric data. The bill would fast-track refugee applications from so-called "safe" countries deemed unlikely to produce bona fide asylum claimants and bar those who receive a negative decision from filing an appeal.

It's billed as an improvement to the Balanced Refugee Reform Act adopted during the previous Parliament but not yet implemented. That bill was approved with much fanfare after the then-minority Conservatives reached a consensus with the NDP. The new bill, however, effectively reintroduces the contentious elements that were omitted — a move that has the official Opposition New Democrats crying foul.

Critics also say the proposed legislation puts too much power in the hands of the minister and raised further concerns Thursday about a provision that could have the unintended consequence of revoking a refugee's permanent residence due to improved circumstances in their country of origin.

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Kenney said the provision is actually aimed at "streamlining" the current two-step process for revoking the status of those found to have obtained their refugee status fraudulently and that he's open to amendments that might clarify the situation.

He also rejected suggestions that detaining individuals who enter Canada by way of illegal smuggling operations and barring even the bona fide refugees among them from obtaining permanent resident status for five years violates international agreements and creates a two-tier system.

BIOMETRICS AND VISA FRAUD

This is a very interesting article appeared in IT NEWS for Australian Business. Canada should follow suit.

Immigration rolls out Unisys biometrics to stop visa fraud - Security - Technology - News - iTnews.com.au

Immigration rolls out biometrics to stop visa fraud

Nate Cochrane Dec 1, 2010 1:45 PM

International network to root out identity criminals captures face and fingerprint signatures.

The Department of Immigration is rolling out a $69 million biometrics solution to crack down on visa fraud that required applicants here and overseas to submit to face and fingerprint scans, Minister Chris Bowen said today.

The four-year project backed by a deed of agreement and foreshadowed in February by the Gillard Government kicked off this week at department offices in Adelaide, the ACT, Brisbane, Cairns, Darwin, Hobart, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney and British Government visa application centres in Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Yemen, UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

It was expected to be expanded to centres in seven countries in Europe, Africa, Middle East and Asia next year.

Melbourne and Sydney have been collecting voluntary biometric scans but this will now be mandatory, the Minister said.

The scheme will apply to those lodging applications on paper for visas overseas and protection visas in Australia; online applications were exempted.

At the unveiling of the Unisys solution at the department's Sydney offices, Bowen said the decision to piggyback Britain’s Border Protection Agency biometric network for offshore processing saved money on building a dedicated network and would cut fraud in countries at risk of abuse by third parties applying for Australian protection visas.

“Biometrics is an important tool against identity fraud and fraudulent visa applications,” Bowen said.

“Australia is significantly expanding the use of biometric testing offshore and on-shore. [Applicants] will be required to provide a digital facial photograph and a scan of their fingerprints as part of their visa application, regardless of their nationality.”

The rollout countries were based on a desire to test the biometric system, countries that posed the greatest risks from those applying for Australian visas from outside their borders and infrastructure availability, Bowen said.

The Government estimated that identity fraud costs the economy $1.1 billion a year although representatives at the announcement couldn’t quantify the cost or risks associated with such crimes perpetrated by visa applicants and which the system intended to root out.

Unisys refused to reveal how much it was charging the Government for its portion of the off-the-shelf solution, the price of which included paying solutions providers, department staff, business processes and workflow customisation. Unisys has supplied such technologies to the Government since 2006.

It was a pragmatic decision to ride over the top of the British network and databases will be checked against those owned by the governments of the US, Britain, Canada and New Zealand, Bowen said.

Although no personally identifiable data would leave Australia and it would be encrypted while in transit it resided in plain text on the department’s identification services repository.

No Australian information was stored in client PCs, endpoint devices or foreign government repositories.

The Minister would not say which Australian Government databases would be available to other countries’ governments or whether US and Australian state drivers’ licences would be rolled into the international framework.

It was believed that subsequent data sharing would be subject to normal law-enforcement memorandums of understanding and processes.

Access to the data by Immigration Department officers will be based on roles within each site such that a low-level operator, for instance, may see an applicant’s name but not their photo.

It was believed that the decision was prompted by growing anxiousness on the part of governments, especially Britain’s, struggling to verify the identities of those seeking access to its borders especially under UN humanitarian provisions such as protection visas. Japan, for instance, requires travellers to submit to face and finger scans on arrival.

Although the Minister said the lessons learned would be applied to future Government biometrics deployments he said it was up to other Australian governments and Federal Government departments to make their own decisions as to their appropriateness.