By our reporter
Melbourne: The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has revealed massive Australian visa fraud by Indian students and workers in the years 2008, 2009 and 2010. These were the years when relations between India and Australia were strained over alleged attacks on Indian students in Melbourne and Sydney. The ABC obtained the visa fraud details through the Freedom of Information Act.
According to the ABC, ” The ABC’s Freedom of Information request took nearly two years – much longer than statutory required periods.When the documents were delivered, they showed wide-scale passport, visa and ID fraud happening in alarming numbers.For a General Skilled Migration visa class, from 23,767 visa lodgements there was a 46.9 per cent fraud rate for 2008/2009.The fraud rate was as high as 51.6 per cent in the third quarter of the 2008/09 financial year.
For Indian student visas, the DIAC documents show a 37 per cent fraud rate from 41,636 lodgements across the same time period.”
“The internal audits show fraud rates approaching 50 per cent, and an Immigration Department struggling to properly identify people who are entering the country.Identity fraud is a significant risk in the Indian caseload given how easily genuine documents with fraudulent details can be obtained,” one document said, ” the report says.
The ABC quotes Immigration Department spokesman Sandi Logan as saying the figures, from the 2008/09 financial year, are troubling.
“Around the periods of 2008, 2009, 2010 the fraud levels were quite considerable, a matter of real concern to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship,” he said.
He says things have since changed.
“We’re quite confident that those people who were issued with a visa … 99.9 per cent are who they say they are and are doing what they said they would do when they were granted that visa.”
However in the papers, it is reported that the Department is nearly powerless to stop identity fraud, because of the low level of technology in Indian passports, the ABC report says.
SEE FULL ABC REPORT AT – http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-22/immigration-audits-reveal-large-scale-visa-fraud/4833710
– SAT News Service
