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Immigration Medical Fraud Alleged To Be Rampant In China
Canadian officials in Beijing turn a blind eye to reports of immigration fraud, clerk says
By Geoffrey York
BEIJING — Wang Xu, a young clerk at a Chinese government office, was working at his desk one day when his boss approached him with an odd assignment. He was ordered to report to a nearby medical clinic for an X-ray exam – even though he was perfectly healthy.
Puzzled by the order, he assumed it was some kind of routine check-up. But after he and a female colleague submitted to the chest X-rays, he soon discovered the real reason.
Mr. Wang says his boss admitted to him that the X-rays were for friends who had bribed doctors to provide fake documents for their Canadian immigration applications. He says his boss also told him that the fraudulent practice was widespread among Chinese citizens who want to conceal medical problems when they apply to emigrate to Canada.
The case appears to raise questions about corruption in Canada’s immigration procedures in China, the biggest source of immigrants to Canada.
Mr. Wang was so outraged by what happened that he submitted a complaint to the Canadian embassy in Beijing in 2003.
He also obtained e-mails from two Chinese officials who confirmed the fraud.
He told the embassy that he was willing to meet Canadian officials and provide all of his evidence, including his own X-rays. But the embassy never asked to meet him or see his evidence. In an e-mail to Mr. Wang, the embassy said it could not do anything about the case because of “privacy” issues.
When he later discovered that his boss’s friends had successfully emigrated to Canada, Mr. Wang approached The Globe and Mail with documents to support his complaint.
Mr. Wang, now a government employee in Beijing, said he was “very nervous” when he discovered that his own personal X-rays would be submitted to the Canadian embassy to support another person’s emigration application. “To reassure me, my boss told me it was very common and many people do this,” he said. “He was very calm about it, as if it was normal.”
He said his boss told him that his friends needed the fake X-rays because they had marks from tuberculosis that would be exposed by a genuine X-ray, which could prevent them from emigrating to Canada.
Continue at Visalaw International / Globe and Mail
