Iranian-Canadians Outraged as at least 100 Accounts Closed by TD Bank

Posted on July 13, 2012 by CICS Immigration Team

View of Tehran, Iran at night. Being a party to a financial transaction to or from family in Iran was enough to get the accounts of some TD Bank customers closed. (Babak Farrokh)

After a report last week by the Ottawa Citizen detailing the case of several Iranian-Canadians who had their bank accounts closed by TD Bank with little to no explanation, it has emerged that the scale of the closures is much larger than the initial report indicated.

At least one hundred Canadians of Iranian descent have come forward in the last week reporting that they have had their accounts closed by TD, in an attempt by the financial institution to enforce economic sanctions against Iran put in place by the Harper government last year.

The Canadian government has had targeted sanctions on individuals tied the Iranian government since 2007, but new broad-based sanctions, enacted in November 2011 under the Special Economic Sanctions Act (SEPA), created a prohibition against any financial transaction by a Canadian resident or institution with any account at a financial institution in Iran, subject to a few exceptions, including personal remittances of values less than forty thousand dollars.

It has been left to each Canadian financial institution to interpret and decide how to comply with the new sanctions, and TD Bank has stated in letters to customers whose accounts it has closed that it believes the sanctions prohibit it from “providing any financial services to, or for the benefit of Iran, or any one in Iran”.

Many in the Iranian-Canadian community are furious about the closures. One affected TD customer, Pooya Sadeghi, created a Facebook page, Condemn TD Bank in their Treatment of clients with Iranian Background, after TD closed an account he shared with his wife and her parents.

On the Facebook page, a commenter, Nilofar Shidmehr, expressed her fear that Canadians of Iranian descent could be targeted by ethnic laws like those that affected Japanese-Canadians during World War 2:

We should do everything to stop this asap. Imagine what happens if there will be a war and the Canadian government sends us to an internment, like they sent Japanese-Canadians to. Is anyone knows some human rights organization which can help? I think this case can be considered as human rights abuse.

There was also blame put on the Harper government for the sanctions. “TD Bank is small potatoes. The real problem is Harper and his thugs in government who are behind all this,” commented Poyan Nahrvar.

In an interview with CICS News, Kaveh Shahrooz, a lawyer and vice-president of the Iranian Canadian Congress, and a harsh critic of the Iranian government, denounced the sanctions’ indiscriminate effect. “The Iranian government is a brutal regime that has killed many people in Iran, and to the extent that sanctions can prevent their agents from operating, we have no problem with that, but they need to differentiate between ordinary Iranians and regime agents.”

In regards to TD’s closure of customer accounts, Mr. Shahrooz said: “we believe [the sanctions] are being over-zealously applied.” The ICC is set to meet TD executives in about 10 days, at which point Mr. Shahrooz says they hope that TD will agree to put in place a process whereby the people affected can be told why their accounts were closed.

Study: Vancouver is North America’s Second Most Congested City

Posted on July 11, 2012 by CICS Immigration Team

TomTom, a provider of automotive navigation products and services, has released its first quarterly congestion index, and it puts Vancouver in second place behind Los Angeles in a ranking of North American cities by their level of traffic congestion.

The next most congested Canadian cities, Toronto and Ottawa, place ninth and tenth, with vehicle commutes taking 47 percent and 55 percent longer during the morning peak period than non-congested, or free-flow, periods, respectively. Commutes in both cities take an average of 22 percent longer due to congestion during all hours than during free-flow periods.

In contrast, vehicle commutes in Vancouver and Los Angeles take 30 and 33 percent longer at all hours due to congestion, respectively.

Commuting times in Vancouver are on average 30 percent longer due to traffic according to TomTom's congestion index report (MagnusL3D)

As the final destination for nearly 14 percent of Canadian immigrants, Vancouver has seen rapid population growth in recent years, which has increased congestion on its roads and highways. Many natural choke points, due to geography inundated by coast line, has also contributed to long traffic delays.

Fewer Test-Takers Passing Canadian Citizenship Exam

Posted on July 10, 2012 by CICS Immigration Team

Citizens take the oath (Government of Canada)

Since the federal government increased the passing grade on the Canadian citizenship exam from 12/20 to 15/20 in 2010 and increased the number of topics that the test covers, failure rates have nearly quadrupled, from approximately 4 percent in 2009, to 15 percent in 2011, according to a report by Cary Mills of the Globe and Mail.

Mills notes that the increase in exam difficulty is affecting certain communities more than others, for example pushing failure rates for Afghan-born immigrants from 21 percent in the year before the exam changes, to nearly 50 percent in the year after, and pushing those for Vietnamese-born immigrants from 14.8 percent before the exam, to 41.2 percent after.

Immigrants from Australia, England and the United States meanwhile have continued to fare very well on the exam, with only 2 percent failing every year. This indicates that higher language proficiency requirements are the most important result of the increase in the difficulty of the exam.

The Harper government has made proficiency in an official Canadian language a more important part of getting both permanent residency status and citizenship in recent years, including changing the eligibility requirements for the important Federal Skilled Worker Program in 2010 to require a passing grade on an English or French language test to qualify for permanent residence.

Canadians 2nd Most Optimistic About Economy After Brazilians in New Poll

Posted on July 6, 2012 by CICS Immigration Team

A view of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil's largest city. Brazilians were on average the most optimistic about their country's economy outlook of the nationalities polled in a recent survey of 13 countries (Ramon)

The results of a new poll commissioned by the International Trade Union Confederation show Canadians behind only Brazilians as the most optimistic citizens of any of the thirteen countries included in the poll.

The poll covered the adult populations of Canada, Brazil, United States, Mexico, France, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, South Africa, Bulgaria, Japan, Belgium, and the United Kingdom, and interviewed 1,000 respondents in each country.

It found Greeks and Japanese the most pessimistic and second most pessimistic. The last place showing for Greece and Japan is unsurprising given Greece’s recent economic crisis, and Japan’s two decade long economic stagnation, mounting national debt, and the widespread destruction caused by the 2011 earthquake, including continuing problems with radiation leakage from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant.

The majority of people in all but two of the countries said they believe their country is headed in the wrong direction. In the US, only 35 percent were optimistic about the direction their country was headed, far lower than the 61 percent of Canadians who said the same. Among Brazilians, 69 percent of respondents said they were optimistic about the direction their country is headed.

Company Gets Fined $12,000 for Hiring Illegal Immigrants

Posted on July 5, 2012 by CICS Immigration Team

The "Three Amigos" worked at a Shell gas station in Thompson, the largest city in northern Manitoba (Bobak Ha'Eri)

In a case more reminiscent of American immigration woes, a Manitoba company has been fined $12,000 for hiring three Filipinos in Canada illegally.

The workers, Antonio Laroya, Arnisito Gaviola and Ermie Zotomayor, began working for a Shell gas station owned by 5896941 Manitoba Limited in northern Manitoba after they were laid off from their jobs in Alberta.

The company owner, Adnan Chaudhary, attended the civil motion.

The three Filipino workers, nicknamed the “Three Amigos” in their Thompson, Manitoba community, were ordered deported from Canada in May 2011 and barred from returning for one year.

They are now attempting to get work permits to resume working in Canada.

Nearly Three Quarters of Canadians Oppose Increasing Immigration Levels

Posted on July 4, 2012 by CICS Immigration Team

Immigrants make up 40 percent of the population of the Greater Vancouver Region (GVR), pictured above. Public opinion in Ontario and British, the provinces with the most immigrants, was the most critical of immigration, with 38 percent saying it has a negative impact on the country. (Image provided by Michael G. Khmelnitsky)

A new public opinion poll shows that 72 percent of Canadians oppose increasing immigration levels, a sign that Canada is following in suit a broader trend among Western countries of public sentiment turning against immigration.

Despite the opposition to raising the number of immigrants admitted each year, Canadians on average still view immigration as having more of a positive impact than a negative one on Canada, which contrasts with public opinion in other western countries like the UK, where 68 percent of respondents in a recent poll said they believed immigration has a negative effect on their country.

Canada has historically had the most favourable public opinion toward immigration among OECD countries, and as a percentage of its population, has the highest immigration levels in the world.

The Ipsos Reid poll used a sample of 1,101 Canadians and has a margin of error of 3 percentage points

Another Former Immigration Official Convicted of Fraud

Posted on July 3, 2012 by CICS Immigration Team

Barriero worked at the CIC office on 5343 Dundas Street until 2010 when he was suspended from his job (GOOGLE STREET VIEW)

Less than a week after the conviction of one former senior Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) official on fraud and breach of trust charges for accepting bribes, another has plead guilty to three counts of breach of trust and three counts of fraud, for taking up to $6,000 in bribes in exchange for using his position at CIC to approve applications for permanent residence in Canada.

George Gonsalves Barriero, who worked for CIC for a total of 12 years, was promoted to a senior position with the authority to approve applications or refer them for further risk assessments in 2005, and that is when it is alleged he began asking permanent resident applicants in the hispanic community for bribes.

He collected $6,000 in 2010 from two PR applicants before being reported to the police by the third applicant he approached for a bribe.