nowthat

Interesting news, it turns out it's not only the boat people who (try to) enter(ed) Australia sans proper documents:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-2...-fraud/4833710

The statistics quoted goes back as far as 2008

keel

This has been known about by immigration for years.

I remember when I filled in my emigration forms 11 years ago there was a note that only original documents were to be sent for assessment for applicants from India, no certified photocopies would be accepted. If you were from the UK, or Europe, certified copies were fine.

Keel

nowthat

But it is whopping 50 percent, it's overwhelming

The internal audits show fraud rates approaching 50 per cent, and an Immigration Department struggling to properly identify people who are entering the country

Students ,skilled workers 457ers - meaning HALF of them is here illegally
And they keep coming ...

Pollyana

If you read the whole article you will see it is based on a Freedom of Info request covering 2008/9/10. It is not saying that half of all migrants are here fraudulently.As anyone who has been around here for a while will know, and as DIAC state in the article, there have been huge changes since then, tightening up on student visas being one thing. The most recent was an announcement that Spouse Visas were to be scrutinised more carefully for fraudulent applications.

It does bear out what has been said in other news reports over the last few years too, that a large part of the problem is with the Indian subcontinent, due to "the ease with which identity fraud is possible in India". Those of us who have witnessed not only widespread abuse of student visas, but also the way the system was abused by many depositing the $100,000 in order to gain extra points for a GSM visa can hardly be surprised by this - the latter involved many allegations of fraud, with a large percentage linked to Indian applicants.
And on a smaller scale, those of us who post in the Immigration forum on here have seen many people, often (but not always) from that part of the world, asking for help to get round various visa requirements.

I feel sorry for those who are genuine, yet are viewed by suspicion by others due to the actions of the fraudsters.

lapin_windstar

Neither the article nor the underlying documents linked to identify the criteria for the selection of cases which were audited. If they were selected on the basis of being high-risk cases, then a 50% rate of defect in some way would not necessarily suggest a high rate of fraud across applications as a whole; if the cases were selected entirely randomly from the whole caseload, that would be a different matter entirely.

Pollyana

I would hazard a guess that they were looking at applications from one geographical area, judging by the comments in the article. However without reading the background info its impossible to know for sure.