ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ It has taken 20 years for the government to find this out which I had revealed to the Government in the mid-1980’s through your columns when the Tamils from Sri Lanka were scamming the system, lying their way into Canada, 10,000 hardcore Tamil Tiger terrorists and all. It has been a million dollar business when in 2009 we saw how this stupidity cost our Tax payers $900,000 for the clean up and keeping an eye on the thousands of Tamils who entered Canada as refugees demonstrating in Ottawa for over two weeks in April and May this year, wanting Canada to support their cause of wanting their separate, mono-ethnic Tamil state, Eelam carved out in Sri Lanka. This was beyond the hidden costs of social assistance that Canada forked out to help over 200,000 Tamil refugees.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ In the 80s and 90s a Tamil agent would charge $20,000 a “refugee client” to supply a phoney passport, a visa, resident papers from counterfeiters and an airplane ticket. The purpose of the false documents was to trick agents at air-line check-in counters, as passengers cannot usually board international flights without producing identifications that shows that they have valid travel documents to their country of destination. Once they set foot on Canadian soil, they claim to be refugees running away from persecution in Sri Lanka, but only to make their annual pilgrimage to Sri Lanka for their holidays and visit relatives once they obtain their landed status and a Canadian passport.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ Maclean’s of April 29, 1996, ‘The People Smugglers’ relates this fascinating story about the Tamil refugee claimants in Canada which made a few Tamil millionaires. This was a sure bet how to become a millionaire fooling the Canadian authorities rather than trying their luck buying a Lottery 6/49 ticket or flipping hamburgers at MacDonald outlets.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ Asoka Weerasinghe