Jason Kenney, the immigration minister of Canada, describes his country as being at war with unscrupulous Indian immigration consultants who do not shy away from employing every trick in the trade, including marriage of convenience, to exploit the dream of many Indians to visit or emigrate to Canada.
Mr Kenney, who met home minister P. Chidambaram and overseas Indian affairs minister Vayalar Ravi last week, expects the Indian government to make statutory efforts to rein in fraudulent agents and the relevant state and police agencies to enforce them on priority.
Speaking in an exclusive interview to this newspaper, Mr Kenney hopes the proposed Emigration Management Bill, which is likely to become an act of the Indian Parliament by the year-end, will clarify the offences for unscrupulous agents in education sector.
In Canada, it is a crime for a person who is not a lawyer, notary or member of a recognised association of immigration consultants to accept a fee for providing immigration advice.
Unlike Australia and Britain which have capped or cut immigration, Canada has maintained high levels of immigration during and since the economic recession. The number of permanent residents or economic migrants from India is rising, but the number of Indian students has tripled in the past few years.
Although India is Canadas number one immigration source country, it has fewer illegal immigrants from India as compared to central America or the Caribbean.
Canada remains generous in its treatment of asylum-seekers, which is probably why it is attracting an influx of boat people fleeing a post-LTTE Sri Lanka.
We just had a boat load of nearly 500 Sri Lankan-Tamils transiting through Thailand arrive off the coast of Canada in a huge human smuggling operation that we believe is tied to the Tamil Tigers, he said.
A second boat is reported to be on its way to Canada and there was some intelligence that more are being planned.
Mr Kenney was expected to finish his swing through Asia with a visit to Australia, which is facing a similar problem of asylum-seekers from Sri Lanka.
We are asking the Asean nations to cooperate in interdicting the vessels. These are rickety, leaky boats that should have been decommissioned, they were never made for trans-Atlantic travel, and we intend to crack down on this dangerous form of exploitation by stiffening our laws, he asserts.