Sri Lankan-born Canadian people smuggler’s new travel document:
As Canadian Border Service Agency officers and enforces are redoubling their efforts to tackle increased border crossings with possible mass deportations from the USA under the new Trump Administration, a 50-year-old Sri Lankan born people smuggler’s new travel document has the Canadian passport issuance system into question.
This follows the detection that Sri Lankan-born Canadian T. Rasiah allegedly linked to a people smuggling ring had obtained a new Canadian passport which he is not authorised to.
His earlier passport was impounded by the Canadian authorities following a 2021 offence of smuggling a Sri Lankan into Canada from the US. He was also subjected to several conditions including electronic monitoring via an ankle bracelet.
According to Canadian news reports, Rasiah, who was earlier believed to be only a link, has now been named by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) as the kingpin of a human smuggling ring. His new passport was found by the Mounties investigating the deaths in March 2023 of eight persons, including children being smuggled into the US from Canada.
A four-member Indian family and a four-member Romanian family including two small children and a man piloting their boat across the St. Lawrence River bordering Canada and the US drowned in stormy conditions during a night crossing.
A House of Commons Committee recently voted for an investigation to find out how Rasiah, who admitted to human smuggling in 2021 and had to surrender his passport and barred from applying for another, had received a new Canadian Passport.
He was re-arrested in May this year and charged with multiple human-smuggling related counts. In June, the RCMP alleged that he had led a network that smuggled hundreds of people north and south across the Canada-US border.
According to reports from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) police have alleged Rasiah led the human smuggling network involved in the 2023 tragedy.
Rasiah’s new passport has now raised questions since it was issued by Service Canada less than two weeks after the 2023 tragedy.
The Ministers of Immigration, Public Safety, Passport officials, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and Officials of Public Safety Canada and the Courts are at odds as to who should be held accountable for Rasiah’s new passport.
Currently, the passport programme is the responsibility of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. However, Employment and Social Development Canada, through Service Canada, delivers the programme.
Tom Kmiec, a Conservative Immigration critic has tabled a motion calling the immigration and public safety ministers to be questioned over the passport issue.
A Liberal MP Chris Bittle had said that the passport case exposed a “serious flaw” that needed closer scrutiny.
Jenny Kwan, an MP of the New Democratic Party wanted to examine what blame the court system shouldered in this situation stating that the court decision related to travel documents did not come from Passport Canada or the Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) but from the courts. She had claimed there is no real question about the failure of the system.
Kelly Sundberg, a professor of Criminology in Calgary had said the current Canadian passport system is the “weak link in the security chain.”
Immigration Minister Marc Miller has asked officials to investigate the issue and said that any findings would be disclosed “when there is an update to be shared.”
According to a CBC investigative journalist, Rasiah “has been moving people across the border for years.”
News reports said the CBSA had mentioned of Rasiah being sentenced to 52 days in jail upon conviction in 2008 for possessing two Canadian Passports not belonging to him at Toronto’s Pearson Airport.
In 2017, investigators in Quebec had charged him in connection with a human smuggling incident for which he had received an 18-month conditional sentence under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
