Like thousands of others in India, Bhupinder Singh and Rajwinder Kaur of Punjab yearned for a new life in Canada.
So in April 2009, they got in touch with an Indian travel agent who promised them he would get them to their promised land.
The fee for Buphinder was C$38,000. Rajwinder had to pay about $25,000. The route was via Indonesia from where they were to fly out to Canada.
The travel agent disappeared after Buphinder was arrested in Jakarta and thrown in jail. Rajwinder was deported back to India.
With nothing left and debts owed to money lenders and relatives, the couple now is destitute and faces a bleak future.
And they are not alone said Balwant Singh Ramoowalia, the president of the Punjab-based says Lok Bhalai Party.
He estimates there are at least 500 ‘travel agents’ operating illegally in Punjab preying on the gullible with offers of sending them overseas.
Ramoowalia, a former MP, who has been spearheading a crusade against unscrupulous agents, says, “Who is not a travel agent in Punjab? Even sadhus and sants have joined the racket.”
The Punjab Tribune in a feature article said illegal immigration in India works at two levels. One way is to seek a legal visa and become part of sports teams, music groups, dance troupes, pilgrimages and now educational tours and perform the vanishing trick after landing on the coveted foreign soil.
The other way is to illegally sneak into foreign lands on fake papers. Though fraught with many dangers, this method is as popular. While the US, Canada and the UK are the most preferred countries, New Zealand, too, is emerging as a dream destination. European destinations like Greece and Spain, rather any country that promises a better life and is easier to enter in an illegal way, fall in the desirable list of those nursing foreign dollar dreams, the paper said.
Pigeon flying or kabootarbaazi, which was once a popular sport patronised by the Mughals, is today in Punjab a euphemism for the illegal immigration trade valued at millions of dollars.
In an effort to curb the menace Canada, a favoured destination sought the help of Punjab Police to keep a tab on the unscrupulous travel agents, who are duping gullible youths on the pretext of sending them abroad.
Canadian officials also impressed upon the need of having stricter laws to deal with such agents.
“We are very concerned about the unscrupulous immigration agents, who are making enormous profits, by exploiting the dreams of poor youth of Punjab. People are giving them millions of dollars and in some cases, their entire savings,” Canadian Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney told reporters in Chandigarh, Punjab.
“These agents are providing them fake documents like bank statements, birth and death certificates, IELTS score-card and academic certificates. We caught them during scrutiny, resulting in visa refusals. We have made a proper file elaborating various means adopted by these agents,” he said.
“Agents’ promises and guarantees are usually designed to exploit the applicants. Many applicants give money to agents, who disappeared later on. Therefore I am here to urge Indian government to bring in stronger laws to crackdown on these unscrupulous agents,” he added.
Kenney also met Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal to discuss this issue with him.
“I have also met the Punjab chief minister today and urged him to direct the state police to make much greater effort. So far we have got positive response but now we also want positive action. They should run anti-fraud campaign against agents and protect the citizens of Punjab,” Kenney said.
“We are ready to work collectively with Punjab Police and we will provide them whatever information that they want from us. Here I also make a public call to victims to come forward and help us to combat for them,” he said.
On the issue of NRI grooms deceiving their wives, Kenney said: “Yes, this is also a very serious issue. We appeal to women to be very careful. We have also opened consulates in Canada to deal with such marriages of inconvenience.”
According to the International Labour Organisation, roughly 12 million persons are illegally trafficked at any given time. The FBI estimates that the illegal trade, worth $9.5 billion annually, has links with international arms trade, drugs, prostitution and child abuse.
According to an Interpol study, India accounts for the largest number of illegal immigrants moving to western Europe. Another report by the United Nations Organisation on Drugs and Crime states that nearly 80 per cent of the illegal immigrants from India are Punjabis. Out of this, more than 500,000 live in the UK alone.
Ramoowalia asserts that gullible Punjabis are losing millions of rupees each day and the loss is so huge that seven generations of affected families will be impoverished.
He adds, “The stories that ultimately find media coverage, form only the tip of the iceberg as hundreds of cases remain unreported.”
Late last year, Indian police said they cracked a ring of criminals who conspired to operate one of the biggest fake visa scams in years involving Canada.
The alleged crooks lurked on the leafy streets outside Canada’s diplomatic mission in New Delhi, as well as in the office of a bogus travel and tourism company in Punjab, a state in northwestern India, local media said.
The fake visa service charged Indians as much as $21,000 to obtain bogus visas, police said, adding they believe the ring operated through a company called Kaavi Tour and Travels in Chandigarh, Punjab’s capital city.
Documents and files seized by police indicate the ring, allegedly headed by a man named Anil Kumar - who has at least three aliases - may have cheated victims out of more than $650,000. That would make it one of the biggest visa fraud operations police here have exposed in years.