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WEDNESDAY, MAY 4, 2016 • T H I S D AY
INTERNATIONAL
Canada’s Govt Has Trouble Detecting Citizenship Fraud Canada’s government is doing a bad job of weeding out fraudulent citizenship applications and this means ineligible people can obtain Canadian passports, the country’s top watchdog said yesterday. The findings could alarm U.S. critics already worried by what they say are the security risks posed by the new Liberal government’s decision to quickly accept 25,000 Syrian refugees after taking power last November. Auditor General Michael Ferguson said in a report he had discovered a series of problems in the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship (IRC) department, which is responsible for making sure only eligible people can become Canadian nationals. “We found that (IRC) was not adequately detecting and preventing fraud in the citizenship programme,”
concluded the audit, which said officials lacked a systematic method of identifying and documenting fraud risks. “People were granted citizenship based on incomplete information or without all of the necessary checks being done,” it said. The audit covered the period from July 2014 to October 2015, when the former Conservative government was in power. More than 260,000 people became Canadian citizens in 2014, an all-time record. Canada has a population of around 36 million. The system is supposed to weed out people convicted of serious offences, those who have faked residency papers or have entered into marriages of convenience. But Ferguson said the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the border security agency were doing a poor job
of sharing data about criminal charges and potential residency fraud. For example, one address was not identified as a problem even though it had been used over a seven-year period by at least 50 applicants, seven of whom were granted citizenship. Revoking citizenship is
time-consuming and costly. As of January 2016, IRC had about 700 revocation cases pending. The department also has responsibility for refugees and coordinated the effort to bring in 25,000 people from Syria. In February, the U.S. Senate
Homeland Security Committee probed the effort, citing the possibility that violent militants could mix in and cross the long, largely porous U.S.-Canada border. Congressional aides say U.S. officials remain wary of Canada’s screening, noting it is nearly impossible for foreign
governments to verify the backgrounds and identities of refugees. At the time, Canadian officials defended what they said was a very strong security system. John McCallum, the government minister in charge of the IRC, was due to react to the report later on Tuesday.
Republican Cruz Slams Trump as ‘Pathological Liar’ On a day when his presidential bid could suffer a mortal blow, Ted Cruz became embroiled in a name-calling contest with Republican front-runner Donald Trump whom he described as “a pathological liar” in one of the most bitter exchanges in the White House campaign. Cruz, Trump’s main rival, has been counting on a win in yesterday’s Indiana primary to slow the New York billionaire’s progress toward the nomination. But polls in recent days have shown Trump opening up a substantial lead in the Midwestern state over the U.S. senator from Texas. Campaigning in Evansville, Indiana, Cruz sounded deeply frustrated by the bombastic real estate mogul.“The man cannot tell the truth but he combines it with being a narcissist,” Cruz said of Trump,“a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country has ever seen.” Cruz also termed Trump a “serial philanderer” -- likely as part of his strategy to try to siphon the support of evangelical voters from Trump. Republican voters in Indiana could give Trump an almost unstoppable advantage in his turbulent journey toward the party’s presidential nomination. He holds a double-digit polling lead in the state. Trump, who frequently refers to Cruz as “Lyin’ Ted,” quickly responded to his rival’s attack. “Over the last week, I have watched Lyin’ Ted become more and more unhinged as he is unable to react under the pressure and stress of losing, in all cases by landslides, the last six primary elections --- in fact, coming in last place in all but one of them,”he said in a statement. Trump has drawn both passionate support and vitriolic condemnation with his stands on immigration and national security - including a call to build a wall along the Mexican border that he says Mexico would pay for and a bid to temporarily
ban Muslims from entering the United States. Fresh off a sweep of five Northeastern states last week, a Trump win on Tuesday could put him within reach of the 1,237 delegates required to lock up the Republican nomination before the party’s convention in July. “If we win Indiana, it’s over,” he told a cheering crowd in Terre Haute, Indiana, on the eve of the vote. Cruz vowed on Monday to “compete to the end”but a loss in Indiana would be particularly crushing for the senator, who has argued that his brand of religious conservatism is a natural draw for heartland Republicans. He won the endorsement of conservative Indiana Governor Mike Pence. Cruz’s fury on Tuesday was set off by Trump linking the senator’s father to John F. Kennedy’s assassin. The Texan pulled no punches. “I’m going to tell you what I really think of Donald Trump. This man is a pathological liar. He doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies,”he told reporters. “He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth. And...his response is to accuse everybody else of lying.” For Cruz, yesterday’s unbridled critique of Trump was his fiercest yet. But it may come far too late. Earlier in the campaign, he refused to bash Trump over such proposals such as Trump’s call for a ban on Muslim immigration. In December, Cruz vowed that he “won’t get engaged in personal insults and attacks” with Trump and warned that voters are turned off by “a bunch of politicians bickering like school children.” Trump now has 996 delegates, compared with 565 for Cruz and 153 for Ohio Governor John Kasich, according to The Associated Press. Another 57 delegates are up for grabs in Indiana, a state that has voted Republican in nine of the last 10 presidential elections.
GLOBAL DISCOURSE
Hollywood icons, Tom Hanks and Brian Grazer, discussing during the Milken Institute’s Global Conference in Los Angeles…yesterday
EU Executive to Propose Reform Asylum System The European Union’s executive will propose a reform of the bloc’s asylum rules on Wednesday, EU sources said, that reflects caution in the face of deep divisions among governments about how to handle the migration crisis. The European Commission last month floated scrapping a rule in the so-called Dublin system that gives responsibility for handling asylum claims to the first EU state a person enters -- a rule that has placed heavy burdens on Greece and Italy. However, two sources said, it would now issue a legislative proposal retaining the “first country” principle while including a central scheme to spread claimants around Europe to give the frontline states the chance to relocate asylum seekers to other EU countries if arrivals on their borders are too high.
An emergency relocation system set up last year after record numbers of refugees and migrants reached Greece was agreed in the face of fierce opposition from east Europeans. Slovakia and Hungary have challenged the legality of the measure and Hungary plans a referendum on any more quotas this autumn. Any proposal will need to win the backing of a majority of the 28 EU states as well as the European Parliament for it to be enacted and EU officials and diplomats do not expect agreement swiftly. An EU source said separately that the Commission would also propose a “financial sanction mechanism” for countries that refuse to take in claimants. “It should therefore go beyond symbolism but be understood as prohibitive pricing,” the source said. “If a member state does not
show solidarity in taking in refugees, it has to compensate with financial solidarity.” Last year, a Commission suggestion that would have given countries an option to pay 0.002 percent of national income to help migrants instead of taking in asylum seekers was not endorsed by leaders. One east European diplomat in Brussels said a new proposal for financial penalties would also be unpopular. Germany - the EU’s biggest economy and the final destination for most of the more than a million migrants who arrived in the bloc last year - is keen to see a permanent mechanism to share out the load. Ex-communist states in central and eastern Europe say their homogeneous societies are ill equipped to take in large numbers of migrants, especially from the Middle
East or Africa. Diplomats speculate that the division over migration between Eastern states and richer Western members which pay for the EU grants and subsidies they receive could affect negotiations on the bloc’s budget. Officials hope, however, that an EU agreement with Turkey last month that has seen a sharp drop in refugees arriving in Greece could ease internal tensions over the migration issue, which has fueled a rise in nationalist parties across Europe. Also on Wednesday, the Commission is set to propose easing visa requirements for Turks as part of the deal, though that also faces difficulties with governments and EU lawmakers who argue that Ankara has not met all the conditions, notably on improving its human rights record.
Israeli Troops Kill Palestinian Driver Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian driver who rammed his vehicle into three Israeli soldiers, injuring them, on a road in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, the army said. The Palestinian health ministry identified the dead man as Ahmed Reyad Shehada, 36, a resident of Bitunia near the town of Ramallah, close to where the incident took place.
One of the three injured soldiers was in a life-threatening condition, a hospital spokeswoman said. In the last half year, Palestinian attacks have killed 28 Israelis and two visiting U.S. citizens. Israeli forces have killed at least 192 Palestinians, 131 of whom Israel says were assailants. Many others were shot dead in clashes and protests. Factors driving the violence include
Palestinian bitterness over stalled statehood negotiations and the growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, increased Jewish access to a disputed Jerusalem shrine and Islamist-led calls for Israel’s destruction. It was the first violent fatality in the region since a suicide bomber died on April 20 of his wounds after he detonated a device
on a Jerusalem commuter bus two days earlier. Suicide bombings on Israeli buses were a hallmark of the Palestinian revolt of 2000-2005 but have now become rare. With Palestinians carrying out less organized stabbing, car-ramming and gun attacks since October, Israel has been braced for an escalation.