90% of immigrants from Pakistan and Afghanistan haven't been adequately screened - CSIS

From the Ottawa Citizen (CSIS concedes nine of 10 immigration applicants not screened by James Gordon, May 30, 2006):

About 90 per cent of immigration applicants from Pakistan and Afghanistan hotbeds for Islamic fundamentalism and central in the fight against terrorism haven't been adequately screened for security concerns over the past five years, Canada's spy agency said Monday.

The No. 2 man at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service said his organization simply doesn't have the resources necessary to do all the security checks it would like.

Jack Hooper, deputy director of operations for the service, told a Senate national security committee about 20,000 immigrants have come from the Afghanistan/Pakistan region to Canada since 2001.

''We're in a position to vet one-tenth of those,'' he said. ''That may be inadequate.''

[. . .]

Read all of James Gordon's article. Click here

This story shows just how reckless our immigration policy is. Ottawa hasn't allocated adequate resources to screening immigrants from terrorist-producing countries; yet, our leaders keep on talking about bringing in more people. The Conservatives, to their credit, did ban the Tamil Tigers despite some signs of pandering to Tamil voters during the last federal election, but the previous Liberal government seemed oblivious to the implications of immigration for national security. Although the Liberals were forced to pass tougher terrorism legislation after 9-11, their immigration minister, Joe Volpe, promised to increase the annual number of immigrants from the current 250,000 to 300,000. While the Conservatives, unfortunately, also want to raise immigration levels, they at least seem to understand that there can't be any increase before the current system is reformed. See here.