Fact Sheet

January 2004

Immigration Intelligence - Irregular Migration

The Immigration Intelligence network is an important element in CBSA's strategy for dealing with irregular migration to Canada. This strategy relies on "intelligence-based" decision making to identify high-risk travellers while facilitating the movement of legitimate visitors, refugees, and immigrants.

• Migration Integrity Officers. The Immigration Intelligence network has 45 Migration Integrity Officer (MIO) positions located in key locations overseas to work with other government departments, international partners, local immigration and law enforcement agencies and airlines to combat irregular migration, including people smuggling and trafficking. The work of these officers has resulted in an interdiction rate of 72% in 2003. This means that of all those attempting to travel to Canada by air, using improperly issued documents, 72% (more than 6,400 individuals) were stopped before they got to Canada. In addition these officers have maintained a steady flow of key intelligence information which allows us to continually enhance the integrity of Canada's immigration program.
  
  
• Document Integrity. Expertise on fraud detection, document security and identity issues is centralised in the Immigration Intelligence Branch. The Branch produces a full range of training packages, document alerts, and tools relating to travel document fraud or document security issues which are disseminated to MIOs overseas, other government departments, airlines and foreign control partners in order to combat irregular migration including smuggling and trafficking. This capacity is complemented by document experts in regional intelligence units.

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