Indian-American student, mom get deportation reprieve

HOUSTON: An Indian American pre-medical student and her mother facing deportation to India for staying in the US illegally have received a last-minute reprieve and were allowed to stay back temporarily to appeal the order.

Mandeep Chahal, who just finished her second year at the University of California-Davis, and her mother Jagdish Kaur, a homemaker, received a temporary stay on deportation by the Department of Homeland Security on June 21.

Chahal, 20, entered the US with her mother in 1997, but did not find out she was undocumented until she was 15.

Jagdish Kaur filed for political asylum in 1998, but following a six-year backlog, failed to show up at a hearing in 2003 and was denied asylum.

A judge then ordered Kaur to be deported. She was picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in 2010, while on her way to a doctor's appointment, and held in detention.

Kaur was released shortly afterwards for medical reasons, but both she and Chahal wore ankle monitors for a while so that ICE could track their movements.

Over the weekend, friends and advocates launched a last-minute social media campaign to halt Mountain View resident Mandeep Chahal's deportation, which was scheduled for Wednesday.

Chahal, studying neurology, physiology and behaviour at UC Davis, has lived in the Bay area since she was 6 years old.

The campaign resulted in more than 3,000 faxes being sent to members of Congress and the Obama administration.

"If anyone we know is going to be sent out of the United States, the last person it should be is Mandeep Chahal," said best friend Julia Duperrault, who has known Chahal since they were middle school classmates in Los Altos.

"I want to thank everyone who has embraced our story and spoken out on behalf of my mother and me. My family will be at home tonight, together, because of you," said Chahal in a statement on her Facebook page.

This morning, my mother and I were taken into custody at the ICE office in San Francisco.

We were there less than two hours before ICE decided to grant us a temporary stay and release us.

US, Canada NRIs plan film on Ghadar Party

BARNALA: Coinciding with the centenary of Ghadar Party, some American Punjabis are out to showcase the lives of Ghadarites, including legendary martyr Kartar Singh Sarabha, in a celluloid form. Ghadar Party was formed away from India in USA in 1913 with a motive to get India out of imperial forces' clutches and many Ghadarites had later moved to India.

Now, towards its centenary year, a Punjabi film "Ankheele soorme-Gadri babe" (self-respecting brave- Gadarites) is being planned as a befitting tribute to the brave soldiers of India's freedom struggle. The film is to be completed before 2013.

"The film will shed light on the lives and struggles of Ghadarites, how they formed the party away from their motherland and how they contributed to India's freedom struggle", said California-based Punjabi activist Sukhdev Singh, who is the brain behind the project. The film, to be directed by well-known director Ravinder Ravi, will highlight the rare aspects of the lives of Ghadarites, said Sukhdev, who is also commissioner of libraries of Contra Costa county in California.

The film would mainly focus on the lives of Kartar Singh Sarabha, Baba Sohan Singh Bhakna, Lala Hardyal, Harnam Singh Tundilat, Baba Gurditt Singh and of course Bhagat Singh, apart from other Ghadarites, Sukhdev said.

The film would be shot at historical Yugantar Ashram of San Fransisco, then headquarters of Ghadar movement, Stockton gurdwara, Sacramento and Yuba city of California. NRI Punjabis, specially about 200 families of Ghadarites' descendants, presently residing in USA and Canada, are being approached to play an active role in this project, Sukhdev told TOI.

Sukhdev, who runs 7-11 stores in California, is presently visiting India to study the life sketches of Ghadarites, specially Sarabha. Shaheed Kartar Singh Sarabha Memorial Trust, USA, Bhagat Gurditta Ji International Charitable Organisation, California and Sarabha village-based foundation will sponsor the film, to be made at a cost of about Rs 10 crore, he said.

Sukhdev, who heads Bhai Gurditta Organization and Dr Jaswant Singh Dhillon, head of US-based Sarabha Trust, have chalked out various programmes in US and Canada for funding and exhaustive research is on to put different elements of the historical film in place.

Indian-American indicted for not reporting HSBC India account

WASHINGTON: An Indian-American neurosurgeon has been indicted on four counts by a federal grand jury for not reporting to taxation authorities about his bank account in HSBC's India branch and the income generated thereof.

Wisconsin-based Dr Arvind Ahuja, a board certified neurosurgeon, wire transferred and maintained millions of dollars in bank accounts in India and the Bailiwick of Jersey at The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Ltd (HSBC), according to the indictment.

In 2009, his HSBC bank account in India had a balance of USD 8,733,785.

The indictment alleges that Ahuja did not report these bank accounts to the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) on his 2006-2009 tax returns.

The indictment further says the neurosurgeon failed to report more than USD 1.2 million in interest income that he earned from his HSBC India account and not paid taxes due on that income.

For the 2006-2009 tax years, he also failed to file the Reports of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBARs) to the Department of the Treasury.

US citizens have an obligation to report to the IRS whether they had a financial interest in, or signature authority over, a financial account in a foreign county in a particular year.

They further have to report all income earned from foreign financial accounts on the tax return and to pay the taxes due on that income.

Govt relaxes rules for surrender of Indian passport

NEW DELHI: The external affairs ministry (MEA) has finally agreed to eliminate the surrender certificate from those who have became naturalized citizens more than 10 years ago and also an OCI application need not be accompanied by an original US passport.

When the new rules regarding the surrender of Indian passports upon acquisition of US citizenship were introduced by the MEA in May 2010, the Global Organization of People of Indian Origin (GOPIO International) expressed strong objections.

GOPIO had also objected to Indian Consulates charging $175 fee for surrender of old Indian passports and additional penalties for various "violations". Based on the persistence and objections raised by GOPIO, on June 1, 2010, a partial relaxation of the rules was achieved and the fee reduced to $20. However, the removal of burdensome procedures and fees on Indians who became citizens of other countries was not addressed in a coherent, consistent and equitable way.

As a result, during the last one year alone, there have been demonstrations, hunger strikes and thousands of emails to the Indian consulates, GOPIO and the government, yet the issue never got the full attention for a comprehensive solution as promised.

On January 6, 2011, GOPIO held a conference session on this subject at its annual convention in New Delhi. A high ranking representative of the MEA attended the session and became aware of the continuing problem. In May 2011, a high level delegation from the MEA headed by secretary Dr Ajai Choudhry along with additional secretary BK Gupta and under secretary Cherian Thomas visited the US to look into complaints of the people regarding visa issue.

"We compliment the MEA high level delegation in accepting some GOPIO's recommendations and MEA issuing the directives accordingly. The elimination of surrender certificate requirement from people who have obtained foreign citizenship more than ten years ago, will not only stop the decline of goodwill in the Indian community for the government of India but can also reduce workload at the consulates," said Inder Singh, GOPIO International chairman.

"Now that the work load will be less, Indian missions in western countries and Travisa should finish off all the backlogs soon and make the process of getting an OCI card and entry visa to India easier for the Indian community," said Dr Thomas Abraham, former chairman of GOPIO International, who has been involved in this issue from the beginning.

"Finally, MEA has taken some steps to remove the difficulties faced by many who became citizens of other countries and desirous of visiting India or applying for OCI cards. This is a welcome action that removes an undue burden on former citizens of India and improves goodwill towards India", said Ashook Ramsaran, executive vice president of GOPIO International.

Wipro won’t sack NRI for torturing wife

Washington-based Wipro employee Yogesh Patil who has been arrested on charges of abetting his wife’s suicide will continue to be treated as a Wipro employee till the charges against him are proven.

When contacted executive vice president (human resources), Wipro, Pratik Kumar told Mumbai Mirror that the company’s policy in such cases is that the employee’s services are terminated only upon his being proven guilty. “We will have to wait till the judgment in this case is delivered before we decide whether or not to take action against him.”

Since Patil has been arrested by the police and remanded to magisterial custody till August 28, his salary will be deducted for the number of days he fails to report to duty. “He will be treated like any other employee who is absent from work. His leaves will be adjusted against the number of days he is absent from work. If his absence continues beyond the leaves he has accumulated he will suffer loss of pay for that period,” Kumar explained.

Kumar said he was not sure about Patil’s job profile in Washington. “He was deputed overseas to work in the technical stream. He was one of our 5,000 employees there. That’s all the information I have about his job.”

Mumbai Mirror had on August 15 reported how the Vasai police arrested former Ruparel topper and Wipro employee Yogesh after he mysteriously arrived in the city carrying his wife’s dead body and cremated her without informing her family.

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Details from Mumbai Mirror Bureau:

NRI tortured wife, drove her to suicide

Vasai police arrest former Ruparel topper and Washington-based Wipro employee after he mysteriously lands up carrying his wife’s dead body and cremates her without informing her family

* Inadvertently the turn for our front page story on Tuesday (NRI tortured wife inspired by Nana film) was jumbled up with another story. We apologise for the same and reproduce the story in its entirety here:

He had all the attributes that a parent might look for in a groom for their daughterWashington-based non-resident Indian Yogesh Patil (30) was a topper from Ruparel College, he had a cushy job with Wipro and he promised to keep his bride happy.

But three years after school teacher Manohar Pandit had married his brilliant daughter Sheetal, an M.Sc in Computers, to Patil, her dead body was brought to Vasai, cremated without his knowledge and last week his son-in-law was arrested by Vasai police for torture and dowry.

After his arrest Patil confessed to torturing his wife which led to her suicide. The sordid story unfolded when Patil arrived from the US with no prior intimation at his parents’ house at Vasai on August 11. Accompanying him was his wife’s dead body. Suspecting something amiss one of the neighbours who did not wish to be identified informed Sheetal’s parents about her death. But by the time her father Manohar who teaches at Chalisgaon, Jalgaon reached Vasai, Sheetal had already been cremated and he was told that she had killed herself.

Yogesh, a topper in XIIth Science examination from Ruparel College, Matunga, with a B.E (Mechanical), had worked in the Pune and Hyderabad offices of Wipro Limited before being transferred to Washington. For Pandit, he seemed like an ideal match for his bright and beautiful daughter. Accordingly the match was arranged. Vasai police say that Yogesh’s father Suresh Patil who himself is a principal at New Era English School, Nallasopara, demanded and got Rs 4.57 lakh in dowry. However not satisfied with that he then asked for another Rs 50,000 soon after the marriage on April 17,2003.

Hiding the fact from Sheetal who was dead against any kind of dowry, her parents scrounged the money together and paid most of the dowry demanded. After the wedding, Yogesh left for the United States and Sheetal joined him on 1 August 2004. Police say that during her short stay with Yogesh’s parents, Sheetal was physically and mentally abused. “Her mother-in-law Sulochana used to taunt Sheetal on trivial issues like cooking and filling water. Sheetal, apparently did not inform her parents about this,” says police inspector R Lokhare.

TORTURE IN US

In the US too, Sheetal was subjected to daily abuse by Yogesh. “When she was pregnant, Sulochna told her son to abort the babies as she thought Sheetal may deliver two girls after the sonography report confirmed twins. But, Sheetal refused to undergo abortion as she was already six months pregnant and abortion at that stage would be risky,” the officer said. In June 2005, Sheetal delivered twin boys in the US.

But her torture did not stop. She was not allowed to speak to her parents on the telephone or write letters to them. Three months ago, Sheetal finally managed to sneak out a letter to her father. She told him that her husband was ‘inspired’ by the Hindi film ‘ Agnisakshi’ where the hero, Nana Patekar tortured the heroine, Manisha Koirala. “He enacted the torture scenes in the movie and told me ‘I am spending on you, you have to obey what I tell you.” She also wrote about committing suicide.

Apart from that letter to her father Sheetal had told a Pune based friend, Sapna Mukherjee (name changed), during internet chats on May and June about the torture and that she was planning to file for divorce.

The police have recovered Sheetal’s laptop and plan to get transcripts of the conversation from the Internet Service Provider. “This would reveal more details about the torture,” said Lohkare.

Yogesh has told the police that there was a bitter fight between the couple on August 3. “Yogesh had repeatedly punched Sheetal’s face and in self defence, she bit Yogesh’s arms and fingers,” police said.

The next day she hanged herself. Police have now recovered the “stridhan” (items gifted to a woman by her parents during the marriage) and other materials from the Patils. Cops say Sheetal used to maintain a daily diary which Yogesh tried to destroy after her death. However, some torn pages of the diary where Sheetal had described the daily torture has been recovered by the police.

“We have accused the three under section 304 (b) for dowry death, 498 for harassment for dowry, 306 for provoking suicide, among other charges,” said Lohkare.

If convicted, the trio could face a minimum jail sentence of seven to ten years and currently the three accused have been remanded to police custody till 15 August. Sheetal’s uncle, Purshottam Gawande, a senior inspector posted at Vidhan Sabha has demanded severe punishment to the three for murdering her niece. The twins are now with Sheetal’s relatives in Chalisgaon.

NRI husband booked for demanding dowry

Depression had claimed life of victim’s father

Ludhiana, July 3
An Assistant Sub-Inspector (ASI) died of a cardiac arrest after failing to provide relief to his daughter, who was deserted by her NRI husband a day after her marriage. The police has now swooped into action and booked the UK-based NRI, Ranjit Singh, for fraud and thrashing the woman for dowry.
Gurmail Singh, who was posted as an ASI in traffic police, died on Thursday following a cardiac arrest. He was under depression after Ranjit Singh deserted his daughter Amanpreet Kaur and fled to England.
According to Amanpreet, the marriage was solemnised on April 29. “But the next day I was thrown out of the house. My ornaments were also kept by my in-laws. Few days later my husband fled to England and asked me to arrange Rs 50 lakh. He told me that only after arranging the dowry amount he would take me to England,” said Amanpreet.
The police yesterday booked Ranjit Singh, his parents Gurcharan Singh and Manjit Kaur under Sections 420, 498, 406 of the IPC for fraud and thrashing a married woman for dowry. The trio is on the run, while the police has arrested Vijay Kumar, a relative of the accused.

Cleaning the sleaze out of immigration consulting

Barbara Kay  May 26, 2010 – 7:16 AM ET | Last Updated: May 27, 2010 4:54 PM ET
Last week, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney indicated he will shortly unveil a complete overhaul of the means by which immigration consultants are regulated. After years of bitter infighting and several publicized board resignations over spending practices from the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants (CSIC), the six-year-old body that has failed to accomplish its mandated task of regulation, rank and file immigration consultants pronounced themselves delighted at the news.

“We have been calling for such changes for a long time,” said Peter Bernier, president of the educational and lobbying body, the Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants (CAPIC), “and are in full support of them.”
Immigration consultancy is a notoriously sleaze-filled profession. There is plenty of money to be had from eager would-be immigrants, whose ignorance or desperation can easily be exploited by unscrupulous snake-oil salesmen. “Ghost” consultants, so called because they never show up in hearings with their clients and their names never appear on documents, can legally advertise misleading and unethical claims, and are a bane to the system.

The profession has been crying out for the kind of regulation enjoyed by lawyers and doctors for two decades. CSIC was set up as a non-profit society in 2003 by then-immigration minister Denis Coderre to end unethical practices, as well as to weed out incompetent and poorly educated consultants within its own ranks. But its mandate did not include the prosecutorial teeth to pursue unregulated ghost or foreign agencies, which is one reason CSIC has been largely ineffective in bringing outliers to heel.

But close observers say some of CSIC’s most serious problems have to do with poor governance and a wilfully unaccountable leadership, in particular the l’état-c’est-moi six-year chairmanship of John Ryan, handpicked to run CSIC by Denis Coderre.

By some insider accounts, Ryan ran CSIC as though it were his own private fiefdom. For example, in his resignation letter in 2005, former board member Francisco Rico-Martinez takes Ryan and his vice-chair to task for allotting over $100,000 to three directors (Ryan and two others) and running up credit card expenses of $225,000 in a 10-month period without consulting the membership. “We are well known for our lack of transparency,” Rico-Martinez bitterly concludes following a long list of governance-related criticisms. Jill Sparling, a longtime activist for regulation, who was ejected from the CSIC board for her unremitting challenges to the “one-man show” of John Ryan, says CSIC went wrong from the beginning because there was nobody on the board with the expertise to run an organization properly; rather, she claims, the board was “a potpourri of community representatives and lawyers and consultants.”

One of Ryan’s more aggressive detractors is Phil Mooney, president of CAPIC from 2007-10 and a frequent presenter to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. In a telephone interview, Mooney described Ryan as “patronizing” and “anti-democratic.”

About 1,700 immigration consultants in 2009 paid nearly a whopping $5,000 a year to belong to CSIC ($4,300 in fees plus mandatory educational costs), about 35% more than lawyers pay their society. Where does that money go? Not to helping the victims of immigration scams so much as for $292,000 in rent on a Bay St office, lavish directors’ fees and vanity projects like a TV studio, a coat of arms and a CSIC merchandising shop.

According to Mooney, nine directors in 2009 were self-paid a stunning total of $500,937 for 12 meetings, which does not include expenses or fees earned by sitting on wholly owned subsidiaries such as CSIC’s e-college, an online school, or the new Canadian Migration Institute (CMI), which lost more than $1-million last year with no explanation to the membership.

Defenders of Ryan and CSIC call their ongoing ineffectuality “growing pains.” “It’s hard to become a regulated profession,” one sympathetic former CSIC board member and present CMI board member told me, citing the difficulties of dealing with a rapid turnover of federal immigration ministers (Coderre … Sgro … Finley … Volpe … Solberg … Kenney).

But CSIC’s critics aren’t buying that. As one member, jubilant at the news of CSIC’s putative demise, wrote me: “It would appear that [Minister Kenney] is boldly attempting to create a regulatory authority with teeth, one that doesn’t place the price of brass and glass above accountability, and one that just might actually protect the interests of the most vulnerable — the immigrants.”

The man at the centre of this upheaval, John Ryan, abruptly resigned his chairmanship of CSIC days ago, though he retains the lucrative CEO-ship and other positions. Maybe more investigative sleuthing is needed going forward.
National Post