Australian Immigration: the Snowden link?

With the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship already under siege over the treatment of refugees in detention camps, deaths in custody and the abandonment of the principles of the UN Convention on refugees in regards to boat people, another disturbing aspect of the department's handling of its portfolio is emerging. That is the recent appointment of VFS Global as the sole processing partner of visa applications for entry into Australia.

The appointment process of VFS appears to have been undertaken very quietly, without the usual press releases accompanying a major policy decision. The lack of transparency in this agreement is dubious at best, in which the department selected a single company as a service delivery partner to handle visa applications and the taking of biometric data from applicants on its behalf, which has effectively created a monopoly for VFS Global.

On the surface, this appears to be an exercise in outsourcing with the objective of streamlining the visa application process. However on further examination, some concerns arise about the principles of competition, the integrity personal data and links to recent data collection allegations made by Edward Snowden, now restricted to the transit area at Moscow Airport.

The appointment of VFS Global as the sole service delivery partner to handle visa applications appears to break the doctrine of 'free competition' outlined in The Competition and Consumer Act 2010, which upholds anti-trust principals in the interests of fair and open competition. The agreement between Immigration and VFS Global squeezes out many visa agencies that have been working with Immigration for years, to some degree marginalizing these businesses that have painstakingly been built up over the period.

However the competition act exempts the Australian government and its agencies from scrutiny. This immunity allows the Immigration Department to appoint agents who practice monopolistic competition in an unfair way. Under the new arrangements Australian Immigration applies discrimination against applications lodged directly to them, by a factor of three. For example a tourist visa through the Australian Immigration office in a consular office is advertised to take 30 working days to process, where VFS Global advertises that applications lodged through them will take only 10 working days. These advertised longer lead times by Australian Consular Offices effectively grant VFS Global a working monopoly on Australian visa applications.

If these practices were employed by a private corporation, the corporation could be prosecuted and face a fine up to A$10 million. Very little, if any benefit to anybody appears out of this agreement. There seem to be few labor savings for the Australian visa offices at diplomatic missions, and no benefits at all to clients. The agreement has effectively increased service charges to clients by up to 40 percent.

The structure of the Australian visa industry after the VFS agreement has dramatically changed, giving one firm an unfair advantage and shutting out the others. The lack of general transparency of this decision has privately angered many immigration advisors and agents, especially with the way the agreement with VFS Global was created.

So who is VFS Global?

VFS is just a collecting agency. No consular interviews are undertaken whatsoever. VFS websites clearly state that the company has no says in the granting of a visa. VFS Global provides services such as dedicated visa application centres and websites, joint visa application centres, waiting lounges, online appointment scheduling facilities and courier pickup services. It is a rapidly growing company formed just after 9/11 in 2001, at the behest of the US State Department. The company now handles visa applications for 44 countries, including Britain, France, Germany, and Saudi Arabia.

However VFS has had issues with maintaining the integrity of client data in relation to visa applications in the past. The company's online UK visa application system was found to be flawed back in 2007 where more than 50,000 applicants' identities and personal information from India, Nigeria, and Russia were compromised.

Even though an Indian visa applicant reported this problem in 2005, no action was taken by either VFS of UK Visas (http://sanjibmitra.blogspot.com.au/2007/05/identity-leakage.html). The VFS website was only shut down after the UK media became aware of this lapse of security. VFS and UKVisas were found to be in breach of the Data Protection Act 1998, where the British Foreign Office was required to review its relationship with VFS Global.

Since the incident reported above, several governments have also been critical of VFS Global's work and raised concerns over security. The executive director of the Chinese Canadian Council Victor Wong stated that "There's the accountability issue, the privacy issue and why are we outsourcing to a for-profit entity something that belongs in the security mandate?" Further Liam Clifford of Global Visas, a migration advice company, told The Sunday Telegraph: "Once you put this work in the hands of private companies overseas, you no longer have the same protection." concerns.html

The VFS-Snowden Link?

The London based VFS Global is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Kuoni Group, a publicly-listed company headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland. What makes VFS interesting is that the chairman of the parent company, Henning Boysen was closely involved with Booz, Allan & Hamilton in the area of predictive intelligence, the same company that Edward Snowden worked for. Like Booz, Allan & Hamilton, WFS Global almost solely acts as a contractor for gGovernment in data collection services. Two other directors were previously involved with Boston Consulting Group which has long been suspected of having close links with the US intelligence.

Taking a straw poll outside VFS offices and in airports over the last month, the new visa application process is causing great frustration among applicants, particularly at a time when Australian tourism is being promoted.

Overzealous scrutiny by the Australian Immigration Department is delaying the decision-making process and forcing applicants to take medical tests for example, which appear to be unreasonable in some cases for the granting of straight forward tourist visas. This alone in many legal jurisdictions would be enough grounds to warrant corruption investigations, due to the potential of unnecessary use of service providers.

A disguised statistical discrimination system used by Australian Immigration justifies selective scrutiny of certain national, ethnic, and demographic groups on the basis of historical risk. This discrimination is irritating and even humiliating many potential bona fide tourists in the department's overzealous pursuit of screening applicants for a small percentage of potential over-stayers.

The biggest danger however is that information supplied for the sole purpose of requesting a visa, could be disseminated and used beyond the purpose it was provided. VFS Global's track record, and the connections of the parent company's directors with organizations like with Booz, Allan & Hamilton, gives great reason for concern.

Most importantly, government data collection agencies are seen to have integrity issues in matters of data collection, particularly in the light of the Snowden allegations. The Australian government needs to answer many questions on the appointment of VFS Global as its service provider partner in the interests of transparency.