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But, we continue with more from the Minister with responsibility for Immigration on a topic, which we’d been trying to seek clarification on for almost 5 weeks. 

That’s a report which we received in the second week of April that the Immigration and Nationality Department came upon 2 fraudulent Nationality documents for 2 Chinese Nationals, Nina Huang and William Wang. Our information was that they were acquired with suspect documents, and the officials weren’t even sure if they ever actually entered the country.

Well, we asked Beverly Castillo about it, and she said that their inquiry reveals that these were passport renewals, meaning that these applicants were processed and approved before the new, very stringent measures were put in place after the Citizen Kim passport scandal. She told us that they caught these suspect documents due to those new measures:

Hon. Beverly Castillo - Minister of State, Ministry of Immigration
"Those two persons were not issued passports. They did appear irregular and they have not returned for those passports so we again putting systems in place to look at those things and those are some of the things that springboard us into putting the proper structure in place so; we feel that we have the opportunity now. They will continue to surface, these things were problems that were developed some time ago and as soon as they surface we nip them, each time we see one we nip them. But it is to set the structures as I said to mitigate against those risks and that is where we are with the new director both in refugees and in immigration."

Daniel Ortiz
"Can you disclose to us what those red flags were with these two applicants who we understand and can you confirm they received nationality certificates?"

Hon. Beverly Castillo - Minister of State, Ministry of Immigration
"Yes the nationality certificates appeared to be fraudulent, they did."

Daniel Ortiz
"Now ma'am we were assured when this new system after the Wong Hong Kim particular, that debacle happen; the then minister Godwin Hulse assured us that the new structures for applying for nationality certificates and passports were a lot more tough, a lot more stringent, a lot more transparent and so the question is how could this have happened again if we were that more careful?"

Hon. Beverly Castillo - Minister of State, Ministry of Immigration
"That is why we caught it because we were very careful and I believe those came from certificates that were issued a long time ago and we're now in the process of renewal of passports and that is when it came to light because the system is now stringent and it revealed them so we will not reissue the passport."

Castillo told us that all new passport and passport renewals will come under the same type of scrutiny which raised red flags on these 2 Chinese nationals.