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Whose Job Was It At Immigration To Weed Out Forgery?
posted (February 10, 2017)
And here's our final piece of former CEO Saldivar's testimony. This is that part of the hearing where the Senators were asking her about the assertion by Former Immigration Director Ruth Meighan and Former Nationality OIC Gordon Wade that they don't check for fraud or forgery in the application documents they receive. Here's what she had to say about that one:

Hon. Elena Smith, Senator
"When the files got to her, she was not supposed to verify anything, she was just supposed to either look at what is there, check and either recommend or return for further work that probably needed to be done, So as the CEO, could you recall that, let's say for example, in her case, recommending visas, that she was not responsible for verifying information, she was just responsible for...?"

Candelaria Saldivar-Morter
"If you approve anything, you will confirm that all the information and all the requirements are met. That is what you do before you do any kind of approval - that all the requirements are met."

Hon. Elena Smith, Senator
"I'm trying to understand because we have been told over and over that there are persons within the process who are responsible for verifying these things so that by the time it gets to the last person there is no need to verify, because the persons before them had already done those verifications and so when it comes to that final person to just sign off on either recommended or if they see that something is obviously missing, it would be returned and I can recall clearly that Mr. Wade had said that when the file got to him, all he had to do was just sign off and send it or he would make a note and say "this document is missing" and he would still send it on."

Candelaria Saldivar-Morter
"How do you sign off if you don't check? While it need to be said and may be it need to be documented, just the mere fact of you singing off is saying that you confirm what should be there is there. That is standard. You will not sign off to something that you have not confirm is there."

Hon. Elena Smith, Senator
"That's the excuse that they gave us. But seeing that you have a manual... Miss Morter, it is fair for me to say that these persons despite being the last person to receive a file, did not complete their duty to ensure that everything that was placed before them was verified?"

Candelaria Saldivar-Morter
"That is what you could say is the outcome. If it is incomplete, then it has to be that somebody did not ensure that it was completed."

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