Huawei Employees Immigration Rejected by Canada Consulate, Accused of Spying

Huawei is one of the largest telecom equipment manufacturer in the world and is also ranked as third largest global smartphone brand. However, Canada had rejected two of its employee’s immigration on the ground of possible espionage (spying) treat. This is something we are listening for the first time that the immigration of employee of an MNC is rejected on the grounds of spying possibility.

The first applicant was rejected in the month of March, and the Canada’s consulate in Hong Kong had cited saying “there are reasonable grounds to believe that you are a member of the inadmissible class of persons described in section 34(1)(f) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.” While the second applicant’s spouse who was on the immigration list is also rejected by citing the same reason.

The two accused employees are said to be working in low and mid-ranking non-executive positions. Both the applicants lodged their responses to Canada’s consulate well before the 30 days deadline. On the other side of the world, Huawei is granted all-clear mentioning there is no national security risk. In the U.S, the documents revealed by Edward Snowden suggested that NSA hacked into the Huawei servers in China.

This is not the first time we are seeing Chinese companies are accused of spying. In 2014, Xiaomi was accused of remotely sending data to its Chinese servers. The problem was later solved when the company shifted the servers to the outside of China to store Indian users data. In 2012, both ZTE and Huawei were accused of doing less than credible business practices including industrial espionage and bribery.

Recently ZTE is banned from using US-based services or products after ZTE is proven to export its products to Iran. But within a month, the U.S government had partially lifted the ban and the final decision is yet to be taken. We will be updating the article once there is more information. Stay tuned!

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