Douglas Todd: Would-be immigrants to Canada being sold ‘false dreams’

2019/04/03 Leave a comment

Yet another story on immigration fraud with some examples of more reputable consultants:

The migration agents confronted Vancouver’s Laleh Sahba as she walked on the sidewalk last month near the Canadian embassy in Ankara, Turkey.

The street hawkers told her that, for $25,000 or more, they would get her to an immigration professional who would be sure to hand her a visitor or student visa so she could be well on her way to obtaining a Canada passport.

The sidewalk agents mistook Sahba for another near-desperate Middle Eastern person who would spend almost everything she had for the dream of becoming a permanent resident in Canada, land of promise.

But Sahba — an Iranian-Canadian and a regulated Canadian immigration consultant — says her encounter with Turkey’s street agents was just another reminder how easy it is for people abroad and in Canada to claim to be immigration experts to take vulnerable people for a nasty ride.

“They are selling wrong information. They are making up false dreams,” Sahba said at her downtown Vancouver office. “This is a huge business. And what disturbs me is that many are in it for the money in Canada. They’re playing with people’s lives.”

Sahba, who works with professional immigration partners in the Middle East, is among a small number of Canadian immigration consultants and lawyers who are coming forward to describe the wide range of misinformation, misdeeds and scams being foisted on would-be immigrants.

Some of those posing as immigration specialists are telling anxious people they will eventually get a Canadian passport if they pay large sums, in the tens of thousands of dollars, just to obtain a study or visitor’s visa, which have limited use. Some are also falsely telling clients they can finagle them status as a refugee.

The immigration fantasies of foreign nationals often end in tatters, says Sahba, 40, who came to Canada from Iran two decades ago and has been a consultant for 15 years. Many immigration specialists are making promises they can’t deliver on. By the time most would-be immigrants come to her to find a way out of their migration problems “they are absolutely screwed. We can’t help them.”

Much more must be done, Sahba says, to clean up the fast-growing immigration-advice industry, which in Canada includes 5,400 regulated immigration consultants and 1,000 immigration lawyers, but also an untold number of unlicensed agents.

Marina Sedai, a Surrey immigration lawyer, tends to agree. She told a Conference Board of Canada workshop in Vancouver last month that there is “rampant immigration fraud” being perpetrated by some consultants and agents.

Sedai said she is constantly hearing from troubled clients about how they’ve being misled or defrauded by self-professed experts who demand large fees to guide foreign nationals through Canada’s intricate immigration system.

As national chair of the Canadian Bar Association’s immigration section, Sedai highlighted how her organization has told federal Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen the system Ottawa has set up to regulate immigration consultants, who have less formal training than lawyers, is not working.  “There are good reasons,” the society said in 2017, “to limit the practice of immigration law to lawyers and Quebec notaries,” with immigration consultants working under the supervision of lawyers.

Many wives are being advised by immigration specialists to get a study visa so their husbands can come to Canada and work and their children can attend school, says Laleh Sahba. The trouble is many wives “don’t really want to study” and end up failing. It leads to big problems for the family.

Sahba, however, believes the majority of regulated immigration consultants do excellent work. Still, she hears at least five times a month from foreign nationals who have become embroiled in shady agreements that involve both Canadian immigration advisers and lawyers.

While Sahba generally supports Ottawa’s aim to make it simpler for some of the more than 500,000 foreign students in Canada to become permanent residents, for instance, she said some advisers are increasingly misrepresenting the study visa program as the backdoor immigration ticket for entire families.

Many wives in their 40s and 50s are being advised, she said, to apply for a study visa so that their husband can come to Canada on a spousal work visa and their children can attend schools in Toronto, Metro Vancouver and elsewhere.

The trouble, Sahba said, is many of the wives are unable to pass English-language exams and “don’t really want to study in the first place.” They begin failing courses and can’t get into postgraduate school, which means they and their husbands and children are expected to return home.

“It’s all over for them. They’ve wasted their time and huge amounts of money. And their kids have in the meantime become used to Canadian society. This is where my heart bleeds.”

In addition to describing scams in which so-called immigration specialists have charged clients many thousands of dollars just for a visitor’s visa, Sahba said other illicit schemes involve provincial immigrant entrepreneur programs, including those operated by Quebec, B.C. and Manitoba.

Since a large number of so-called immigration specialists also have real-estate licences, Sahba says, some become embroiled in housing deals with rich prospective newcomers.

Other advisers direct so-called entrepreneurs to make “passive investments” in Canadian properties or businesses, which often involve nothing more than appearing to transfer money between relatives’ bank accounts.

In one extreme case, Sahba worked with two sisters from Pakistan who transferred more than $170,000 to immigration agents in Canada who said they were arranging the purchases of a gift shop and pet store in Vancouver. The entire process, which involved transferring photos and signatures via Skype, was fake. The culprits couldn’t be tracked.

The Canadian Bar Association, in its attempts to target “incompetent and unscrupulous” immigration advisers, told Canada’s immigration minister in 2017 there had been an “astonishing” 1,470 complaints against the regulated members of the Immigration Consultants of Canada Regulatory Council (ICCRC) since it began in 2011, plus 1,115 more against non-members.

That regulatory council posts some of the online allegations against its licensed Canadian immigration consultants, with one ICCRC page describing disciplinary investigations against almost 50 named members, who regularly charged clients $10,000 to $30,000 for relatively small tasks. Many of the consultants are accused of misdeeds such as: “Deceiving client,” “misleading client,” “falsely advising client,” “failing to notify client,” “charging client exorbitant fee” and of “misrepresenting” themselves in a variety of ways, including as border officials.

Sedai said some immigration advisers have even become involved in presenting false job offers to would-be immigrants — an activity she says she has run into in Surrey. Burnaby immigration lawyer George Lee is among those who has tried to expose the widespread jobs deception.  

Although the clients of people who make a living in the immigration industry continue to take part in illicit schemes based on bad advice, Sabha wants to make clear some clients have not been innocent in the process. “They’ve got dirty hands, too.”

And the chances for all concerned of getting caught are increasing.

“The immigration officers are also not stupid anymore, not like in the old days,” Sahba says, chuckling. “They’re smart. And they’re looking at all aspects of every immigration application.”

Source: Douglas Todd: Would-be immigrants to Canada being sold ‘false dreams’

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , ,

‘He was supposed to help us’: Chinese immigrants out thousands after immigration agent disappears

2019/04/03 Leave a comment

It would be a lot simpler just to ban consultants and only advise applicants to use lawyers. And hard to understand why people would trust a 24-year-old with that kind of money (no, lawyers have a few bad apples too, but there are meaningful codes of conduct and enforcement):

A Winnipeg immigration agent has allegedly skipped town, leaving a group of Chinese immigrants in the lurch and out thousands of dollars.

Jiatoo Immigration Consulting Inc., run by 24-year-old Zhihao Jia, quietly shut the doors at its Pembina Highway office in early March, clearing out furniture in a seemingly overnight move with no notice given to its landlord or clients.

“He was supposed to help us — but he didn’t help, but hurt us,” said Julie, a client of Jia’s, who the CBC has agreed not to identify.

Julie said she gave Jia $10,000 on March 1, 2019, to help her apply for a post-graduate work permit and eventually help her get permanent residency in Canada.

Instead, less than two weeks later, she was left scrambling to find Jia after he stopped returning her calls or texts.

‘No people, no furniture, nothing’

When Julie went to Jia’s office on March 11, she knew there was a problem.

“We found his office was totally vacant. Nobody was there. They were all gone. No people, no furniture, nothing,” she said.

The CBC has agreed not to name the woman we are calling Julie, as she is afraid that speaking out could impact her future immigration applications.

She is one of at least 13 Chinese immigrants who claim they were affected by Jia’s disappearance, according to licensed immigration consultant Yu Xiang, who is working with Julie and a few other clients left in the lurch.

One person gave Jia over $20,000 and only received partial services before the immigration agent packed up and left, Xiang said.

“The severity of harm done to them [varies],” person to person, he said.

Some clients paid and got nothing, he said, while others got partial help and some received full service. But Xiang questions the legitimacy of their applications, because Jia was not licensed to fill them out.

CBC has not been able to speak with Xiang’s clients to independently verify this claim.

Julie said she felt she could trust Jia after seeing online advertisements for his company, and a website saying it was nominated for a 2017 “new emerging Chinese company” award at the Manitoba Chinese Business Gala.

When she went to the company, Julie had just graduated college and needed to get a job in order to obtain a work permit and stay in Canada.

She agreed to pay Jiatoo Immigration Consulting $15,000 for help to find a job and eventually receive assistance with her application for permanent residency in Canada, according to the retainer agreement signed by the client and the company.

Julie paid Jia $10,000 up front, and was to pay the remaining $5,000 at a later date.

“We are newcomers. We are not familiar with the immigration service or the working environment here in Canada,” she said when asked why people pay for immigration services.

“We need help. We need guidance and instruction. We need to consult people who know how to help us.”

Jiatoo owed 2 months’ rent

The landlord at 675 Pembina Highway got a call from an employee of Jiatoo Immigration on March 5, saying the office was empty.

“She said the place was cleaned out,” said property manager Eileen Gaynor.

CBC has not been able to reach Jia for comment. Texts and phone calls to the cellphone number he provided to clients, and which is listed on Jiatoo’s website, went unanswered.

CBC reporters also visited two properties associated with Jia through land titles. Both were abandoned. Stacks of newspapers were piled up outside the front door of one of the properties.

Gaynor said Jia still owed rent for February when he vanished. He had given her a cheque but it bounced. By March, he had closed his bank account so she could no longer collect on his debt.

Jia moved into the strip mall in April 2018, according to Gaynor. Company records show he is the director of Jiatoo Education Service Inc and also the president of Club Royale Immigration Inc.

Winnipeg police investigating

Julie said despite paying Jia, she got nothing in return. At first she wasn’t sure what to think, but after telling police what happened, the woman is confident she’s been duped.

“It’s official now, so we aren’t suspicious anymore. We are pretty sure that he’s a fraud,” she said.

For weeks, the woman kept trying to get ahold of Jia. He eventually phoned her husband, telling the couple to stop looking for him — or else.

“He said he knew us. He has got our information, and he [said] if we called police, it will have a bad influence on our immigration process,” Julie said.

After reporting Jia to police, Julie called the Canada Border Services Agency and Winnipeg-based immigration consultant Yu Wang — the licensed immigration consultant Jia worked under as an agent. Company records show that Wang is the director of Internationalized View Investments Consulting Ld.

In Canada, under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, advice or representation for immigration applications can only be provided by either a person licensed through the Immigration Consultants of Canada Regulatory Council (ICCRC) — the regulatory body for immigration consultants — or a lawyer in good standing (or in Quebec, a member in good standing with the Chambredesnotaires du Québec).

Winnipeg police confirmed that they received a report from the client and are investigating. The CBSA said it is not their practice to confirm or deny whether they have launched an investigation.

At this time no charges have been laid.

Not allowed to give immigration advice: ICCRC

Jia was not licensed to do immigration work, but had been hired to recruit clients for Wang.

Jia is not a member of the ICCRC, but was registered as an agent of Wang’s.

Agents are not allowed to provide any advice for immigration under the current ICCRC regulations, but those rules are frequently skirted, explained Xiang, who is a licensed consultant under the regulatory council.

Wang told CBC News he had no idea Jia was taking money from clients until a woman called him mid-March to allege the agent stole her money.

“He’s supposed to [be] recruiting clients for me,” Wang said. “I prepare the application to Citizenship and Immigration Canada.”

Wang said Jia informed him earlier this month he was moving to Vancouver, so Wang cancelled his agency agreement with him. The ICCRC confirmed the agreement was cancelled on March 15.

He says he has no idea where any money Jia collected would be and he does not have access to a client list. He said repeated messages to Jia about the money have gone unanswered.

“I didn’t see the money at all,” he told CBC.

Xiang said the likely reason more people have not reached out to Wang is because they do not understand that he is the consultant Jia worked under.

Julie said at first, she was afraid to speak out, but decided she couldn’t stay quiet and allow other people to be victimized.

“We trusted him,” she said.

“We want people [to know] what kind of a company Jiatoo is, and we want people to know what kind of person Zhihao Jia is — and to me personally, I want my money back.”

Julie said Jia came to Canada as a student in 2012, and took the same path as she did which makes his actions even more egregious.

“He studied here and graduated and [worked] here. So I think he should know what we think. He should know what we feel — what we feel as a newcomer here.”

200 cases reported each year: CBSA

The Immigration Consultants of Canada Regulatory Council cannot legally prosecute or investigate allegations of fraud. It can discipline a consultant if an agent of a member acts unethically.

On first offence, the council member receives a written warning.

On second offence, the member is fined $100.

The CBC requested an interview with the ICCRC, which could not be accommodated in the time frame requested.

In a prepared statement, the regulatory council said it could not disclose information on any investigations that are currently underway.

But Xiang says he’s heard stories like Julie’s too many times.

“It has a very huge impact on the reputation of Canada’s immigration system,” he said.

“And there’s lack of trust between these newcomers and the various service providers in Canada.”

Almost 180 cases of suspected immigration-consultant offences are brought to the attention of the Canada Border Services Agency each year, according to data provided by the agency.

About 120 of those complaints involve unlicensed consultants.

Xiang says those cases aren’t just about money. A late application form or forms with missing errors can mean the applicant is denied a work permit or permanent residency, and the consequences can be deportation.

“We’re talking about people’s lives here,” he said.

Source: ‘He was supposed to help us’: Chinese immigrants out thousands after immigration agent disappears

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Douglas Todd: Chinese students’ river of cash unlikely to dry up

2019/01/15 Leave a comment

Speculation, of course, but my guess:

A business college at the University of Illinois has taken out an insurance policy against the potential catastrophic loss of revenue from high-fee-paying students from China.

Educators and social-media commentators are expressing fears the river of money flowing from Chinese students into Canada, the U.S., Britain and Australia will dry up because of a brewing trade war and the arrest in Vancouver of Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou.

The government of China has said it has more than 600,000 students studying abroad, the vast majority of them in English-language countries. Highly desired Canada has more than 186,000 of them, according to China’s Toronto consulate (the federal government’s figure is slightly lower). That means China’s young people make up roughly one in three of all 500,000 international students in Canada.

Despite China’s ambassador to Canada last week hammering English-speaking countries as “arrogant” and rife with “white supremacy” for their defence of Meng’s arrest, there is no sign that China’s leaders are ready to follow the lead of Saudi Arabia’s rulers, who reacted to Canada’s human rights comments last year by calling back most of the Saudi students in Canada.

“I don’t think the Chinese will be as petulant as the Saudis were, or as unsophisticated, although they may make more subtle changes over time,” Andrew Griffith, a migration researcher and former senior director in Canada’s Immigration Department, said.

Canada could even attract more Chinese students in the future in part because the number entering the U.S. appears to be flattening out, possibly because of President Donald Trump’s rhetoric about China and immigrants. That’s why Illinois business college dean Jeffrey Brown, realizing his school had become highly dependent on Chinese students’ money, took out an insurance policy with Lloyd’s of London.

Canada hosts eight times more Chinese students per capita than the U.S., suggesting this country’s educational institutions are more dependent on, if not addicted to, their fees than U.S. colleges. Some higher-education researchers are calling the phenomenon “academic capitalism.”

It’s the expanding trend in English-language countries to make up for steadily eroding taxpayer funding of schools, colleges and universities by capitalizing on the full fees paid by students from mostly well-off families from around the world, with China providing by far the biggest group.

Some Canadian educators, and researchers like Mengwei Su and Laura Harrison of Ohio University, say the intense concentration of Chinese students in Western schools brings with it drawbacks, however, mainly for the students themselves.

Even though Western universities welcome Chinese students as “a particularly lucrative market,” Su and Harrison found many of the young Chinese struggle with English and integrating into Western culture — partly because they are ending up in classrooms and living situations dominated by other students from China.

“Seventy per cent of the students in my class are from China,” one Chinese student told the Ohio researchers, describing the sense of social segregation. “The class is not much different from that in our country,” said another Chinese pupil. One young woman from China opted to study in the Netherlands rather than North America, saying, “I want to avoid too many Chinese students.”

Against a backdrop in which the taxpayer-funded proportion of the operating budgets of B.C.’s public universities has drastically declined in recent decades, more than half the foreign undergraduate students at Simon Fraser University, more than 2,700, now come from China.

The University of B.C. has 5,000 students from China, almost one third of its international student population. Scores of public high schools, colleges and two-room private language institutes also take in hefty fees from the roughly 50,000 Chinese students in B.C., mostly Metro Vancouver.

The dark blue at the top of this chart indicates more than half the undergraduate international students at Simon Fraser University since 2011 have come from China. (Source: SFU)

The federal Liberal government is busily wooing more Chinese students, however. Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen is following the enthusiastic lead of former minister John McCallum and saying “We’ll do whatever we can” to bring in an increasing number of students from China.

Hussen maintains international students in Canada, whose numbers have been recently jumping by roughly one quarter annually, funnel $11.6 billion a year into Canada’s economy, adding they also enhance “cultural exchange.” To make it easier for more Chinese students to jet across the Pacific Ocean to Canada, the Liberal government recently opened seven new visa centres in China. Hussen acknowledged such students can contribute to the housing and rental squeeze in cities such as Toronto and Metro Vancouver, particularly since many offshore parents buy Canadian homes for their offspring.

Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen says “We’ll do whatever we can” to bring in an increasing number of students from China.

Western “higher education institutions are slowly evolving into a corporate-like enterprise that pursues monetary gains, at times eclipsing their educational mission,” write Su and Harrison, of Ohio University, echoing growing sentiment among scholars of higher education.

The Ohio researchers found a key financial problem is that some overseas recruiting “agents” are exploiting international students, with more than half the Chinese students they surveyed hiring these advisers to navigate their complicated route to the West.

The trouble with agents dominating the field of global education, according to Su and Harrison, is many are providing misinformation to students, steering them to inappropriate schools and not warning them about how difficult it will likely be to learn workable English. Many students get stuck in never-ending English-remediation classes.

To root out abuse and increase overseas families’ trust in such agents, Australia, New Zealand, Britain and Ireland have developed a code to regulate them, say Thompson Rivers University researchers Victoria Handford and Halying Li.

But Canada has not signed on to the protocol, which is designed to ensure the agents behave more ethically.

Meanwhile, Canada’s recruiting continues apace.

Source: Douglas Todd: Chinese students’ river of cash unlikely to dry up

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School agents benefit both Canada and China – The Conversation

2019/01/12 Leave a comment

The analysis of the numbers and practices is more interest than what appears to be shilling for education consultants while indicating a possible regulatory gap:

China is the No.1 source country of international students who come to study in Canada. According to the Canadian Bureau for International Education, 150,000 international students from China studied in Canada in 2017.

Any political impact on Canadian and Chinese relations is potentially serious for a wide global network with something at stake related to Chinese students in Canada — including students and their families, universities and services related to international study, such as education agents.

Education agents play a significant role in counselling and referring students to international education providers. They connect the people involved in international education, linking students, parents, education providers, visa offices, professional service providers such as language training institutions, academic program evaluation agencies, travel and accommodation providers and finance institutions to each other in order to facilitate study in another country.

As an education researcher focused on studying trust and leadership, and as part of my university’s recruitment efforts, I have studied how students and their families decide to invest in international education, including through using education agents.

I also supervised a student’s research project that investigated the role of education agents in China. The student, Haiying Li, helped to inform this article. Li worked as an education agent between 2001 and 2014 in various capacities: among her roles, she worked for our university, and as a consultant for Beijing-, and Guangzhou-based firms and at a program supporting Masters students based in Vancouver and Shanghai. This was before she became a student in Canada.

What I have seen is that education agents play a significant role in helping international students come from China to Canada, and the agents’ work benefits both countries’ economies and people.

How agents work

The agents provide services such as identifying the institution and course of study that meet the student’s needs, helping the students finish applications, submitting grade records and serving as a liaison. Some agencies may also provide training for required language proficiency tests. In some cases, after the student enrols the agent can play the role of cultural mediator.

Based on research conducted in 2014, 60 per cent of international students used an education agent to apply to Canadian colleges and universities.

Among the three different types of education agents, the first is an institution representative who receives a commission by the school they represent. The second type is the student’s representative; the student pays for advising services typically to apply to academic programs offered by the best-ranked universities.

The third type of agent may be remunerated by both a student and an institution. The student pays for the agent’s professional overseas study consulting service; the agent may also receive commission from schools who she or he works for.

Canada benefits

I teach and supervise many international students, including Chinese students. Students’ eagerness and wonder in a new place is common, yet no less beautiful each time it unfolds, reinforcing the significance of intercultural experiences.

International students bring Canadians the opportunity to begin to understand cultural differences and similarities and to become better equipped to live successfully in a multicultural global economy.

International students bring both more money and jobs to Canada, contributing more than $15.5 billion to Canada’s economy annually. They bring knowledge, information and skills to Canada.

The federal government reports that international student spending directly and indirectly supported 168,860 jobs in Canada in 2016, an increase of 38 per cent over 2014. Thus international students have direct impacts on GDP, jobs and tax revenue.

Agents working for schools recruit students to Canadian institutions but if they perform their role successfully, they also raise the brand image of the institutions.

These agents also market Canada. They show the advantages of Canada amid other prospective countries of study, empahsizing the quality of education, the multicultural nature of Canada, safety, the beautiful Canadian environment, the potential for new economic development, the high-quality life style and immigration pathways for international students.

A 2013 report commissioned by the Council of Ministers of Education Canada based on a voluntary survey of 145 elementary, secondary and post-secondary Canadian educational administrators, and government officials in education says that how schools use and manage agents varies significantly (of note: Québec survey responders reported minimal use of agents). More research about agents’ work in Canada would be helpful.

Agents in China

Consultants EY Parthenon report that the total agent market size in China is USD$1.2 billion. In 2017, according to the Chinese Ministry of Education, 608,400 Chinese students were going abroad.

Students who leave China to study internationally come from across the country, including from what China classifies as first-, second- and third-tier cities. China ranks these cities based on five indicators: availability of business resources, urban hubs, activity of urban people, lifestyle diversity and future plasticity.

From the perspectives of parents and international students, the education agent is a conduit. Working with an education agent is reassuring because the agent can understand parents, students and their families and speak their language and thus help navigate a huge emotional and financial decision.

Trustworthiness

Some existing studies suggest that students and their families often choose the institutions that the agents recommend.

But researchers Mengwei Su and Laura M. Harrison argue this reliance has not always been beneficial to students: they argue that in our globalized economy students may be exploited for economic gain and that “delegating recruitment to overseas agencies causes mismatches between host institutions and the Chinese students.”

In a context where Chinese study abroad has grown rapidly and not every country agrees on regulatory practices (Canada is not a signator to an 2012 agreement signed by the U.K., Australia, Ireland and New Zealand for best practices agents’ trustworthiness is a significant issue for families and schools.

Eight interviews recently conducted with people knowledgeable about agent work (one agent in China, one director of international marketing representative from a Canadian university, three mothers of international students and three international students) suggested some values and standards that could be probed in further research.

In creating trustworthy relationships between clients and agents, positive feedback from the client’s friends was significant: in other words, a word-of-mouth referral. Successful experiences shared by previous clients, coupled with objective comparisons of service price, service quality and personal qualities of the agents all mattered.

With the growing markets in international education, high-quality services by trustworthy professionals are essential.

Source: School agents benefit both Canada and China – The Conversation

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Lawyer versus consultant? Immigration data shows visa applicants have best shot with former

2018/12/12 Leave a comment

There may also be some selection bias involved (e.g., nationals who engage lawyers may be stronger candidates for visa approvals):

Foreign nationals who prepare their own Canadian visa applications are nearly as successful in being accepted as those who spend money on a consultant to do the job.

But chances of success are much higher if they hire an immigration lawyer to help get their study, work or visitor visas, according to immigration data obtained under an access to information request.

Canada received 342,154 temporary resident applications in 2017, the data shows. While 86 per cent of applicants declared themselves as self-represented, 6 per cent were represented by consultants and another 5 per cent by lawyers. The remaining 3 per cent hired Quebec notaries or used “non-remunerated” representatives.

Overall, 18.9 per cent of the applications were rejected. Those who prepared their own applications had a 19.3 per cent refusal rate, slightly higher than the 18 per cent among those who paid a consultant to do it.

In contrast, only 10.4 per cent of applications prepared by a lawyer were rejected. The refusal rates for applications prepared by Quebec notaries and unpaid representatives were 13.1 per cent and 10.1 per cent respectively.

Marina Sedai, chair of the immigration section of the Canadian Bar Association, said she wasn’t surprised lawyers had the highest success rate.

“Canadian lawyers’ rigorous education, legal analysis skills, and high ethical standards enforced by an effective regulator, have long been understood to result in better outcomes,” Sedai said.

“Lawyers’ culture of the law being a calling rather than a business means that although lawyers will often take the tough cases, they will also protect clients by advising them against hopeless cases.”

When it comes to the lower success rate for consultants, lawyers are quick to point out that group has lower educational requirements and a less robust regulatory regime than lawyers. For their part, consultants say the immigration data is too general and doesn’t give the full picture.

“It is based on the flawed assumption that all applications are equally complex. In reality, applications completed by unpaid representatives may be far simpler, thus having a much higher chance of success,” said the Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants in a statement to the Star.

Currently, licensed immigration consultants must meet a minimum language requirement and graduate from an accredited immigration practitioner program, which takes about a year to complete full time. While only about 1,000 lawyers practise immigration law, there are five times more licensed consultants in Canada.

“Immigration lawyers typically have completed a four-year bachelor’s degree before undergoing a very competitive process for admission to law school. Law school degrees take three years to complete and are also no cakewalk. Then there is the bar admissions course which must be passed, the articling process, etcetera,” said Toronto immigration lawyer Ravi Jain.

“Many immigration consultants have only completed online courses at a community college. The education and training is just not comparable.”

The immigration consultants’ association, which has more than 2,000 members, said it’s pleased more people are using consultants and believed that’s due to the generally higher fees charged by their lawyer counterparts.

Regulatory bodies for lawyers and consultants do not mandate how much their members can charge clients, but fees can range from hundreds to thousands of dollars.

Jain, who is also vice chair of the bar association’s immigration division, said the success rate for lawyers would likely be even higher if not for the fact lawyers often take up very difficult and complex cases.

“A lot of my clients come to me after they have gone to a consultant or tried on their own,” Jain said, adding many are reluctant to lodge a complaint against their former consultant and prefer just to have him reapply.

“It’s much more difficult to obtain approvals when applications have already been refused,” he added.

Source: Lawyer versus consultant? Immigration data shows visa applicants have best shot with former

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Immigration consultant council suspends licence of former Edmonton MLA Carl Benito

2018/10/06 Leave a comment

Yet another one:

The federal council that regulates immigration consultants has temporarily suspended the licences of former Edmonton MLA Carl Benito and one of his sons, as it awaits the outcome of a Canada Border Services investigation of an alleged large-scale immigration fraud.

At a hearing Tuesday, Cindy Ramkissoon-Shears, an independent chairperson of the Immigration Consultants of Canada Regulatory Council (ICCRC), determined there were reasonable grounds to conclude that allowing Benito and his son Charles to continue practising as consultants may cause harm to the public and could undermine the reputation of the profession.

The temporary suspensions mean the Benitos must have no further involvement with their clients. They must immediately make arrangements for another consultant or lawyer to assume their clients’ files.

Benito and his son did not respond to interview requests from CBC News on Tuesday.

The ICCRC is the national body that, by federal law, regulates all individuals, except lawyers, providing Canadian immigration, citizenship, and international-student advising services.

The council only seeks an interim suspension in exceptional circumstances, following a preliminary investigation, when it considers allegations so serious that allowing the consultant to continue to practise poses a potential risk to the public.

The hearing Tuesday heard evidence the ICCRC had received three complaints about the Benitos’ immigration consulting practice dating back to 2016.

But the council only began its investigation after it learned from CBC News on Aug. 16 that the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) had raided Benito’s home and office in late June as part of a major immigration fraud investigation.

Bundles of $100 bills seized

Court documents obtained by CBC News revealed the CBSA seized more than $250,000 in cash — mostly bundles of $100 bills stashed in two floor safes — as part of an investigation into what the agency alleges was a three-year immigration fraud scheme. The agency also seized numerous cash-filled payment envelopes bearing what appear to be the names of clients.

In search-warrant documents, the CBSA alleged that since Nov. 11, 2015, Carl Benito had counselled dozens of Filipino immigrants to improperly extend their stay in Alberta. The agency claimed Benito organized a scheme involving bogus applications for study and work-permit extensions.

The CBSA also alleges it found at least one Filipino immigrant, and possibly several more, working illegally for the Benitos’ consulting business.

The ICCRC had previously determined there was sufficient evidence to hold a hearing for  interim suspensions against Carl and Charles but there was not enough direct evidence to include a third son, Mark, in the proceedings.

During Tuesday’s hearing, Carl Benito’s lawyer, William Macintosh, argued the information contained in the CBSA search-warrant documents did not constitute sufficient evidence because it was essentially hearsay and, in some cases, double hearsay.

But a lawyer acting for the ICCRC said the information in the search-warrant documents, supplemented by similar information contained in the three previous complaints, created credible and compelling grounds to support the suspension of the Benitos.

“In my submission, there are more than reasonable grounds to believe the Benitos have been running a practice, the modus operandi of which was to perpetuate a fraud against the Canadian government,” lawyer Lisa Freeman told the hearing.

Carl Benito did not speak at Tuesday’s hearing. His son, Charles, who was self represented, told the hearing that he had done nothing wrong and was innocent.

None of the Benitos has been criminally charged and none of the allegations from the search-warrant documents has been proven in court. The CBSA has confirmed its investigation is ongoing.

Council investigation delayed

An ICCRC investigator admitted under questioning by Macintosh that the council’s investigation, and potentially a full disciplinary hearing, can’t continue until after the CBSA concludes its investigation.

The investigator conceded the council is wholly dependent on documents from the CBSA for its investigation, and it could take up to a year for the CBSA to conclude its investigation.

In an August interview, the council’s director of professional conduct told CBC News the investigation process can be complicated by the immigration status of individuals who may be critical witnesses in a disciplinary hearing.

Immigration Consultants of Canada Regulatory Council director of professional conduct Michael Huynh says the investigation process can be complicated by the immigration status of people who might be critical witnesses in a disciplinary hearing.

“Because of the nature of the services members provide — that is, the members of the ICCRC — a lot of the complainants sometimes are of precarious status,” Michael Huynh said. “So they might not be willing to, after filing the complaint, testify, in which case it gets a little harder for us to procure the evidence necessary to prove our case.”

Huynh said there are also situations where a complainant may have been “complicit” in the immigration consultant’s activities, which may make them reluctant to testify for fear of compromising their status.

Benito was elected to the Alberta legislature in 2008. He became an immigration consultant after losing the Progressive Conservative nomination in 2012.

On websites and Facebook pages filled with photos of beaming clients, “Kuya Carl” (Brother Carl) claims he can help fellow Filipino immigrants secure residency, study permits, and work permits.

“Carl is simply the best in immigration consulting in Edmonton,” one of his websites reads.

In an article recently published in a local Filipino newspaper, and republished on his immigration firm’s website, Benito claimed he was a victim of “sensationalized” journalism.

“We have several clients who are our direct witnesses on how Triple Maple Leaf Canada and Carl Benito conducts his Consulting Services with utmost transparency and within legal bounds and following the guidelines as set by Immigration Canada,” Benito wrote in the article.

Source: Immigration consultant council suspends licence of former Edmonton MLA Carl Benito

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

Refugee board releases guide to deal with bad lawyers, consultants

2018/09/22 Leave a comment

The twitter traffic I have seen from immigration lawyers applaud this (overdue) move:

The Immigration and Refugee Board has issued new guidelines to help its decision-makers and the public deal with complaints involving allegations of substandard legal representation.

“In the past, there were no formal procedures established at the board for dealing with allegations against former counsel, and each situation was dealt with on a case-by-case basis,” said spokesperson Anna Pape.

“Now, after internal and external consultation, the IRB has developed its own protocol to guide the decision-makers and the parties, based on the procedures in the Federal Court and in other courts.”

While some complaints about counsel raise legitimate concerns, others can be controversial because people may make them to try to delay proceedings or to demand that their case be reopened in the event of a negative decision.

Among the most high-profile complaints in recent years were from Roma refugees against three Toronto lawyers — Viktor Hohots, Joseph Farkas and Erzsebet Jaszi — who were later disciplined by the Law Society of Upper Canada, only after most of the complainants had their claims rejected and were deported with no redress.

The refugees’ complaints alleged the lawyers accepted legal aid retainers but abdicated their professional responsibilities, engaged in professional misconduct and negligently represented their clients, and ultimately led to their claims being rejected. Most only raised their concerns to Toronto’s Roma Community Centre when the majority of their claims were refused.

While critics welcome the guidelines and believe they can help ensure decision-makers take such complaints seriously, some said they are long overdue, coming four years after the Federal Court published similar protocol.

“It’s interesting that it took the board this long to develop a formal policy,” said York University law professor Sean Rehaag, co-author of a 2015 study that examined the odds faced by Roma in Canada’s refugee system, including inadequate legal representation.

“The biggest problem is these people are vulnerable. They may not know their rights or speak the language and are scared of retribution. There will never be full assurance against problematic counsel.”

The new guidelines apply to the board’s four tribunals that deal with asylum claims and appeals as well as immigration detention and appeals. They detail the steps individuals must take to complain against their counsel and the documentation they need when the issue arises in the middle of a proceeding or after a decision is made.

Complainants must provide the board with documentation showing they have informed their former counsel about the allegations and provided them 10 days to respond to the claims. They must also release their solicitor-client privilege to the extent necessary to allow former counsel to respond to the allegations.

Meanwhile, adjudicators can give direction or issue orders to make the proceeding fairer or more efficient despite the guidelines. They may also disclose a counsel’s breach of professional obligations, such as incompetence, negligence and misconduct to relevant regulatory body.

According to Pape, the board reported complaints against 10 lawyers and nine immigration consultants to their respective professional regulators in 2017. So far this year, they referred three lawyers and two consultants to their licensing bodies.

Source: Refugee board releases guide to deal with bad lawyers, consultants

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Council that regulates immigration consultants accused of fraud, forgery and human rights violations

2018/07/04 Leave a comment

Not the first time the Council has faced scrutiny about its behaviour (Agency that oversees immigration consultants appears to be in turmoil):

The council that oversees the work of thousands of immigration consultants in Canada is facing serious allegations from one of its own members.

Muhammad Watto, 54, alleges in court documents that the Immigration Consultants of Canada Regulatory Council (ICCRC) has engaged in fraud, forgery and human rights violations.

Watto, who has been a long-time critic of the council, has filed a notice of application under the Not-for-profit Corporation Act asking the Ontario Superior Court to order a formal investigation into the ICCRC, a non-profit organization that has been mandated by the federal government to regulate immigration, citizenship and international student advising services.

“I have observed myself some major discrepancies and some major alleged fraudulent activities concerning, not only the way they were handling public complaints, but also the way they were handling the funds,” said Watto, who has been a consultant for 12 years.

Among the allegations in the court filing are:

  • The directors and officers of the council are working against the charter, mandate and articles of the corporation and for their own self-interest.
  • Altering and forgery of financial statements.
  • Multiple counts of accounting fraud.
  • Failure to secure, or destruction of, financial records.
  • Open violations of human rights,

The notice of application also says the RCMP is reviewing information about the council’s activities.

Regulatory council set up in 2011

The allegations have yet to be proven in court and the council denies it has done anything wrong.

Details about the allegations have yet to be released.

The regulatory council, which was set up in 2011, sets the rules for how immigration consultants conduct themselves, providing education, licensing and discipline. It’s needed to help and protect those who want to come to Canada, overseeing more than 4,000 consultants. It is run by a 14-member board of directors.

If the council isn’t running smoothing, those who will suffer most are the immigrants and refugees who use consultants in their efforts to live in Canada.

The council also recently fired its president, Stephen Ashworth, who had been hired only a year ago.  Ashworth was the fifth president of the ICCRC, which was created in 2011 by the previous Conservative government to replace a prior body which was entangled in a number of problems.

Cindy Beverly, ICCRC director of communications, said Ashworth was relieved of his duties because “the board has a different alignment.”

Ashworth would not comment on his dismissal.

Recommendation that council be disbanded

This is not the first time the council has faced controversy. Last June, a parliamentary committee recommended that the government get rid of the council and step in to regulate consultants directly after hearing of problems facing the regulator from within.

Watto would support that recommendation.

“We want government to look into this and take over,” he said.

The ICCRC sent a written response to the CBC’s request for an interview about Watto’s allegations.

“The ICCRC is committed to good governance and financial probity. The ICCRC rejects Mr. Watto’s unsubstantiated allegations of misconduct,”  it reads in part.

It also noted that Watto is facing potential disciplinary action and revocation of his licence.

“I have not done anything wrong,” said Watto, who characterized the filing of a complaint against him as an attempt to intimidate him. He said the same thing has happened to other members who asked questions about the council’s transparency and accountability. Watto said the accusations against him are without merit.

Federal department says council operates at ‘arm’s length’

The department for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship said it is aware of the court action and the recent dismissal of Ashworth.

In a written statement it said “the ICCRC is the regulator of immigration consultants and is a self-governing organization that has an arm’s-length relationship with the department.”

As for the year-old recommendation that government scrap the council, the department said it “continues to closely analyze the report.”

Source: Council that regulates immigration consultants accused of fraud, forgery and human rights violations

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Ungovernable unlicensed immigration adviser gets 7-year jail term

2018/06/02 2 Comments

Good:

An unlicensed immigration consultant has been slapped with a seven-year jail sentence for giving immigration advice and counselling an applicant to lie — conduct an Ontario court described as “evil.”

Angelina Codina, 60, a disbarred Toronto lawyer, was also ordered to refund more than $30,000 to four of her former clients. This is one of the stiffest sentences handed to an unlicensed immigration consultant.

In February, a jury found Codina guilty of five charges under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, which carries a maximum sentence for an offence at two years imprisonment or a fine of $100,000, or both.

“Unscrupulous immigration consultants in Canada are in a special position to thwart the system by advising people outside Canada on what lies they can profitably tell in order to gain admission,” Ontario Superior Court of Justice Anne Molloy wrote in her sentencing reasons released this week.

“The result is that unqualified, and often undesirable, applicants are able to successfully enter Canada by fraudulent means, taking the places of other more deserving candidates. These are the evils this legislation is meant to address.”

The charges against Codina, operator of Codina International, spanned three years from 2011 to 2014, and included four counts of offering advice on immigration matters without a license and one count of counselling a client to misrepresent facts on an immigration application.

By law, only a lawyer in good standing or a licensed immigration consultant can offer immigration advice for a fee. Codina is neither.

Although her company had employees, including some who were licensed to provide legal advice to immigration clients, the court said each of the offences of which she was convicted involved her personally either advising or offering to represent clients.

“This was an organized and sophisticated endeavour operated for profit without regard to the requirements of the law. There were four separate offences involving four sets of clients, all of whom suffered harm. That places this offence at the upper levels of seriousness for crimes,” Molloy wrote.

“Ms. Codina’s level of blameworthiness is also at the upper-end of the scale. She masterminded the whole scheme.”

Source: Ungovernable unlicensed immigration adviser gets 7-year jail term

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ICYMI: Federal Court asked to spare former clients of immigration consultant fraudster | Toronto Star

2018/03/13 Leave a comment

Well, it was misrepresentation, whether committed directly by the person or through an intermediary:

Former clients of an unlicensed consultant convicted in one of Canada’s biggest immigration scams have asked the court to spare them from being removed from Canada for “misrepresentation.”

In a proposed class action application filed with the Federal Court last week, Chao Yuan Lin and Xiang Zhou — two of Xun “Sunny” Wang’s former clients — said evidence at the man’s criminal trial indicated “Wang or his staff committed immigration fraud and not their clients.”

Wang, owner of New Can Consulting in British Columbia, was found guilty of immigration fraud in 2015 for filing fraudulent immigration applications for hundreds of clients, and was sentenced to seven years in prison. Last year, three of his former staff were also convicted of immigration fraud and were sentenced to 18 months in jail.

Wang’s services included helping clients apply for citizenship and renew what’s known as a permanent resident, or PR, card, a document required of non-citizen immigrants to enter Canada by commercial vehicle.

Wang falsified documents to make his clients appear to have met the residency requirement when they were physically out of the country in order to renew their PR card.

“Despite the mountain of evidence of Mr. Wang’s fraudulent activities committed against his clients and Canada Immigration, the respondent (public safety) minister decided to treat the clients of Mr. Wang as no less culpable and has been seeking to remove them from Canada by alleging that they committed misrepresentation,” said the court application represented by the lead claimants, Lin and Zhou.

The Immigration Department declined to comment on the class action application or reveal the number of Wang’s former clients whose immigration status is under review, as the matter is before the court.

In the court application, Lin claimed he was not aware of any suspicious or fraudulent activities of Wang, nor was he informed of any by the Canada Border Services Agency when he retained Wang to renew his PR card in 2013, a year after officials executed a warrant to search Wang’s office in Richmond, B.C.

 

According to the court submission, Lin was refused a travel document to return to Canada by Canadian officials in Beijing in 2014. He filed a successful appeal and obtained a new PR card in June 2016. Last month, however, the border agency told him he was inadmissible to Canada because he misrepresented himself on his PR card renewal, and he was referred to an admissibility hearing.

According to the submission, Zhou successfully renewed his PR card in 2010 through Wang’s company but was intercepted by border agents at the Vancouver International Airport a year later because he had failed to meet the minimum two-year residency requirement within a five-year period.

Zhou was issued a removal order but successfully appealed the decision, got his PR card renewed and sponsored his wife and child into Canada in 2013. Then last month, he too was informed by the border agency that he’s inadmissible to Canada for misrepresentation.

The court application asks that the permanent residents not have to go through the admissibility hearings for misrepresentation.

Both Lin and Zhou declined to comment.

Their lawyer, Lawrence Wong, said border officials identified about 2,000 of Wang’s clients during his criminal trial and hundreds of them had hired the unlicensed consultant for PR card renewal.

The court submission argues that misrepresentation in the PR card renewal does not imply his clients acquired their permanent resident status improperly and has nothing to do with the retention of the permanent status.

A PR card serves as proof of permanent resident status, but the status may remain without a valid card, the court application says.

“If the applicants made misrepresentation to renew their PR cards, then they should have their cards revoked or renewal applications denied. They should not lose their legally obtained PR status and be given a five-year ban from entering Canada,” the application says.

Another complaint the applicants have against the government, according to the application, was that their PR cards were successfully renewed by the Immigration Department but the public safety minister, who oversees the border enforcement agency, delayed “in shutting down the unlicensed and illegal activities of Mr. Wang” and “took it upon themselves to revisit the applicants’ cases.”

via Federal Court asked to spare former clients of immigration consultant fraudster | Toronto Star

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