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POPULATION: Canada Targets Dodgy Immigration ‘Consultants’

Mark Bourrie

OTTAWA, May 22 2003 (IPS) - When Mohammed Khozan handed 10,000 U.S. dollars to a London-based immigration consultant, he expected to be resettled in Canada within a few weeks.

Instead, after more than a year of battling with the consultant, a Canadian ex-lawyer who ”specialised” in advising Middle Eastern clients on how to enter Canada as landed immigrants, the Iranian-born Khozan gave up, wrote off his cash and asked the Canadian High Commission for a set of forms.

”Three months later, I was on my way to Canada. I learned the hard way that most ‘immigration consultants’ don’t do anything except fill out forms. They pretend to be able to pull strings, but after you hand over the money, all you hear is excuses,” Khozan said.

Because of such complaints, Canada’s immigration minister says he intends to regulate immigration consultants by the end of this year, to put an end to fraud, poor advice and bad legal practices by non-lawyers retained by people wanting to move to Canada.

The announcement by Denis Coderre came the same day a panel of lawyers, consultants and immigration activists recommended a discipline system for consultants and an errors and omissions fund to protect clients.

The report, issued by a 14-member committee headed by immigration lawyer Benjamin Trister and refugee and immigration activist Rivka Augenfeld, was established after complaints from lawyers and would-be immigrants.

”This is not a new problem. It has been going on for years, and it victimizes some of the most vulnerable people in the world,” said Augenfeld, who has helped hundreds of cheated immigrants fight for justice.

Trister, one of the country’s top immigration lawyers, says honest, competent consultants will still be able to practice, but the new rules will weed out the cheats and fraud artists.

"Although there are many consultants who conduct their work in an ethical manner, there are many who do not," he said. "This behaviour harms Canada’s reputation abroad. It harms Canada’s national security, it harms vulnerable applicants, and it causes serious problems for Canada’s economic self-interest."

According to the report, ”We know that some consultants are involved in people smuggling. We know that some immigration consultants use, or fabricate, fraudulent documents for aliens to enter this country.”

"We know that some immigration consultants abuse their client’s trust by promising the impossible and failing to deliver. We know that some immigration consultants charge exorbitant fees for their services," it adds.

According to the document, 75 percent of applicants hire a lawyer or consultant to help them immigrate.

In an interview outside Parliament’s House of Commons, Coderre said the problem is not consultants but the way that some of them operate.

"Right now, even a lawyer … disbarred for fraud, the next day can open his own office and become an immigration consultant. What we need is professionals. I’m not against consultants," Coderre said. ”I’m against those vultures."

The panel’s report, released earlier this month, says consultants should be licensed and monitored through a self-regulatory body. No more than one-third of the body’s members should be consultants, it said.

As well, the committee recommends that people without significant ties to Canada should not be licensed as immigration consultants – an effort to control fly-by-night operators in foreign countries who could refuse to appear for disciplinary proceedings. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has investigated thousands of such cases.

Foreign consultants affiliated with established Canadian firms could still be licensed, the report adds.

Trister says consultants usually are not a bargain for people who want help coming to Canada. ”Our research has shown that unregulated immigration consultants are often more expensive than lawyers,” he said.

”That might surprise people because one of the reasons people gave that we need consultants was because lawyers are too expensive. It hasn’t worked out that way. Consultants are not, broadly, cheaper than lawyers.”

The proposed rule-setting agency would also develop a code of conduct, complaints process, compensation fund, bilingual services and a national education programme. Fees would be scrutinised by an independent person.

All members would have to complete an accreditation exam and meet standards to be set by the new body, the panel advised. The law would be backed up with fines or imprisonment.

”I would say that, if you’re a foreign immigration consultant with no ties to Canada and you’re ripping people off, the future does not look bright,” Trister said.

Ottawa has been under pressure from the United States to clean up the immigration consultant business. Trister said Washington too, must tackle the issue.

”There’s been a lot of unfair criticism levelled at our system,” he said. ”The Americans pointed to us as being the weak link in North America but we have more people illegally coming north than there are going south. I don’t believe the system is as bad as people make it out to be, but it is a significant hole in the system that we can easily plug.”

He said consultants who flout the rules but operate outside Canada’s jurisdiction will likely not be able to stay in business long.

”Our hope is that if the department will not talk to these (foreign consultants) who are not licensed, the marketplace will take care of them because they will not be able to offer services on a par with the other people who are licensed.”

”People will become sophisticated enough to ask themselves,’why am I paying someone that (the) Immigration (department) will not talk to, when I can pay the same amount to someone who Immigration will talk to”.”