New legislative acts in Canada tighten requirements for immigration consultants
One of the expected initiatives that has every chance of becoming law in the near future is the Cracking Down on Crooked Consultants Act. The essence of this legislative act is to make it illegal to provide paid immigration consulting services by those who are not licensed lawyers or registered immigration consultants. According to the new law, individuals who provide such services without the right to do so may be fined up to 50 thousand dollars or imprisoned for up to 2 years.
Let me remind you that on April 13, 2004, another addition to the immigration law IRPA came into effect, regulating who has the right to officially represent the interests of applicants for immigration to Canada before immigration authorities when applying for immigration to Canada (authorized representative) and provide paid consulting services. Such persons could only be a Canadian lawyer or a registered member of the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants (CSIC).
However, the law did not define who could provide paid services without acting as an official representative before Canadian immigration authorities. According to the amendments to the existing legislation, now nobody except a Canadian lawyer or a registered member of CSIC can provide such services for money.
The reason for attention to this issue is that there are quite a lot of fraudsters in the field of immigration to Canada, as I have repeatedly written in my articles. For example, the most common type of fraud was the sale of fake job invitations to Canada (or promises to make such an invitation) to obtain work visas or to get additional points for immigration.
Another type of fraud was the fabrication of various "plausible" stories and the production of fake documents for those who wanted to stay in Canada as refugees, and inducing them to deceive immigration officials.
Finally, another common business in the immigration field was the organization of fake marriages for family sponsorship for individuals who had no chance of obtaining permanent resident status in Canada under any of the existing immigration categories.
The Canadian press regularly wrote about all these cases, conducting detailed investigations. Those who engaged in such criminal activities even had their own name – "ghost consultant," because they never left any traces anywhere, and certainly did not appear in any official documents. In fact, we are talking about a developed underground business.
Speaking about the practical benefit of the adopted law on immigration consultants, it is very doubtful. Various kinds of fraud are usually committed by individuals who are outside Canada, that is, outside Canadian jurisdiction. Directly in Canada, few would risk engaging in such matters, as document forgery is a criminal offense, regardless of whether it relates to immigration or any other area.
Outside Canada, the picture looks completely different, as Canadian laws do not apply to the activities of companies and individuals from other countries. Not to mention that local authorities are little interested in Canada's problems, and we should not forget about such specific features of third world countries as escaping criminal liability through bribes or calls from influential people. And although the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration of Canada, Mr. Kenny, states that Canadian authorities plan to resolve such issues at the international level, there are great doubts that this will succeed.
So far, it looks like additional difficulties from the introduction of this law will be experienced precisely by those who work in Canada in accordance with current rules and laws, while it will practically not affect those who operate outside Canada. In general, there is a feeling that the adoption of this law is nothing more than the Conservative government's desire to create the appearance of work by tightening responsibility and narrowing the circle of persons entitled to provide consulting services, without really eradicating the reasons why immigration fraud continues to exist, and moreover, thrives.
In my opinion, there is absolutely no need to tighten requirements for those Canadians who can provide consulting services in the field of immigration. Currently, everything in this area is so overregulated that common sense is lost, and many consultants operate outside the system not because they have any bad intentions, but because following the regulated path sometimes simply makes no sense. Rather, immigration consultants should be given relief, not tightening, while simultaneously streamlining the recording of these specialists' activities.
The Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration of Canada, instead of spending huge amounts on propaganda and fraud prevention, could simply introduce a few additional points in the immigration application form. In which the applicant must indicate who provided services in preparing documents for submission to the embassy, whether they used someone's services in obtaining a work permit, and so on. And also – warn that concealment of such information is grounds for refusal to consider the application or even deprivation of permanent resident status in the future if the concealed facts are discovered.
I think such an approach, with incomparably smaller financial investments and a minimum of effort expended, would have a much greater effect in fighting fraud than the current tightening of requirements and the huge sums that will be spent on advertising innovations.
Now about the change to List 38. That it would be changed, and changed in the foreseeable future, became clear after the March statement by Canadian Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Mr. Kenny. I recall that it was about beginning to accept recommendations and wishes from all interested parties and organizations on which specialties should be included in the updated list of priority occupations. Since then, no official announcements have been made on this matter, which in turn has created grounds for various rumors.
Although there are still no clear statements about how the list of priority specialties will be changed, and what will be removed or added, it looks like it will be shortened. Moreover, apparently, the most popular specialties related to finance and the IT industry will be removed.
This conclusion is suggested by a report from the Canadian Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration that the number of applications awaiting processing exceeds 400,000, and that for List 38 more applications are submitted than the allocated quotas for the Skilled Worker category. In this situation, given the ministry's priorities to completely eliminate the immigration backlog and reduce processing times to a few months, one should expect stricter selection criteria.
It looks like the Conservative government continues to try to solve immigration issues by tightening and imposing various restrictions, without conducting a deep analysis of the situation and identifying its causes. This is done instead of developing new effective strategies that would achieve the desired results. Therefore, in my opinion, the situation with immigration under the Skilled Worker category will not improve in the near future, but will only get worse.
Elena RYABININA.
«Russian Toronto»