Immigration Fraud - BEWARE

A number of months ago I wrote about how the future of Canada’s immigration policy will largely be based on employment opportunities in Canada. What this means is that as Canada’s labour pool shrinks, our demand for skilled workers who are job-ready increases. Now more than ever, Canadian companies must recruit foreign workers to meet labour market needs and Citizenship and Immigration Canada, provincial nominee programs and Service Canada have all reacted to address this need.

Based on the combination of a lack of skilled workers in Canada with a high level of interest from abroad to move to Canada, our country has created the perfect storm for both a successful immigration policy and in increase in immigration fraud.

Immigration fraud is not a new issue in Canada. Our immigration system has been abused over the years by immigration marriages, falsified investment documentation, hidden criminality and bogus refugee claims. However, as immigration policy slowly shifts from traditional selection criteria to an employment driven program, so to have the fraudulent activities shifted to that same area.

Abuse of our current employment related immigration programs typically occurs in one of two ways.

First, as you would expect, applicants are currently applying for provincial nomination or labour market opinions or arranged employment opinions on the basis of fake job offers. A fake job offer can mean that the company offering the position has no intention to hire the immigrant when they arrive, but is being paid to offer the job, the immigrant has produced fraudulent documents to prove his or her qualifications for the job, or companies are writing job offers to fit certain program criteria, but in fact expect the immigrant to perform a less impressive or completely different job once they arrive in Canada.

The second area of abuse of our immigration system comes in the form of immigrants paying for job offers. Most provinces have legislation that provides that a person must not request, charge or receive, directly or indirectly, from a person seeking employment a payment for employing or obtaining employment for the person seeking employment, or providing information about employers seeking employees. What this means is that paying $10,000 for a job offer for your relative overseas is illegal (this happens all the time!). Furthermore, all levels of government are aware of these problems and we can expect a higher level of monitoring and enforcement as these activities continue to swell out of control.

As with any illegal activity, the action is only as relevant as the consequence and in these cases the consequences can be severe. One possibility is that a finding of misrepresentation might be made against the potential immigrant thereby making it impossible for that person to even visit Canada (let alone immigrate) for a period of two years or even longer. If the immigrant used a forged or falsified document to commit immigration fraud a finding of serious criminality can be made as uttering a forged document is an offence under the Criminal Code of Canada. Those in Canada committing the fraud may also be subject to criminal prosecution.

As economist Thomas Friedman put it, a good immigration policy has a tall wall and a wide gate. Canada’s gate is only getting wider as our economy continues to grow and jobs are created. As there is so much opportunity for immigrants it is truly a shame that abusing our system will only cause our wall to grow taller and our gate to narrow.