ICCRC: How to choose immigration consultants

ICCRC: HOW TO CHOOSE IMMIGRATION CONSULTANTS

Legal basis

According to Article 91 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and Article 21.1 of the Citizenship Act, only the following persons can apply for immigration and citizenship applications, including applications for temporary residents, permanent residents and IRB.

Lawyer,
Other legal workers registered with the Provincial Lawyers Association currently only have Paralegal in Ontario meeting this condition.
Quebec notary registered in Chambre des notaires du Québec,
A licensed immigration consultant registered with the Immigration Consultants Regulatory Commission (ICCRC).

Status of illegal consultants

In Canada, it is a criminal offence for illegal consultants to pay for immigration counseling. The maximum penalty is 2 years imprisonment and a fine of 100,000 Canadian dollars. Even so, police and prosecutors usually do not care about illegal agents who are not bad in nature, so illegal immigration consultants in Canada are still banned. However, with the increase in the popularity of the ICCRC Association and the irresponsible agency behavior of some non-licensed immigration consultants over the years, more and more domestic applicants have realized that they need to find a legal immigration agent.
Outside Canada, paid immigration advice is not governed by Canadian law, so most offshore agencies submit applications in the name of the applicant’s own or unpaid agent. In the field of temporary residents, such operations are acquiesced by the Visa Office and the Visa Center. Travel agencies and study agents can submit visas to clients in batches without being investigated by relevant laws. However, in the field of permanent residents, the issue of illegal immigration consultants has caused too many cases of refusal.

Applicant’s own obligations

In Domantay v. Canada, 2008 FC 755, the Federal Court held that the IRB was obliged to verify that the applicant’s paying agent was licensed, and that this logic would still apply to ordinary visa immigration cases. Simply put, the visa officer has the right to ask if the applicant has used immigration consultants, immigration consultants are legal, and refuses to deal with illegal immigration consultants.
The result of the matter may be even worse. As early as 2010, Hong Kong began to hire illegal immigration consultants for applicants but did not disclose applicants who refused to reunite immigrants, in Chang v Canada, [2010] IADD No. 14, No. TA9-00387 and follow-up In a series of cases, the IRB approved the appeal of these cases, arguing that the applicant did not need to fill out 5476 to file an illegal immigration consultant.
Islam v. Canada, 2016 FC 913 is the first time a federal court has ruled against a visa refusal by an illegal immigration consultant. In 2015, the Singapore Embassy refused to sign the applicant with the employer’s recommendation letter and a series of other applications, and found that the applicant had hired an illegal immigration consultant. The court found that the visa officer’s decision was unreasonable and violated the procedural fairness and the plaintiff won the case.
The most representative case is Ge v. Canada, 2017 FC 594. Hong Kong found the clues of the applicant’s use of illegal immigration consultants. Afterwards, the applicants replied that they did not use illegal immigration consultants. Hong Kong responded with similarities from these applicants. And it is obviously unreliable as a refusal. At least 57 groups of applicants chose judicial review, and the court won all the plaintiffs on the grounds that the visa officer violated the procedural fairness. Some opinions or consensus of the judgment in this case are:

It is not illegal to use only illegal immigration consultants, and it is not necessary to fill in 5476 to declare the use of illegal immigration consultants.
But the visa officer can ask about the matter, and the applicant is also obliged to answer the truth.

Risk of choosing an illegal immigration consultant

Our view is that using illegal immigration consultants and being discovered by visa officers is a very tricky business. Although it is not illegal in itself, there is no need to disclose it, but the visa officer will treat the case with colored glasses, and once the refusal is made, the process of appeal and judicial review is long and uneconomical. In addition to the federal visa officers in Hong Kong and Singapore, provincial government immigration officials in Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Quebec have challenged or rejected applicants on the grounds of illegal consultants.
If you must choose a non-licensed immigration consultant, you must ensure that you have a response plan after being questioned by the Immigration Department. All of our cases have licensed immigration consultants or lawyers, and there are also registered provinces in Saskatchewan and Quebec that require separate licenses. You can choose with confidence.

How to choose an immigration agency

At present, the number of licensed immigration consultants has increased year by year, and more and more former “illegal immigration consultants” have begun to choose to cooperate with licensed immigration consultants to represent immigration cases. The quality of immigration consultants and institutions is uneven, and fees are quite different. The industry faces serious information asymmetry.
We believe that experience and responsibility are the two most important elements in choosing an immigration agent.
Experience refers to how many similar cases the consultant has dealt with. Although immigration law is only one of the many laws in the law, there are quite a few branches in the immigration law, and each branch is profound. No company can say that it can master every branch, for example, the case of refugees is never involved.
The processing experience of similar cases is sometimes far more important than the understanding of the law, because the interpretation of the law is diversified, and the usual interpretation of a law by the visa officer is often different from how the law should be interpreted, but the visa officer decides the original case. The direction, in order to insist that “the law should have been interpreted like this” and the visa officer’s death or even appeal is uneconomical.
Responsibility is another important factor. For immigration consultants, signing up for one client is just one more case, but it is an application that affects the client for a lifetime. A good immigration consultant treats the client’s case as his own case, pays tribute to the possible risks, and does his homework on the legal points that determine the case.