March is Fraud Prevention Month in Canada: protect yourself from ghost immigration consultants

March is Fraud Prevention Month in Canada

When it is time to start your immigration process to Canada or even before, when you want to have a clear informed opinion on what is your best option to move to Canada, you certainly want to refer to a trustable consultant.

In matter of immigration consultancy, the Canadian law authorized only three categories of professionals to assist and represent a client for a fee:

All the members of these three categories, have graduated from a specific study program and have passed a licensing exam, plus criminal and good conduct screening, before being licensed to practice. Furthermore, they are continuously bound to respect strict regulations in the relationship with their clients in order to maintain their license.

The reason behind this authorization is the necessity to protect clients from consultants that may not have the required knowledge to provide proper advise and they may act fraudulently or provoke damages to their clients immigration files.

Ghost consultants are everywhere and are dangerous. Sometimes they are cheaper than an authorized consultant, most of the time they are not. Quite often, they pretend to be located in Canada, but they are not. The consequences of a poor immigration advice, may be serious and affect your immigration status in the long period.

When approaching an immigration consultant or an immigration agency, before signing anything or paying any money, ask for their registration number and check their credentials on the registry they declare they belong too.

We encourage potential immigrants to protect themselves against immigration fraud by verifying their immigration consultant using ICCRC-CRCIC’s Public Register

More video and explanation on ICCRC-CRCIC website.

For more information:

contact@migroconsulting.ca

photocredit ©  Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay