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For those thinking of hiring a Canadian immigration consultant, here are some facts you should consider.

The following are recognized by Citizenship and Immigration Canada, to file your application for you. Others may do so but only with the assistance of an immigration lawyer:

- Immigration lawyers - regulated by a Canadian law society or the Chambre des Notaires du Québec
- Immigration consultants - regulated by CSIC - Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants

The contact details of Canadian Law Society of each province is available here: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/informa...verify-rep.asp

**There has been a modification to Citizenship & Immigration Canada's directives on who can act as a paid immigration representatives. They have added the following paragraph to their web site:
There are just over 1000 authorized CSIC members, but an estimated additional 5000 non authorized "ghost" consultants operating in Canada, and untold thousands more operating in other countries. Some of the ghost consultants in Canada have convincing web sites with address and phone numbers, and in some cases may even claim CSIC membership or use the CSIC logo. So in that context, they appear legitimate but they are anything but. They often will accept their payments via a Western Union or Money Gram money transfer, or cash. Some will accept checks, money orders and bank transfers but will not supply a written receipt or a detailed contract.

Some consultants have also setup a second business such as job recruitment or some other type, and may refer their clients to that second business which in turn will be the one charging the fee.

Hiring a Canadian immigration consultant or adviser will not speed up you claim with Citizenship and Immigration Canada, in fact due to the level of unethical or fraudulent practices committed by people advertising their services as Canadian immigration consultants, it could actually delay your application or get it rejected outright.

*WARNING
Many web sites will show a CSIC logo or mention that they belong to CSIC, without mentioning the name of the supposed member or his CSIC membership number as required by CSIC.
Unless they can provide proof of their CSIC membership, those consultants should be avoided for misrepresenting themselves.

To verify if a consultant is duly registered with CSIC = http://www.csic-scci.ca/find

To verify if a consultant's membership has been revoked by CSIC = http://www.csic-scci.ca/find/revoked.html

To verify if a consultant's membership has been suspended by CSIC = http://www.csic-scci.ca/find/suspended.html

If you hire a ghost consultant who files for you, any application or submission he may make on your behalf to Citizenship and Immigration Canada could be rejected. For that reason, some unauthorized consultants will take your money but never submit your application, simply informing you at a later date that your application has been rejected.

You can verify the current status of your application to Citizenship and Immigration Canada on their web site. You will need your identification number. If you paid a legitimate consultant to file for you, he will (or should) have given you such a number: https://services3.cic.gc.ca/ecas/?app=ecas&lang=en

Hiring a certified immigration consultant does not guarantee you ethical service either. Some can give bad or illegal advice which is likely to get your application rejected. Some are known to Citizenship and Immigration Canada for having in the past, advised their clients to lie on their applications. Hiring one of these guarantees extra scrutiny of your application and increases your chance of failure.

The only thing that's absolutely guaranteed is that it will cost you money because successful or not, the consultant will have been paid.

According to the Toronto Star, there was a case of applicants who where advised by a paid consultant to apply under the refugee program for which they where not eligible, and that caused their claim to be rejected. Had they applied under a different program for which they where eligible, they could have succeeded since they already met the required criteria. The dishonest consultant to which they paid thousands of dollars actually caused their application to fail. They where deported.

You do not need to hire a consultant to apply for a refugee or immigrant status in Canada. The requirements and necessary forms are available on the web site of Citizenship and Immigration Canada - http://www.cic.gc.ca

Generally, the reputation of Canadian immigration advisers is rather bad. The profession has been plagued by misconducts for years. In an effort to clean it up, CSIC was setup in 2004 to self regulated the profession, but fraud is as rampant as ever since CSIC has no control over ghost consultants who operate due in parts to loopholes and lax law enforcement. Also, accredited members who openly break the rules of conduct are rarely penalized by CSIC. A legislation that would make ghost consulting a criminal offense is nowhere in sight so victims of these vultures continue to pay the price. If you have been defrauded by a Canadian immigration consultant, you can file a complaint with the RCMP - Royal Canadian Mounted Police on this web site: www.recol.ca

If your consultant was a CSIC member, you should also file a complaint with them at: www.csic-scci.ca/content/complaint_process

The services of an immigration consultant can cost thousands of dollars. Many web site offer an automated or personal "evaluation". Some are free while others charge up to $100 or more. These are often nothing more than money-making machines for the consultants. All it does is verify the required immigration criteria which are already available for free on the site of Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

These cheap or free evaluations are sometimes just a tool for catching new victims en masses so they can then be "milked" for all their worth. In some cases, if an applicant clearly lacks the skills or other requirements needed, instead of being told the truth, that his chances of successfully immigrating to Canada are zero, he will instead will be charged further consulting fees for various vague "services". Ethics are a rare commodity with many consultants, both authorized and not.

The Toronto Star newspaper has done an intensive investigation on Canadian immigration consultants. If you take the relatively small number of individuals investigated and multiply by the number of immigration advisers believed to be operating in Canada, the instance of unethical, shady and even criminal activity is alarming.

The Star's "Lost in Migration" series, which won a 2007 international Online Journalism Award in the public service category, can be seen at :

part-1

part-2

part-3

The Toronto Star noted that one reason many of these immigration advisers are successful is that they advertise in local languages to an ill informed population that depends entirely on the information supplied by these individuals, since the web site of Citizenship and Immigration Canada is strictly in English and French. For that reason, they have published a short list of advice in the following language:
Chinese
English
Farsi
Hindi
Korean
Portuguese
Punjabi
Spanish
Tamil
Urdu

Below is the English version: