Why IRCC Should Pay Attention to the B.C. Small Claims Case Li v. Dong 2017 BCPC 285 – Re: Custodian and Unauthorized Immigration Practice
Background of the Case
Li v. Dong, 2017 BCPC 285 (CanLII), <http://canlii.ca/t/h6ftb> was a five-day small claims matter between two educational agents, Ms. Chunmei LI and Mr. DONG.
Without delving too much into the myriad of messy facts – Mr. Dong was an educational agent and Ms. Li was a sub-agent. They had primarily verbal and one written agreement between them to split the cost of recruitment fees and percentage of tuition fees for minor students recruited from China.
Among part of this play was the fact Ms. Li charged students (who were from her own English language institute in China) $5000 to $6000 for “supervisory services” including custodianship. Ms. Li (new to Canada as a PR) wanted to better understand the educational market in Canada and therefore assisted Mr. Dong for various amounts per school. Some schools offered their own student services/custodianship services but this did not dissuade Ms. Li from charging her pretty penny.
Mr. Dong also benefited by charging CDN $300 for a custodian notarize fee from Ms. Li and CDN $1200 for a custodian fee of the CDN $5000 wanted to charge the students she referred to Mr. Dong.
Adding another layer to the mix, was Ms. Cindy Lii, who testified on behalf of Mr. Dong at Small Claims Court, discussed the fact she prepared documents for student visas and school applications for the students. She would refer students to Mr. Dong and also collect a cut [side note: there is no one last name Lii on the ICCRC registry]. Ms. Lii also took fees from Ms. Li to help prepare study permit applications.
Why should IRCC care about this?
From my perspective, the current rules around minor children – where, unlike with Universities there is no #DLI or sense that a student has to meet certain bona fide requirements in order to qualify – is broken. With no regulation of educational consultants and the cross-border movement of children and money, the natural consequence is the type of taking advantage of (I would deem it exploitative to call it mildly) that is ultimately being done at the expense of young children and their unbeknownst parents.
In the same way that a recruiter cannot charge both the employer and the employee, somehow in the business of minor students and educational agents, we have lost all control. This same problem affects post-secondary students but at least there are some safeguards and students themselves can advocate for themselves in a complaint.
Why are educational agents charging funds to have an immigration (custodianship document) signed?
Given notaries are all able to sign them (they don’t require any s.91 rep) – who is keeping track?
How is someone who is presumably not a designated immigration representative able to not only charge students to do visas, but charge other agents to do visas on their behalf and simultaneously collect funds from the very schools these students are obtaining visas for through agents?
I actually wrote this in part of a s.44 submission to CBSA not so long ago – but the fact is these agents are being inherently authorized by allowing to practice (without investigation by authorities), given business licenses, and provided advertisement space. How much fault can you really pin on the end user when 90% of what is provided in your own language in front of you is falsely claiming to be legitimate.
Why are schools not being regulated in the amounts they can charge for services and what these services are directed at?
We talk so much about big money – and rightfully so – through casinos and real estate, but the impact of money being washed through innocent children in the name of the education should raise some sort of moral conundrum that IRCC would want to step in on.
I would suggest IRCC make major clarifications to the custodianship process and indeed require clear third-party legal advice prior to accepting the form.
To go a step further, I would suggest that with the looming influx of minor students that will become university students and later put upward pressure on our economic immigration system, that schools be issued quotas for minor international students consistent with a prescribed ratio – based on Canadian students, with an emphasis on schools outside metropolitan areas that may require economic assistance or greater diversity.
Schools should also require designations in order to ensure minimum standards are met prior to enrolling minor international students. Private Schools, especially should have to provide some sort of compliance update to the Ministry.
Whether the Provincial/Federal Government knows it or not – education has become an exportable commodity. Therefore just like goods require taxes, tariffs, and customs law – so does education and especially international education. I think the Governments should reach out to one another and strike up a working group. I know I’d sign up given the stories I have been hearing and the type of preventable catastrophes that are looming around the corner.
Hopefully IRCC puts focus on this issue as I definitely see the snowball and these type of cases increasing without clearer guidelines and stronger deterrents.
