The Extent Unauthorized Immigration Agents Go to Hide Your Situation – A Case Study in Fraud
Recently, I was on Global News, talking about international student fraud (often times originating from overseas) where students get lured into Canada on a study permit and end up as precarious, exploited workers. You can find that piece here: https://globalnews.ca/news/4409552/aldergrove-subway-allegations/
In today’s piece I want to tackle a related issue that I have first hand knowledge of is affecting individuals across the spectrum – from individual seeking TRVs to study permits and work permits, and even to applications for permanent residence/permanent resident cards. This fraud takes place both inside Canada and outside Canada, although predominantly with unlicensed agents abroad or those agents who claim to work with “Canadian registered consultant partners.”
This type of fraud has affected a recent client of mine. I’m sharing his story (with permission). I’m modifying the facts so this will have no impact on his future immigration yet it can still serve as a warning to those who get caught up in these type of situations.
Scenario
You are a citizen of China seeking to visit Canada where you have a sibling who is currently on a post-graduate work permit. You engage in the services of a local agent in the service of your small town on the outskirts of Qingdao. He says he is an immigration service. They have a 95% success rate and they can help you with the process. They say they will go to the Visa Application Centre (“VAC”) VAC on your behalf. It is easier that way and you will not need to do anything other than to give them documents.
You provide them the documents. They tell you that they believe you will be granted a visa and to wait approximately three to four weeks for notification. They do not provide you any receipt or file number other than a brief voice message indicating it has been sent. You have not seen the final package.
They notify you on 29 April 2016 that your application was unfortunately refused but that the refusal was out of their control. They say that refusal decision appears to put the onus entirely on you for not providing enough financial documentation.
You see the letter. The heading says:
The letter is addressed to you, it has the file number.
The content of the letter says:
You accept the refusal as par the course. You don’t blame the agent. Your family accepts it (they got their visas after all) and you let the matter go.
Several years later you find a licensed Canadian representative. You now wish to visit Canada again to celebrate your brother’s wedding. Your brother hired a representative in Canada who assisted him on his PR paperwork (economic immigration) which went smoothly.
As part of the process, your new representative recommends that you do an access to information request to get a copy of the Officer’s Electronics notes and the refusal letter. You ask for a copy of the physical file as well. you pay $5 dollars for this request.
A month later, IRCC responds stating that they have unfortunately disposed of your information in correspondence to their data retention policy.
Two years have passed since the last administrative action. However, they do send you a copy of the refusal letter as per below:
This date is 6 days before the date of the refusal letter you received from your consultant.
There is also a different address located on the top of the letter – not just your name listed.
You also note the number of pages in the refusal is very different
There is another page that you are surprised to see – that the refusal is not just one page long:
In the electronic notes, you learn from the notes that a large portion of the refusal was actually due to the submission of unclear photocopies.
The reasons for refusal were entirely the same as the one included in your letter for the consultant. Why was the refusal letter transferred to a new form?
Breaking Down the Fraud
There are two major elements to this particular fraud case. These likely are the reason why said fraud agent
1) The Date of Refusal – this allows these fake agents/consultants to sit on refusals. They can pass the decisions within their networks and decide how to scrub them before sending it to you. While in this case they did not adjust the reasons for refusal, it would be very foreseeable that they would scrub it for wrongdoing (misrepresentation, poorly submitted documents, etc.);
(2) The address of the agent involved. You did not ask a Beijing firm for support. Why is there a Beijing address? By scrubbing the refusal letter and writing their own fake one, they were able to preserve their network of addresses. This would stop a line of investigation from IRCC. This would insulate the fact that the individual in Qingdao was not doing the work potentially and may have been a sub-agent for someone in Beijing.
Best Practices
As a client, you should always review everything that goes out, demand a copy of everything that is sent on your behalf, and require a file number as soon as possible. If you are passive and don’t take these steps, these are the types of frauds that will be perpetrated on your behalf.
While in this case, the only misrepresentation was a passed on refusal letter (not anything directly submitted to IRCC), it would not be out of ordinary for a fraudulent document to have been submitted on your behalf. With two years having passed, you will have no way of ever knowing.
I encourage all applicants to act prudently. Immigration works very differently than likely in your own countries where the process may be done in person, or through a process where you know exactly what is being passed on and when. With the move to electronic communication, and the lack of regulation of overseas agents, expect to see much more of this moving forward until preventative steps (such as sending a copy of the entire file to the client as well as the agent) are implemented. by IRCC.
The Asian Struggle in the Law That We Never Talk About – 5 Reflections on Battling Our Upbringing
This post is inspired by a series of older conversations with my sister (in LAW) and former colleague, Krisha Dhaliwal who is starting her LLM at the University of Toronto in September.
I’ve been involved with Asian representation in the law for awhile now. I’m been grateful to be on the front lines with organizations seeking to break through the bamboo ceiling with ambitious goals such as to see that more diverse partners are appointed and that our judiciary starts to reflect our country’s diversity. As young Asian lawyers we often get together and discuss ways in which the system holds us back by sorting and filtering us through monikers such as “firm culture” and “fit” to mentorship being so difficult for us to access.
One of the things that rarely gets talked about, that I want to raise here, is the very struggle Asian lawyers have with themselves. I figure, with all the attention being placed on Asian Representation in Hollywood, Film, etc., that now is a good time for this (rather personal) post.
With this topic, I won’t touch upon mental health issues. It is quite well understood that is is an area with a huge stigma in our community and among lawyers no-doubt magnified by a legal profession that puts even higher expectations on outwardly appearances of confidence and success. We will keep this topic for another day but that day will come.
I want to focus on our upbringings. I want to focus on the very foundations of how we were brought up as first and second-generation Asian-Canadians by our parents and how some of the values we grow up with can often clash or challenge or absorption into “mainstream” law. Yet, for many of us it is this very journey into understanding and reclaiming our own voices and identities that for inspired our careers in the law.
In writing this post I acknowledge that there are very diverse experiences of Asian parenthood, so I’ll necessarily need to generalize how I and many of my colleagues responded. Some of you may relate to some or none of what is contained in this piece. Others may have had entirely polar opposite reactions influenced by the same life lessons but in different ways.
While it may seem I’m drawing primarily negative influences in relating to these lessons from our upbringing [indeed, I call the title of this articling “Battling”], I acknowledge they are entirely double-edged. Some of our best traits such as thoughtfulness, emotional intelligence, humility are all cut form the same thread that brings us those more challenging aspects that make being a lawyer difficult. For all of us who are Asians and lawyers (especially junior), I hope we can step back from the lens of lawyering and see how we are very blessed by our upbringing and how it made us better human beings first and foremost.
Without further ado, here we go:
Reflection from Upbringing 1: Don’t Say Something Until You Thought it Through a Million Times – Silence is Powerful
Growing up, it was engrained in me at an early age that I was not supposed to be vocal as an Asian-Canadian. Perhaps this was the product of my own parents not having space to be vocal and being of the head down, hardwork type. The idea that “if you do not have anything to say, don’t say it at all” was very much the mantra around the house, dinner table, and definitely public interactions with other families and friends. What ended up materializing is that I became quite nervous speaking out. You may not see it as obviously today, but a very deep fear of public speaking naturally followed. For many years (in fact I would say that it has only recently subsided a little through my teaching, guest-speaking, and speech giving), even introducing my name and what I did around a roundtable would lead to sweaty palms and constant overthinking. I was used to being behind the scenes, to let others do the talking.
I remember in law school feeling constantly overwhelmed by those speaking up around me. Those that were brilliant and provided brilliant answers – prevented me from feeling confident to provide my own thoughts. I chalked up their confidence to their socioeconomic status (she’s the daughter of a Judge, or his aunt is best friends with an SCC Judge) or their intelligence (relating to my lack thereof). Those that spoke because they liked the sound of their voice or made comments that were shot down by professors I internally criticized and/or felt a sympathetic camaraderie towards. They had violated the cardinal Asian household rule.
As a result, in law school I may have put my hands up less than 5 times in three years. I faded away, never engaged enough with my classmates on an academic level, and it is something I deeply regret to this day. Indeed, I still feel overwhelmed around brilliance yet it is so crucial to the development and growth of juniors such as myself.
Similarly on a silence perspective, I still find it challenging putting out a controversial or strong-minded opinion as opposed to harbouring it for myself or sharing it among a smaller, trustworthy circle. I am sure that these similar feelings I hold also contributes to why we are as a larger cultural group we are not as engaged in politics or leadership as we ought to be. As a community, I find we tend to be afraid to say things and especially afraid of the consequences of saying them when viewed by others (the majority).
In a litigation context (especially in-person) this also becomes difficult. We have to do extra work to battle that voice (be it your own voice of that voice of your parents from childhood) telling you that you are wrong and that you have not thought it through. I still write everything down more than I’d like to and find it challenging to go off script.
Reflection 2: Don’t Show Off, There Are Always Those Better/Wiser Than You
Another major lesson from my childhood was one of humility. I wasn’t a brilliant kid, so admittedly there was little to show off about, but in public I was told never to gloat over accomplishments. My parents would never publicly acknowledge that I was doing well in school or sport. Ironically, to this date, my mom still asks whether I am having a successful practice or not and tells me she has trouble pitching my services for the lack of knowing this answer.
Behind closed doors, we were always told to look at others as pillars of success and desire. The occasional kid whose parents would gloat or whose accomplishments would become public knowledge would end up being the topic of dinner-time conversation. “You need to be more like him – look at his grades. He already is doing AP. What are you doing with your life?” When it came to performance it was always about how everyone else was doing when compared to you. I believe that a large part of this mentality was generated from the roots of the homeland, where opportunities for our parents truly were mostly merit/exam-based and where failure on things such as the gaokao exams inevitably led to different and less prosperous pathways (more on failure later).
There was also very clear authority in most of our families. As children, we were of low authority. Our parents were the higher authorities. Higher still were police and government.
This indoctrinates in many of us, now as lawyers, a need for constant validation from others, especially those higher in the hierarchy. This creates in us the constant want for someone to tell us that either we are “doing well.” We also come to expect criticism and in fact criticize ourselves more than we need to. I see a lot of self-deprecating Asian lawyers – no doubt still viewing their own (already brilliant accomplishments) in the lens of their equally successfully colleagues.
Reflection 3: Failure (and Wrong Turns) are to be Avoided
The third lesson was about failure. This is one I will be sure to teach my child differently when I become a parent. I entirely understand why our parents taught us to equate failure as a negative. For them, every one of their moves from choosing to abandon their lives in their home countries, to seeking employment, to buying their first house was so calculated. They always saw (and still see) our generation as too impulsive. There was not margin for failure or/else they had experienced that failure and wanted to shield us from it.
In my childhood, failure was most often of the academic variety. Where grades were below class average/median, it was considered a clear negative. Again, as discussed above, failure was also intertwined with the success of those around you.
I would argue that particularly for Asian law students and young lawyers – learning to fail and fail hard is a very eye-opening experience but much required experience. Starting from the graded curve in law school to the adversarial nature of litigation, failure is ultimately part and parcel the experience of lawyering, especially when you represent clients who are vulnerable.
For myself personally, I cannot think of one important practice tip or thing I believe I do well that was not influenced by something that went sideways.
Still, the competition of law – the feeling of needing to constantly be successful – in court room wins and positive news, affects the reality that a large chunk of law is addressing situations that are negatives for all parties involved and seeking understanding as opposed to a positive outcome.
This is also why I find myself particularly sensitive to the question that clients have about success rates (that anything who tells you a number is entirely making up). I almost recommend that the best way to judge a practitioner is to ask them about their greatest failure and the lessons learned from it rather than the amount of their success.
Reflection 4: You are Responsible for Everything, Don’t Burden Others With Your Problems
This one may be more of a product of the rational atheism I grew up in (that I know […]
