Some “recruiters” charge $170,000 for fake job offers in Canada.
Some immigration websites offering permanent residence in the Atlantic provinces advertise the “easiest way” to relocate: all you need is $170,000 and a willingness to work for several months without payment. And many potential immigrants give their money away just to get to Canada.
One of the most popular Canadian immigration programs is the Atlantic Immigration Pilot. It offers relatively mild requirements, and many aspects of this program are not thoroughly elaborated. More and more fraudulent consultants and recruiters take advantage of it to fill their pockets.
Selling fake job offers is widespread in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. According to Erica Stanley, a licenced immigration consultant in Charlottetown, many have gotten away with it: immigrants live in Canada as permanent residents, and fake employers continue to run their businesses.
The Atlantic Immigration Pilot Program was launched by the federal government in 2017 to help fill gaps in local labour markets. It is controlled at the provincial level. Under this program, one can get permanent residence within six months.
The Atlantic Immigration Pilot is different from other immigration programs. First, potential immigrants deal directly with employers who seek international workers for occupations that they cannot fill with local employees. Second, the participant employers do not pay state fees. Third, the applicants meet lower requirements for their education and proficiency in official languages.
Fraudulent agencies exploit weaknesses in the program, forcing immigrants to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for being employed without a paycheck or with a fake paycheck. Some employers cooperate with such agencies for money, while others do not even suspect that someone is acting on their behalf.
A representative of the company that has allegedly hired a foreign worker as a caregiver says that this company and many others participating in the Atlantic Immigration Pilot are vulnerable to scammers because corporate names are public.
Erica Stanley says she receives hundreds of calls every day from people willing to buy fake job offers. Once she has been offered $10,000 just for a meeting to discuss hiring people for fake occupations. She has heard of illegal transactions more than once in the past two years. Fraudulent activity harms her business, as well as the reputation of her profession.
In Nova Scotia, one of the methods used by scammers is to access the employer directly and to offer him free recruitment services. Of course, the employer agrees immediately. As a result, fraudsters take a lot of money from a future employee, while licenced consultants authorized by the government get only a few hundred dollars for paperwork, resumes, and job interviews.
Currently, the three Atlantic provinces have publicly announced that they know about fraudulent schemes and intend to fight them. The New Brunswick Labour and Employment Board said it has rejected several suspicious job offers. And the province of Prince Edward Island has hired a specialist who will be responsible for overseeing compliance with all program conditions.