News Release – Minister Kenney meets with ethnic community about scams and dishonest immigration representatives

Toronto, April 25, 2009 — A town hall meeting taking place in Toronto today will give recent immigrants and ethnic community organizations an opportunity to share their experiences of using fraudulent immigration consultants and other representatives.

“I want to hear from people who have been victims of immigration scams,” said Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism and host of the meeting.

“I know that for every bad guy there are many more good consultants and representatives out there,” said Minister Kenney. “But I want to hear first-hand from people about the false promises they were given, or the offers of fake documents or guaranteed visas. That will give us a better picture of the nature and scope of the problem and inform our efforts to prevent fraud.”  

The town hall follows the launch in March of a national advertising campaign, including a multilingual video warning, to inform potential immigrants how to protect themselves against false claims from dishonest immigration consultants or unethical representatives, such as labour, student or live-in care-giver recruiters. A town hall meeting will also be taking place in Vancouver.

Minister Kenney will also be inviting representatives of national organizations to a meeting in Ottawa to discuss ways of better preventing fraud.

In addition to today’s town hall meeting, Citizenship and Immigration Canada will launch on-line consultations to seek people’s experience of working with mmigration consultants and other representatives. To view the warning video or find out more about how to protect against immigration-related fraud, please visit the CIC website.

For further information (media only), please contact:

Media Relations Unit
Communications Branch
Citizenship and Immigration Canada
CIC-Media-Relations@cic.gc.ca