Inundated with a flood of fake wedding photos, false forms and forged signatures, Ottawa is sounding the alarm over immigration fraud.
Officials launched a campaign last week warning potential immigrants they could be removed from Canada if they enter under false pretences.
The warning came in a video the government posted on the Internet, and will be carried in brochures sent out in different languages to Canadian visa offices around the world.

This week, the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants followed suit with its own public outreach campaign warning potential newcomers of the risks of hiring unregistered consultants, both in Canada or overseas.

"We’re essentially going forward with a campaign to sensitize the community to think twice before hiring anyone and to vet their background," society chair and acting CEO John Ryan told the South Asian Post.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney also issued a warning about immigration consultants, saying they don’t get you in faster, and if you hire one it had better be from the government’s approved list.

Kenney said that if prospective immigrants want to hire a consultant, they’re encouraged to work with one of the 1,477 – including seven in India – recognized by the CSIC.

"Vulnerable consumers can find themselves victims of unscrupulous agents and we support the government for taking this important first step to shed light on this serious problem," added Ryan.

Kenney’s political opponents say unscrupulous consultants are the real problem – and that the scams will persist until the government starts regulating that industry.

But Ryan points out that the industry has been regulated in Canada since 2004, adding the CSIC is the industry’s federally-appointed regulator.

"The problem is Canadian law extends only to the territorial limitations of Canada," says Ryan. "In downtown Beijing or Mumbai, it’s not Canadian law that applies. Immigration fraud is a transnational problem and cooperation between countries is exactly what needs to occur."

Widespread fraud in northern India is a main reason the rate of rejected applications is a whopping 60 per cent in the Punjab state capital of Chandigarh – three times higher than the rate of rejections in New Delhi.

This enrages Newton-North Delta Liberal MP Sukh Dhaliwal, who calls this latest immigration fraud crackdown "window dressing, nothing more than that."

Dhaliwal, whose riding boasts a large South Asian population largely from Punjab, says if Ottawa is serious about "handling the situation" it needs to throw resources at the issue, not Internet videos and platitudes.

"The workload they have at the overseas visa offices has been increasing, they need more people," he tells the South Asian Post. "It’s just easier to reject the application that put the time in."