With friends like these…

>> Refugees are prime prey for ruthless, unregulated consultants

by PATRICK LEJTENYIOR

The Pakistani refugee who came to the Mirror’s office two weeks ago looked like anyone you might meet on any of Montreal’s nightlife arteries. Well-dressed and speaking with a slight accent, he looked every bit the part of an immigrant who had successfully assimilated into North American culture.

“I go out, I drink, I party,” he says. “I can’t go back to Pakistan. I’ll suffocate, I’ll die.” The culture shock, he said, would be too much for the man in his mid-30s, having spent almost 10 years, most of it driving a taxi, in New York City and Montreal. But although he might be a natural fit here, his legal status is iffy. After landing in Vancouver in 1992, he quickly moved to the States, afraid his refugee claim would be immediately refused. After spending nine years there, he, like many refugees in a tight bind, made a deal that he is now regretting.

“I contacted this man [in Montreal] after my refugee claim was turned down in the States,” he says, “and he said he would fix things up for me when I got here.” He arrived in Montreal from New York last April, applied for refugee status again, and went on welfare. Before he left New York, his refugee consultant told him that for a $10,000 fee, he would help him create a new story that wouldn’t mention his original arrival in Canada in 1992 nor his illegal entry and stay in the U.S. He would also arrange a marriage with a local woman. According to his marriage certificate, he was married that August.

“After the wedding, he asked for another $8,000, but I wouldn’t give it to him,” he says. His consultant then threatened to expose him as an illegal alien, and, after September 11, even worse. “He told me that he faxed CSIS telling them that I was a terrorist. He was blackmailing me.” He says that he has received death threats, and has since gone into hiding.

Ungoverned free for all

This kind of story is nothing new to Rivka Augenfeld of the Committee to Aid Refugees. The refugees’ precarious situations, and their unfamiliarity with the claimant process, make them easy prey for crooked consultants. “The problem is that for lawyers, there is a bar association and a disciplinary body,” she says. “But for consultants, there are no regulations, no standards. It’s a total free for all. Some consultants are okay, others are terrible.”
Anyone, she says, can represent refugees before the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB). But only lawyers can represent refugees before a federal appeals court, which leads to another problem. She points out that there is a lack of big money to be made as an immigration lawyer. According to Augenfeld, lawyers are paid $150 to help fill out the appropriate forms and $250 per case hearing. Many lawyers become burnt out with their caseload or don’t bother working hard enough on them. “There are good lawyers who do good work for a lot of money,” she says. “But in general it doesn’t inspire that many people.”
The problem of bogus consultants is one that Augenfeld and others are hoping that the federal government will look into. There are some simple solutions, says spokesperson Gitangeli Lena of the Canadian Council for Refugees, a national refugee advocate group. It’s just up to Citizenship and Immigration Canada to implement them.

“They should keep a list of bad consultants on file to investigate any complaints,” she says. “They should also provide information at every point of entry so right off the bat refugees know what their rights are. A lot of potential refugees are taken advantage of because they don’t know how to use the system.”

Women are at special risk because of both their sense of powerlessness and their ignorance of how the system operates. Sadeqa Siddiqui, coordinator of the South Asian Women’s Community Centre, says she knows of cases of sexual harassment of newly arrived women at the hands of their consultants. But getting them to cut off contact with their harassers is often difficult. “These women are scared of what these men will do,” she says. “It’s very difficult to get them to leave the women alone unless a judge or the IRB prevents contact.”

According to both experts and victims, the shifty world of immigration consultation here often works in conjunction with networks in the refugees’ home countries. Deals are brokered overseas, marriages are arranged, and money is transferred from all parts of the world. “There’s a myriad of these so-called immigration consultants. You see them all over Côte des Neiges and Park-Ex,” says Lena. “They could easily be shut down, and they should be, because they’re ripping people off.” :