Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
economic opportunities.
21
So it was logical in the face of uncertainty, and
worse, anxiety, that East Asian entrepreneurs began their application proc-
ess by securing information. In the Vancouver survey, the 90 entrepreneurs
on average knew only 'a little' about business opportunities in Canada at the
time of their visa application. Two-thirds had collected information from
reconnaissance visits, half from friends and relatives already in Canada,
while 42 percent had depended upon immigration consultants. The inter-
views identified serious gaps in basic information. One extreme, but scarcely
unique case, involved an entrepreneur who scoured Richmond, on the flat
delta of the Fraser River in suburban Vancouver, looking for an address in
Richmond Hill, a suburb north of Toronto, where he had made an invest-
ment. After a further week of fruitless searching in the Toronto region, he
discovered that the address was fictitious and that the business, in which
he had sunk a considerable investment on the advice of his immigration
consultant, did not exist. Generalizing, another business immigrant told
me, 'Only the tycoons, like Li Ka-shing, come here with a committee of
experts. The middle-class ask their friends, and often it's a case of the blind
leading the blind. There have been disasters'.
Immigration consultants have become a significant intermediary in the
movement of economic migrants; in Taiwan there were almost 200 immi-
gration consultancies in 1996, a three-fold increase in a decade (Tseng
1997, 2000). In principle, they have scanned global venues and can suggest
to clients the best package in the migration market. In practice their knowl-
edge is considerably more impaired: one consultant specializing in Canadian
BIP options declared 'We really do not know that much about Canada. It is
after all a foreign country to us' (Tseng 2000: 152). Even barring fraudulent
intent, the capacity for poor advice from such a consultant is evident. The
possibility, perhaps even the likelihood, of misleading information from
consultants in Canada as well as overseas has been apparent to legislators
for over 25 years. An early report was issued with the unusually direct title,
The Exploitation of Potential Immigrants by Unscrupulous Consultants
(Government of Canada 1981); ten years later a Parliamentary Standing
Committee decreed
Immigration Consultants: It's Time to Act
(Parliament of
Canada 1995). But it was not until 2004 that Ottawa required that immi-
gration consultants be organized into a self-regulating association.
Of the 90 entrepreneurs interviewed in Vancouver, over 80 percent had
used a consultant in applying for a business visa. Some immigrants
acknowledged that the consultant provided important guidance concern-
ing where to live in Canada (36 percent) and the type of business to estab-
lish upon arrival (28 percent). Rarely, however, did the consultant
comment on potential problems the entrepreneur would face in the
Canadian business environment. In general entrepreneurs were sceptical
about the services of their consultant. One Mandarin-speaking applicant
