Wonderful $25/HR opportunity -or- Canada LMIA abuse and immigration fraud
jobbank.gc.ca
jobbank.gc.ca
I'm a skilled worker working on a temporary visa, working for Canadian company in people management role. If I want to get enough points to get a permanent visa the best options are.
1. Go back to university and study give money to Canadian universities. 2. Leave my current job where I'm doing proper work, and try get one of these job bank ones.
I fell like the system is pushing me to either give money to universities, or give my time (at a low price) to these borderline fraudulent jobs with LMIA attached. I don't believe this is the outcome the system was designed for, but it's what it's been gamed to achieve.
I could understand if Canada wanted to simply reduce immigration, but that's also not the outcome being achieved.
For example, when I was a kid, my parents and I got Canadian PR via express entry as a backup option in case we wouldn't get a Greencard in the US.
For most South and East Asians, the true value of Canadian Citizenship is the fact that it gives you TN privileges, which essentially give you the ability to stay in the US indefinetly.
CoL in Canada is easily 2-3x that of the US with salaries that are easily half those you'd get in the lower 48.
I'd love to see the data on that
I think the CoL aside from housing is much more manageable outside of BC.
I remember as a kid it was very common for families on VI and the Lower Mainland to pool money for one family to cross the border and do all their Costco and Safeway shopping in Bellingham and then drive back.
A good example is milk - it costs around US$4 including tax in the US, but around US$5 in Canada. Same for bread (though I was in Canada during the 2000s when there was a massive price fixing scheme by bread makers in the country) let alone restaurants and eating out (your average South Asian restaurant in Abbotsford or Surrey would sell a meal like Chole Bhature for around US$20 when the exact same restaurants and ownership in Fremont and Fresno would make the same meal and fixing for around US$10-22)
All this doesn't sound too bad on a SV salary, but non-tech salaries in BC are around CAD$40-70k so your household income after tax is best case CAD$60-90k [0]
There's a reason my family left Canada for the US.
[0] - https://www03.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/hmip-pimh/en/TableMapChart/Tab...
Also prices are significantly higher once you leave the Lower Mainland due to how uneven population is spread.
That said, Canada is a very federal country (much more than the US) so the BC experience is obviously very different from that in other provinces
I'm surprised that they even decided to try to hire in Canada instead of outsourcing.
Abbotsford is Canada's Fresno, for people who are out of loop.
Edit: I think this is a US-to-Canada transfer for an employee of theirs in the US who's F1-to-H1B or H1B-to-EB1/2 conversion failed.
I lived in the Lower Mainland and VI as a South Asian kid - I know the ins and outs of "fake jobs" for visas. This ain't one of them.
Instead, it's one of those mobile QA consultancies [0]
If you wanted a fake job for Canadian visa scheme, the common path is one of the various Jatt trucking companies with biradari/familial networks between India and Canada.
Fresno is what? For people outside of the North American loop?
The only difference between Fresno and Abbotsford is Abbotsford gets snow on occasion.
No, the second of those is not “similarly large” to the first, not even in a vague loose approximation kind of way. (Fresno County is majority-Hispanic, with over a third of the population primary Spanish speakers.)
The company "hiring" is an offshoring company. They clearly aren't trying to hire in Canada, but you have to post a job bank listing to be able to submit an LMIA application. Their target is purely the LMIA process to parachute people into Canada.
The company is not located in Abbotsford. That's where the business incorporation lawyers are, which is the only address they have in Canada. Every indication is that it has no actual Canadian presence.
This is a fantastically fake job listing. Further it isn't a "QA Tester", it's a software developer with a comical mix of skills.
What appears to be happening is an employee at this company was in the US and probably didn't get the F1 to H1B conversion or an O-1 conversion, and as such SubcoDevs reopened the role in Canada in order to ensure the employee still remains with them.
I've done this at a previous employer before, my dad himself benifited from a similar system back in the day, and so have so many others.
This clearly is NOT a cash for visas program and ANYONE who is Indo-Canadian or Indian-American can easily tell based on this.
The office they listed is corporate lawyers: Klassen and Company Lawyers. Ones that handle filing incorporation papers. This employer absolutely does not occupy that address.
>and as such SubcoDevs reopened the role in Canada in order to ensure the employee still remains with them
That would be a blatant abuse of the LMIA process. Airdropping employees between countries is not the purpose of LMIA spots.
You have to list the role in LMIA if you are doing this kind of a transfer [0]
LMIA exemptions only work for a limited set of professions [1]
Everyone from Subcodev to Microsoft does this and has done this since the early 2000s.
[0] - https://www.rippling.com/blog/work-permits-for-employees-in-...
[1] - https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/co...
Posting a fake job listing to acquire an LMIA spot to airdrop someone getting kicked out of another country *is 100% LMIA fraud, 100% of the time*. It is an illegal abuse of this program.
The LMIA process requires that you demonstrate that there are no Canadians (or PRs) available to fill a role at going market rates. It is not "post a fake listing, wait a while, punt some random Indian over to Canada" freebie. Random links don't demonstrate otherwise.
Does this sort of fraud happen all the time? Of course it does. The government has started to get some heat so they're starting to pay a bit more attention now though, so future results may vary.
Abuse of the program? Absolutely.
Illegal? I haven't heard of any Software firm prosecuted for this yet.
Feel free to apply to the job and litigate it if you don't get it if you want to make a statement.
Also, those are not random links. Rippling is the primary HR Platform used by YC and YC funded startups, and I gave you the IRCC Page explicitly listing which roles are except from LMIA filings.
All I know is neither Trudeau nor Pollviere will do anything about it. One of our relatives who does this kind of stuff in the construction industry is himself a major donor to the BC CPC.
The what now? Do you mean BC United (formerly the BC Liberals)?
They are random in that they don't refute anything I've said, nor do they support what you've said.
>All I know is neither Trudeau nor Pollviere will do anything about it
I guarantee there will be massive changes over the next 24 months. We've already seen some kick in [0]. Donations to a party kind of don't matter when you get absolutely obliterated at the polls because of this abuse.
It's actually interesting looking at your various posts on this. In another you claim that Canada isn't worth the trouble but as a stepping stone to the US....but then you casually rationalize outrageous immigration fraud (both in the case of this company, and in the case of your apparent family member that should be jailed). Do you maybe, perhaps, see a bit of a link between these positions?
But again, it hit a breaking point. A breaking point and beyond. To say there has been an enormous sentiment shift would be understating it.
[0] - Moments ago Trudeau gave a press conference where he noted that "immigration has grown at a rate far beyond what Canada has been able to absorb". For Trudeau to be saying this, after years of his government basically making the mere questioning of rates verboten, is quite incredible. It is a sea shift moment.
New grads in Canada are having an incredibly rough time finding jobs. Canada is absolutely flooded with new arrivals (this isn't some sort of racist "some people look different!" appeal because of a few migrants, but instead is a factual observation that Canada has seen ridiculous levels of migration, hitting 3.2% population growth YoY. Population trap type numbers).
If you list a job in Canada, as I frequently do, you will get thousands to tens of thousands of applicants. Canada is awash in jobless software developers, particularly in generalized roles, and finding good candidates requires a lot of winnowing through garbage, but they are there.
So it's interesting that this "employer" -- whose only address in Canada seems to be the lawyers that did the provincial corporation filing -- claims that there is so little talent in Canada that they have submitted an LMIA submission to the government. An LMIA is a claim that there are no talents for a given need so they need to bring in someone that the employer selected to Canada.
I guess there are no suitable developers in Canada with their hilarious mix of needs with the acclaimed 7 - 12 months of experience from their 1-2 year education program. It's almost like it's written to be exclusionary.
This program is absolutely rife with fraud. The fact that there are zero credible checks -- note that to apply to this job you email them directly, so the government does not see the number or quality of applicants -- means that the program has widespread reports of employers using it to bring friends or family into the country, or third parties in return for a kickback of some sort. There are rampant reports of individuals paying tens of thousands to be "selected" for a LMIA position.
This is happening throughout Canada. And it is disgusting.
Keep exposing it, just like you did here. I have faith that our government will react, eventually. This stuff is crazy.
There was a recent vote in the Parliament of Canada on the topic of immigration rates (and in particular about the Century Initiative goal of raising Canada's population to 100 million): https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en/votes/44/1/322?view=par... -- 170 members of the Canadian Parliament supported high immigration, and 138 were opposed to it. It of course fell along partisan lines -- with 100% of members of the Liberal, NDP, and Green parties supporting high immigration, and 100% of the Conservative and BQ parties opposing high immigration.
Rate of immigration is a subjective matter, and any attempt to misrepresent it as being objective is dishonest; since it entirely depends on political opinion. A white nationalist likely sees multi-cultural immigration as terrible (unless those immigrants are all white), whereas many liberal/progressive people have a fairly welcoming attitude towards immigrants (something which is reflected in Canadian federal immigration policy).
I think you're misinterpreting that vote. The BQ (a separatist party that often fields antagonistic type bills just to be a nuisance) tabled a bill that claimed that the government was following the Century Initiative. Conservatives went along because it's kind of hilarious -- despite the fact that Conservatives are one of the prime backers of the CI -- and Liberals and NDP went against because they weren't giving the bill credibility. It was not serious. It was not a referendum on immigration levels.
And FWIW, Canada's intake rates massively exceed the goals of the Century Initiative. The CI would be positively responsible compared to what Canada has been doing.
> Rate of immigration is a subjective matter
Canada is objectively suffering extreme problems because of mass migration. The term "population trap" is an objective measure when growth rate is deleterious, and Canada is well within those destructive bounds.
Ignoring tiny countries like the UAE and the fact that they have a gigantic subservient class of Indian worker slaves, immigration needs to work for the host country. To be beneficial for the host country, its culture, its people. Canada's immigration rate traditionally worked great. We got the best of the best, enriching the fabric of Canada. A diverse collection of peoples that came and made Canada better. ~0.5% growth idea, sustainable, and beneficial.
3.2% is absolutely disgusting, and hurts everyone.
> a white nationalist sees immigration as terrible ... many liberal/progressive people have a fairly welcoming attitude towards immigrants
Yeah, this false dichotomy worked for a while, but it no longer carries weight. For years the government pushed this line that one could only have a problem with immigration rates if they're a racist. It's played out.
Mass migration is one of the most destructive forces for progressive policies. Ignoring that many migrants bring hyper-conservatism with them -- and at a high enough intake rate they don't shed those beliefs as quickly -- Canada is basically boot-stomping the working poor and unemployed of Canada. They can't find housing. They can't find jobs. As the percolation happens social services is going to be threadbare because housing costs are increasing by multiples, where any is even available.
You’re being dishonest here.
You can’t count temporary residents, especially after the Liberal government recently announced that they’re going to cancel many temporary residence visas to bring down the TR population % to 5% (from circa 7.5%). The current federal plan is to effectively expel around 150,000 TR visa holders from Canada each year.
Canada’s permanent residence immigration target is set at 500,000 plus Quebec’s 40,000, for a total of approximately 540,000 permanent residence grants per year. 540,000 of 40 million is 1.35% per year. That’s perfectly reasonable, and in line with historical population growth peaks.
Once you subtract the 150,000 planned TR visa holders’ expulsions per year, the actual immigration rate per year comes down to 390,000 per year. Which is less than 1%.
The biggest problem is NIMBY controlled municipal boards restricting new housing development. Every recent problem Canada is having can be traced back to housing cost. High housing costs have a “trickle down” effect of driving up the cost of basically everything. And this is a solvable problem. Just build more housing.
Yes, you absolutely can. There are millions of "temporary" residents here needing housing, clogging transit and hospitals and schools and services. Millions. They don't not exist because they're inconvenient to an argument. And there are almost certainly far, far more than the government is openly acknowledging. Hospitals are filled with NOSTATUS (e.g. no legal right to be in Canada, and with no insurance) elders [0] that many of those temporary residents dragged to Canada, also with zero inclination for them to ever leave. The problem is exponentially getting worse.
And here's a cold, hard truth -- the vast majority have zero inclination of ever leaving. The whole reason there was an absolute explosion in temporary residents is the belief by many that this will be permanent some way or other. And history with this government is that it will. Just do a couple of protests, cry about how exploited you are, and it becomes a PR and are magical social capacity to absorb the world makes it happen. This government is already talking about granting permanent residency to people who once had a temporary residency which expired and they just...stayed. Because there are zero consequences or downsides.
> Every recent problem Canada is having can be traced back to housing cost.
It's a serious, profound problem, but no it isn't everything. Having more people competing for everything has consequences. It's impossible to camp. Parks are absolutely overwhelmed. Traffic is...worse than ever. Our mass transit is now absolutely filled with e-bikes as food delivery workers that fill basements in the suburbs flock to the city.
The thing is, untold millions are fleeing India and elsewhere not because of how great density has turned out. Recreating it here is not a goal most Canadians appreciate. It's okay for every bit of greenland not to be paved over. It's okay that everything isn't pushed to exhaustion.
[0] - A major reason Canada is pursuing mass immigration is the demographic problem of an aging population. The rhetoric falls apart when that young professional brought to Canada then chains in their extended family, dragging the average somehow even higher than it was before. Canada's immigration -- the purpose and rhetoric behind it -- is profoundly dishonest and has run on a playbook that anyone questioning it is just a vile racist and can be discounted. At least until the government pushed it to the point of disaster and that force field fell away. There are going to be a lot of really hard questions and answers about the various programs in the coming years.
Ha. Maybe in Toronto. Out here in rural Canada, I had five people apply to the job I posted a few weeks ago. Total. Which was actually more than I expected! Last year you couldn't get a single person to apply. Curiously, none of them immigrants. I hired them all and could still use more, but it's hard finding anyone.
Not that there is much surprise. The people not living where the jobs are has been an ongoing problem in Canada for decades. As a result, not having enough workers and having too many workers are both true at the same time.
1. Claim you cant find anyone
2. Hire offshore
3. Now there's no demand for juniors
4. Now you literally can't find anyone
5. continue hiring offshore because that's your only option
6. ???
That said, the Job Bank has always been this ridiculous, absolute embarrassment. I've seen other posts on there that are straight up fraud in the sense that someone has submitted a fake posting for another company, leaving an obviously fake email as the contact point. (To which I notified the company)
If you're hiring a frontend or generalist/Swift/Python person, I've been out of work for nearly a year now in Vancouver and am spending all day today applying to random general labor work since the software pursuit has stopped paying off; I don't know ML but am curious. Can find my info in my most recent "Who wants to be hired post". Willing to be on-site or meet up for coffee.
Sorry, how do you know that the company has submitted an LMIA? Just by the presence of that job on jobbank.gc.ca?
Darshan Maharaja posts often about these kinds of things - https://twitter.com/theophanesrex. Smart guy all around.
I'd be amazed if even 30% of visa and PR applications to Canada are legitimate and free of fraud. Not even mentioning asylum seekers and refugees.
My wife immigrated to Canada just before Covid through spousal PR sponsorship. Although I'm an honest guy, with so much fraud, I kind of feel like an idiot for wasting so much time and money going through the proper channels when everyone else is abusing the system.
Regardless, with the state of this country right now, we are planning to leave again. The reasons we moved to Canada to begin with are simply not the reality of 2024 Canada. It has been a massive drop in quality of life for us.
This includes a whole lot of immigration that has nothing to do with the LMIA system. What other fraud is there specifically?
With such a sheer number of applications we simply don't have the capacity to do much verification.
In many cases, applicants going through a broker don't even know they are committing the fraud.
Having gone through the system, TFW->Provincial nomination->PR->Citizen, I don't know, how much of that is actually happening in large enough numbers to have a negative effect. Obviously some game the system but I didn't and neither did many others. It's easy to claim, very hard to back up with data.
> With such a sheer number of applications we simply don't have the capacity to do much verification.
Do you have a source of that? In my experience it just leads to longer processing times, not being waived through.
I've personally seen quite a few cases of marriage and family related fraud. I've been to fake weddings for immigration purposes. I personally know people that have assumed deceased family member's names for the same reason. Some countries have very bad paperwork so it's not difficult to fake these things and nearly impossible for IRCC to confirm. I've straight up been given advice that would be fraud by an IRCC approved immigration lawyer.
Just search on Google "canada immigration fraud", or any other similar term and you will see countless cases where people have gotten caught. I seriously doubt we are catching even a tiny percentage of the fraud - but obviously numbers on this are impossible to know. So anecdotes are about all we can get.
The case of the 700 Indian Students comes to mind - https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/canada-says-it-won-t-deport-inter...
Note that these "students" were not deported, which only encourages others. It's common for foreign (out of Canada) immigration consultants to "guarantee" visa's to their customers.
Look around the immigration forums and services available online. Clear and rampant fraud. We have immigration consultants running "colleges" out of the same strip mall as their immigration office.
As I wrote above, I'd recommend checking out Darshan Maharaja's X feed as he follows these things much closer than myself, if you have interest - https://twitter.com/TheophanesRex.
> Do you have a source of that? In my experience it just leads to longer processing times, not being waived through.
No. But with a backlog of 2.2 million applications and a government order to eliminate the backlog it's hard to believe it's not happening.
Surely, 7-12 months of experience is more than enough.