The OISC has a duty to ensure that people providing immigration advice or immigration services are competent to do so. Its guidance on competence sets out the standards that advisers should meet.

Following the introduction of the points-based system and other important developments in immigration, the OISC is considering whether the guidance needs to be fundamentally changed. This consultation is an opportunity for advisers and other stakeholders to be involved in the OISC’s decision-making process, so that the future regulation of immigration advisers remains efficient and relevant to the changes happening in the wider immigration sector.

The consultation is open for 12 weeks, until 29 January 2010.

For further information on the consultation and details on how to respond, please see the OISC website.

How to choose an immigration adviser 

A simple way to verify an adviser’s status is to check that the adviser and firm are legally registered (as they must be) to give immigration advice on the OISC or the Law Society website. This does not of course verify that the person you are talking to is the adviser listed, but it is a good starting point. 

The OISC publish a useful guide: ‘How to choose an immigration adviser’ on it website. 

Before you put your trust in any professional you must do your own ‘common sense’ checks. For instance, does the person have an office you can visit or are they asking you to meet at a McDonalds or in a pub? I have met more than one candidate who handed over £2000 in cash to a person calling themselves a Solicitor in the East Ham branch of McDonalds. Both cash and ‘Solicitor’ were never to be seen again. 

Warning bells should also be sounding loud and clear in your head if the adviser is insisting you pay in cash or to a personal bank account. 

Be cautious of sending money to a person you have never met or cannot verify. There are of course many legitimate advisers which operate a telephone or internet based service, but do your own checks. 

Anyone can be impressed by a fancy website, but there’s nothing like checking out someone in person, face to face, at their premises.

Advisers should be giving you their business cards and terms of business outlining their fee structure. They should also be knowledgeable, professional and know what they are talking about. If in any doubt, walk away.

Finally, if the advice and solution being offered sounds ‘too good to be true’, it probably is. 

Just as most financial frauds are perpetuated by investor’s greed to obtain unrealistic returns, immigration victims pay money to illegal advisers because they promise something honest advisers have told them cannot be done. 

If you would like to share your ‘immigration advice’ experience with our readers, write your comments below.

Related articles: 

Home Office announce tough new regulations for immigration advisers

If you need any immigration advice or help with Sponsorship or Work Permits, Visa or an appeal against a refusal please email:

info@immigrationmatters.co.uk or visit www.immigrationmatters.co.uk

Rakhi Shahi, 31, was found guilty of conspiracy to defraud, handling criminal property and immigration offences at Isleworth Crown Court. 

Jatinder Kumar Sharma, 44, her husband, admitted his part in the scam in March.

Neelam Sharma, 38, also thought to be Sharma’s wife, was found guilty of handling some of the cash in the scam. But she was cleared of conspiracy to defraud and immigration offences. 

Both women had denied the charges. All three lived in Clarence Street in Southall, from where they ran their consultancy Univisas. 

Shahi, an illegal immigrant, was jailed for eight years while Neelam Sharma was jailed for four years for money laundering. 

Jatinder Kumar Sharma was jailed for seven years. 

He admitted seeking or obtaining leave to enter or remain in the UK by deception, possession of identity document with intent, conspiracy to defraud, possessing criminal property and two counts of theft. 

The court heard he has been married to Neelam Sharma for about 20 years and recently also married Shahi. Both marriages took place in India. 

Sentencing Judge Richard McGregor-Johnson said the criticisms of the government agencies were “plainly well founded”. 

“The checks were woefully inadequate and frequently non-existent. 

“You (the defendants) saw the weaknesses in those systems and dishonestly exploited them.” 

The group created thousands of bogus documents including college degree certificates, tax and wage forms, references and academic records, to secure UK visas including student visas. 

The scam exploited the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme, the International Graduate Scheme and other leave-to-remain visa applications. 

Police suspect the company secured visas for at least 1,000 people, mostly from the Indian sub-continent, using a network of bogus colleges in London, Manchester, Bradford and Essex. 

Eight Pakistani terror suspects who were arrested earlier this year during raids in Manchester and Liverpool are also thought to have used a similar scam to gain UK visas. 

The UK Border Agency, the Home Office and the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner (OISC) were criticised for a “shambolic” system which the fraudsters exploited.

Prosecutor Francis Sheridan told the court the evidence against the trio presented a “damning indictment” of failures of the UK’s border controls. 

The court heard Home office employees failed to spot discrepancies in employment certificates and wage slips and that some students appeared to have attended two full-time courses simultaneously. 

Several applicants gave the same address and in one case one person’s sex changed in the middle of the immigration process.

Last February the Metropolitan Police and the UK Border Agency raided Univisas’ office and found 90,000 documents, including false university certificates and pay slips. 

Officers also found passports, 150 ink stamps and £22,500 in cash and seized 980 individual files. 

The court heard the fraudsters charged hundreds and thousands of pounds as fees and were confident enough to offer a money-back guarantee to clients. 

The scam garnered more than £1.5m in two years, of which police have so far been able to seize £420,000. 

Jatinder Sharma was caught when he offered to get an undercover newspaper reporter a post-graduate diploma in business administration and other papers for about £4,000. 

Following the verdict Tony Smith, the regional director of the UK Border Agency, said: 

“This was one of the largest joint investigations ever undertaken by the UK Border Agency and police. 

“We believe we have cracked a major international conspiracy to facilitate the entry of illegal immigrants into the UK. 

“Those behind it showed total disregard for the law, and their motives were purely financial.”

Immigration Matters Comment 

Unfortunately, fraudulent immigration consultants give the rest of the profession, the vast majority of whom are honest law abiding advisers doing a good job for their vulnerable clients, a bad name. 

However, the public should have confidence that registered immigration advisers can be trusted and are regulated. 

If you need any immigration advice or help with Sponsorship or Work Permits, Visa or an appeal against a refusal please email: 

info@immigrationmatters.co.uk or visit www.immigrationmatters.co.uk

The proposals would give greater powers to the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner (OISC), which regulates the advice sector, to tackle unscrupulous as well as untrained and unqualified advisers. 

The measures announced today are detailed in the ‘Oversight of the Immigration Advisers Sector Consultation’, giving users and stakeholders an opportunity to give their views on how immigration advisers can be better regulated.

The OISC is charged with regulating and ensuring that immigration advisers are trained and qualified. It currently regulates over 1,600 organisations and around 4,000 individuals. 

As part of a toughening up of the system, the consultation proposals include: 

• tightening restrictions on individuals who have provided immigration advice illegally so they cannot own or participate in an immigration advice business
• strengthening the rights of the OISC to access and inspect immigration advisers; and
• issuing businesses with ‘yellow card’ warnings to say that their practices are not up to scratch. These would act as notice to improve standards and set out any changes required 

Border and Immigration Minister Phil Woolas said: 

‘The Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner plays a crucial role in making sure that people are getting the right advice on immigration matters and tackling those advisers that play the system and offer false hope. 

‘Any abuse of our immigration laws will not be tolerated. Attempts to frustrate the system cost the taxpayer money and make it more difficult for people who genuinely need our protection. 

‘Those responsible will be investigated and prosecuted. The OISC has already undertaken over 75 successful prosecutions, but we need to help them to take tough action earlier.’

Since its creation in 2001 the OISC has driven up standards across the immigration advice sector. 

It has received over 3,500 complaints about advisers – it has successfully prosecuted 77 organisations and individuals, issued 67 formal cautions. The courts have issued nearly £60,000 in fines and compensation, and awarded around £45,000 in court costs.

Suzanne McCarthy, Immigration Services Commissioner, said: 

‘The OISC has already created a successful regulatory system and raised the standard of immigration advice available. If these proposals are implemented it will allow the OISC to give greater protection to individuals from unscrupulous advisers and protect the immigration system from abuse. Good immigration is in everyone’s interest. Bad advice ruins lives.’ 

These improvements to the regulation of immigration advisers follow the reforms, announced last week, to the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal. The Tribunal reforms will mean a faster, more efficient system that will save the taxpayer money, speed up the removal of those who are found not to need our protection while integrating genuine asylum seekers quicker. 

These changes will help to improve public confidence in the immigration system and are part of the biggest shake-up to the immigration system for a generation. This also includes fingerprint visas and ID cards for foreign nationals that lock people to one identity, and our high-tech electronic border controls that check people against police, immigration and customs watch-lists and will cover even more passenger journeys by the end of this year. 

Immigration Matters Comment 

Legitimate Immigration Advisers will welcome tougher rules to stamp out the rogue advisers who give the profession a bad name. 

Unfortunately, many so called advisers have been allowed to operate, largely unchecked, illegally in the UK for too long. 

The OISC (Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner) does its best, but  not seem to have adequate resources or manpower to find and prosecute criminals who extort money from vulnerable migrants. 

The police are not interested in tracking down or prosecuting illegal ‘immigration advisers’, despite the fact that they often take thousands of pounds by deception from migrants who believe they are dealing with a bona fide immigration adviser or lawyer. 

In any other situation this would be called fraud, and the police would be arresting and charging the culprits under existing criminal law. 

In some cases it can take years to bring a rogue advisers to justice. In the meantime fraudsters continue illegally taking thousands of pounds from Filipino, Indian and other migrants.   

There have been several cases of Filipino Senior Carers who had paid £2500 to a person, whom they thought was a legally registered adviser, to renew their work permits in 2007 – at a time when the Home Office had blocked all extensions and there was no chance of obtaining a permit.

The girls never saw their money again and were left in dire straights with their visas. 

What can you do to avoid illegal immigration advisers? 

A simple way to verify an adviser’s status is to check that the adviser and firm are legally registered (as they must be) to give immigration advice on the OISC or the Law Society website. This does not of course verify that the person you are talking to is the adviser listed, but it is a good starting point. 

The OISC publish a useful guide: ‘How to choose an immigration adviser’ on it website. 

Before you put your trust in any professional you must do your own ‘common sense’ checks. For instance, does the person have an office you can visit or are they asking you to meet at a McDonalds or in a pub? You may laugh, but I have met more than one candidate who handed over £2000 in cash to a person calling themselves a Solicitor in the East Ham branch of McDonalds. Both cash and ‘Solicitor’ were never to be seen again. 

Warning bells should also be sounding loud and clear in your head if the adviser is insisting you pay in cash or to an off-shore bank account. 

Be cautious of sending money to a person you have never met or cannot verify. There are of course many legitimate advisers which operate a telephone or internet based service, however, in the above mentioned fraud case, it was difficult to bring the fraudster to justice because few people had ever met the adviser in person. 

Anyone can be impressed by a fancy website, but there’s nothing like checking out someone in person, face to face, at their premises.

Advisers should be giving you their business cards and terms of business outlining their fee structure. They should also be knowledgeable, professional and know what they are talking about. If in any doubt, walk away.

Finally, if the advice and solution being offered sounds ‘too good to be true’, it probably is. 

Just as most financial frauds are perpetuated by investor’s greed to obtain unrealistic returns, immigration victims pay money to illegal advisers because they promise something honest advisers have told them cannot be done. 

If you would like to share your ‘immigration advice’ experience with our readers, write your comments below.

If you need any immigration advice or help with Sponsorship or Work Permits, Visa or an appeal against a refusal please email:

info@immigrationmatters.co.uk  or visit www.immigrationmatters.co.uk