Residents in the Peace and Northern Rockies should be on high alert if approached by someone offering immigration incentives on behalf of the Northeast B.C. Immigration project after its organizers identified scammers misrepresenting the program.
The Northeast B.C. Immigration project is led by Community Futures Peace Liard and Northern Lights College. The groups joined forces to encourage skilled foreign workers to move to smaller communities in Canada by offering businesses the opportunity to sponsor these potential employees.
The groups said bringing in the foreign workers, in turn, would provide companies with a more diverse hiring field.
To sponsor these workers, members on the pilot project’s team, as well as the employer, must follow specific guidelines and protocol. Fake recruiters, Community Futures Peace Liard said, are in violation of the law.
“We want to make it very clear: these practices are not legal,” the organization wrote to alert the community.
“There are significant and regulated processes that must be followed to bring foreign workers into the county. Attempting to bypass these processes places both employers and workers at serious risk of legal and financial consequences.”
The organization did not say if they contacted the RCMP about the impersonators.
Scammers, who are representing themselves as aligned with the immigration project, are offering businesses money in exchange for hiring foreign workers – this is not how the Northeast B.C. Immigration Project works.
To qualify for the actual program, employers must prove a shortage in labour and available workers, then, they must approach a foreign worker with a job offer that is up to the standards of the program for the sponsorship to be allowed. No cash should change hands in these interactions, the organization said.
The organization advised all businesses and community members to be on high alert and said they will never, “engage or promote the services of any immigration or recruitment consultants.”
“This is an employer-based project. The (Northeast) B.C. Immigration Pilot does not and will not hire recruiters or immigration consultants,” said Moira Green, the general manager at Community Futures Development Corporation Peace Liard.
Anyone who is approached by an impersonator of the Northeast B.C. Immigration project team is being asked to contact the authorities.
