Edmonton entrepreneur joins effort to ramp up anti-fraud protections for immigrants

As international students fighting removal from Canada over fake admission letters made headlines, Edmonton entrepreneur Kemi Bolatito-Bello saw an opportunity to help.

With several businesses already under her belt, Bolatito-Bello pivoted to an entirely new industry in 2020.

She earned a diploma in immigration law and a licence as an immigration consultant, then developed a new company through the Alberta Catalyzer, which provides coaching and other resources for tech entrepreneurs.

Last year Bolatito-Bello launched Scooly — an AI-powered platform that connects international students and immigrants to vetted immigration experts and schools around the world.

"Scooly was founded to solve immigration fraud for international students and immigrants," Bolatito-Bello said in a recent interview.

"We saw students being asked to leave Canada because of fake admission offers and asked what can we do? How can we use technology to fight the crime going on in that space?"

While Bolatito-Bello was applying her entrepreneurial prowess to the issue, Ottawa was also taking steps to ramp up oversight, rules and investigations.

And according to a new survey commissioned by CBC News, there is a strong appetite for more regulation among the people who have lived it first-hand.

Eight in 10 newcomers reported having an overall positive experience with the immigration process. Almost half said they had used the services of an immigration consultant or lawyer to navigate the immigration system.

But nine-in-ten respondents still agreed that Canada should better regulate immigration lawyers and consultants to ensure they give newcomers the right advice and don't take advantage of them.

The survey, conducted by market research firm Pollara in November, asked 1,507 people who arrived in Canada in the past 10 years about their immigration experiences and found that 33 per cent used consultants, while 16 per cent used lawyers. A national survey of that size would normally have a margin of error of +/- 2.5 per cent.

The push for more protection isn't surprising to Manraj Sidhu, an Edmonton lawyer who often represents people who have fallen victim to immigration fraud at the hands of consultants or employers.

Sidhu said Alberta needs to be more selective about which colleges are authorized to accept international students.

But ultimately, he said, foreign students and workers need better protections so they have the agency to speak out when they become victims of fraud.