Yes, I have it here.
Immigration consulting is my passion. Since I come from a legal background—I can't get a licence as a lawyer, which is another reality—this is the closest I can be to the legal profession.
On March 7, the immigration department in New Zealand introduced a licensing system for consultants. It's a federally regulated body; it's not given to the consultants. For example, if you are a farmer and you have 1,000 cows and you want to take care of them, you'll put them in one place and include them all, rather than exclude some.
The present system has been established with licensing systems for every profession in Canada. You're trying to exclude people because they don't have this or that; they don't have the language. You're not going to regulate people like that. You cannot, because if people are going all over the place and this is their livelihood, they're going to do it.
I'll put it in very loose terms, from my 15 years of experience in this field. The immigration profession from the outside, in other countries, is seen to be like the drug business. Because human smuggling in other countries is so rampant and so much money is involved in this, people wish to get into this business legally or illegally. Very few want to have legitimate businesses, but there are also people who want to have illegitimate businesses.
For example--and obviously I can't give you proof for this one--I started my practice way back in 1993 in India, in a small office, working with the law firm Brownstein and Brownstein. In the very first month after I put an advertisement in the newspaper, a gentleman came to me with a bag full of money. He said, “Mr. Ajmera, I work as a human smuggler. I saw your advertisement that you can send people to Canada. If you help me and my people, I will give you $15,000 per person.” I said, “Look, I'm a lawyer. My father was a lawyer, and my grandfather was a lawyer under British rule. That's the last thing I would like to do.”
As of today--this was overheard, and I don't have proof--the going rate to smuggle people from India to Canada or America is $80,000 Canadian.