With regard to restricting the practice to immigration lawyers, in an ideal world, everyone would have access to justice and would have the ability to afford services. I think immigration consultants can play a role in certain types of immigration applications.
We may want to consider looking at what scope of practice immigration consultants should reasonably be permitted to be able to provide services under. Perhaps things like appearing before the IRB should be eliminated, because that does require an understanding of the law and legal processes, which is not part of the education of consultants.