AI Reshaping Canada’s Immigration Fraud Battle

By Aloa Alota
New Canadian Media

One day Alberta immigration lawyer Yameena Ansari began receiving inquiries from prospective clients who wanted to confirm they were actually communicating with her. Someone else had become her. Fraudsters had stolen her professional identity, presenting themselves as the real lawyer while offering services she had never authorized.
“Fraudsters stole my identity and were posing as me to solicit vulnerable clients,” Ansari said.
She says her case of identity theft did not involve artificial intelligence. But she believes emerging AI tools are making longstanding immigration fraud schemes increasingly convincing. “Today, they [fraudsters] deploy highly polished websites, professional social media campaigns, and even AI-generated marketing to mimic legitimate law firms,” she said.
In written responses to questions from New Canadian Media, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) confirms applicants and immigration representatives are increasingly using generative AI to prepare application materials, including letters, forms and supporting narratives. It also acknowledges that it has encountered cases in which AI has been used to generate fraudulent immigration applications. The responses offer one of the clearest public acknowledgements to date that artificial intelligence is becoming part of the immigration fraud landscape.
IRCC, however, declined to describe the specific techniques, warning that publicly disclosing operational details could inadvertently help bad-faith actors evade detection. It also did not disclose how many AI-assisted fraudulent applications it has identified or whether such cases are tracked separately. Instead, the department says it is continuously updating its fraud detection measures, risk assessments and internal safeguards as AI-enabled fraud evolves, while continuing to advise applicants on how to detect, prevent and report immigration and citizenship fraud and scams.
The department says immigration officers receive ongoing guidance on identifying irregularities associated with AI-generated documents and other emerging technologies, although it did not say whether the guidance comes from an internal training unit or an external provider. It also confirmed that IRCC itself uses artificial intelligence and advanced analytics to support administrative functions such as triaging applications, generating officer summaries and operating client-service chatbots. Those tools, however, do not make immigration decisions. Final decisions, particularly refusals, remain the responsibility of trained officers following a full human review.
While IRCC says AI-assisted fraud is an emerging risk, immigration lawyer Mario Bellissimo argues that the technology is forcing regulators to rethink a more fundamental question: what does unauthorized immigration practice look like when advice is no longer provided by a person?
“Unauthorized practice no longer necessarily involves an identifiable individual,” Bellissimo said. “Applicants may obtain guidance through AI-powered tools, automated platforms, overseas service providers, or hybrid models that combine technology and human actors operating across multiple jurisdictions.”
“Technology undoubtedly offers significant opportunities to improve access to information and services,” he said. “However, if regulatory frameworks fail to keep pace with technological change, we risk creating new vulnerabilities for applicants while making it increasingly difficult to identify who is responsible when inaccurate advice, misleading information or misconduct occurs.”
“Effective regulation must not only address the risk we know today; it must be sufficiently adaptable to address the risks we can reasonably anticipate tomorrow,” he said.
Fraudulent operations, she says, have become markedly more sophisticated in recent years, replacing crude scams with polished digital campaigns that can be difficult for prospective immigrants to distinguish from legitimate legal services. “A decade ago, bad actors operated out of sketchy backrooms,” Ansari says. “The shift towards digital application portals has enabled overseas networks to manufacture incredibly realistic yet entirely fake documents at an unprecedented scale.”
The technology, she says, is no longer confined to forged paperwork. It is increasingly being used to create convincing online identities capable of deceiving vulnerable applicants. “We encounter every single one of those scenarios on a near-daily basis,” she says, referring to forged documents, fake job offers, false promises of permanent residence, licence impersonation, and unauthorized immigration advice. “If there’s a loophole in an applicant’s knowledge or vulnerability in their dreams, fraudsters will aggressively exploit it.”
Not everyone, however, believes artificial intelligence represents a fundamental shift in the nature of immigration fraud. British Columbia immigration lawyer Amandeep Hayer takes a more sceptical view, arguing that AI’s role is being overstated in discussions about immigration fraud. While acknowledging that AI can generate documents and other digital content, he argues that the technology itself is not what enables fraud.
“I don’t think we’ve gone to the point where AI is able to generate fraud,” Hayer said. “At the end of the day, if somebody’s going to be doing fraud, regardless of AI or not, they’ll find a way to do it.”
For Hayer, artificial intelligence is simply another tool. It may change some of the methods fraudsters use but not the underlying motivations or opportunities that give rise to immigration fraud. Fraud, he argues, is ultimately driven by human intent rather than technological innovation.
What is no longer in dispute is that artificial intelligence has become part of Canada’s immigration landscape, both as a tool for legitimate administration and as an instrument that can be exploited by bad actors. Whether AI ultimately proves to be a revolutionary force in immigration fraud or simply another technology that amplifies existing schemes remains a matter of debate. What experts broadly agree on, however, is that protecting applicants will depend not only on technology, but also informed applicants, accountable representatives and regulators capable of adapting as quickly as the fraudsters they seek to stop.