In an undercover investigation, CBC's iTeam recorded an immigration consultant offering to pay a Prince Albert, Sask., business owner cash in exchange for a letter offering a Chinese national a job.
And it may, in fact, be part of a larger scam.
Last month, a man named Bill Sui dropped by Fabricland in Prince Albert and told owner Barb Reid his company was looking for Canadian jobs to offer to Chinese people wanting to immigrate.
According to Reid, Sui told her his immigration consulting company, Vstar International, would pay the salary and benefits of a would-be Chinese immigrant for three months of work if she simply provided a job offer.
As an extra incentive, he offered to pay Reid $15,000 in cash. He called it a "training fee."
In one of those conversations, Sui explained the details of his $15,000 offer to Reid.
"Usually we give cash, because usually our owners have a really high personal income. So, I just give them cash to save their tax and also save tax for our company," he said.
Sui told Reid everything about this program was on the up and up.
"I'm not trying to hide anything," Sui told Reid. "Basically, this is a government program. It's a benefit for you to get some cheap labour and skilled worker because you pay taxes."
He said the Chinese workers would be brought in through the skilled worker category of the Saskatchewan Immigrant Nominee Program, which allows the province to recommend qualified foreign nationals for landed immigrant status.
Sui said because the skilled worker category requires a job with specialized skills, Reid would have to give the job an impressive-sounding title; the new immigrant couldn't just be called a cashier.
Reid explained to CBC what Sui originally proposed to her: "It would have to be like a 'buyer' or something like that, so it looked good coming to Canada."
In a recorded conversation, Sui assured Reid other businesses had already signed on, listing off restaurants and electronic stores as examples, though he didn't provide names or locations.
Sui said Reid would be able to pick the worker she wanted from a stack of resumés. He assured her there would be no long-term commitment.
"We cover first three months wages just like probation period for you to try them out," he said. "If he works well, he can stay. If you don't like him or he doesn't make enough profit for you, I just find another job for him."
Even if Reid let the worker go, Sui said, "you keep the $15,000."
Vstar charges Chinese immigrants $200K
According to immigration consultants CBC contacted, a skilled worker application typically costs between $3,000 and $8,000 — assuming the foreign national has secured their own job.
On its website, Vstar boasts that it has helped many Chinese people immigrate to Saskatchewan, Manitoba and British Columbia, but it doesn't reveal what it charges for this service.
CBC's iTeam wondered what Vstar charged, so Chinese-speaking CBC journalist Sharon Wu contacted the company and posed as a Canadian helping her Chinese relative and his family emigrate to this country.
The owner of Vstar, Nicole Sun, told Wu the company charged Chinese nationals $200,000 for the skilled worker application.
"This is the fee charge for the entire immigration application process," Sun explained to Wu. "It's the money you pay for your family to get residency status."
Sun confirmed that Vstar has a pool of employers who are looking for Chinese immigrant workers.
"We have employers from all types of industries," Sun said in the recorded conversation, which has been translated from Chinese. "We have big companies who have over 80 staff — most common ones have 10-ish employees."
Sun said she would examine the resumé of Wu's relative and find an appropriate placement.
She said the $200,000 would be paid in instalments and "we often guarantee within three months the applicant will definitely get a job offer that makes a good fit for him. If not, we will refund all we have charged."
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