Immigration Scams: How to Spot and Report Them in the USA, Canada and Mexico

Be careful if someone:

• Guarantees a visa, job, approval or faster processing
• Pressures you to pay today or lose your place
• Asks you to pay with gift cards, cryptocurrency, a money transfer service or a personal bank account
• Contacts you first through social media, WhatsApp or a free email address (such as Gmail) and claims to be an official
• Asks for your passwords or access to your government online account
• Offers to lie on forms or supply documents you did not earn
• Uses a website that does not end in an official address (.gov in the US, canada.ca or gc.ca in Canada, gob.mx in Mexico)
• Claims special contacts at an embassy or immigration office

One sign is enough to stop and check. Using false documents can hurt you even if a scammer supplied them: Canada can bar you for 5 years for misrepresentation, and in the US lying to get an immigration benefit can make you permanently inadmissible unless you get a waiver.

Fake job offers often promise a high salary for simple work, use only chat or email for the "interview", and then ask you to pay for a work permit, visa processing, a "guarantee deposit" or travel. Real employers do not sell jobs.

• USA: employers and their recruiters are not allowed to charge H-2A or H-2B workers recruitment fees. Work visas start with an employer petition, not a payment from you to an agent.
• Canada: employers, and recruiters acting for them, cannot charge or recover recruitment fees from temporary foreign workers.
• Mexico: a work visa starts with a real job offer from an employer who must be registered with Mexico's National Migration Institute (INM).

Before you pay anything, check that the company exists on its own official website and that the job is listed there.

No. A Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) is a document a Canadian employer gets from Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) to show it needs a foreign worker. The employer pays the processing fee (CAD $1,000 per position as of September 2026) and cannot recover it from you. Selling an LMIA or a job offer to a worker is illegal, and IRCC lists LMIA sales among common immigration scams.

People who buy an LMIA often lose their money, and a fake or bought job offer can lead to a refusal and a misrepresentation finding. Note that job offers no longer give Express Entry points (since March 25, 2025), so anyone selling an LMIA "for Express Entry points" is selling something with no value. Read more on the LMIA work permit page.

Look-alike websites copy the design of government pages and charge extra to submit a form you could file yourself. Some also collect your passport data. Search ads can appear above the official site, so check the address bar before you type anything.

See our pages on the ESTA and the Canada eTA. Mexico's INM has warned about fake websites and says no person or intermediary is authorized to charge for booking appointments.

Only government officers decide immigration cases: USCIS and consular officers in the US, IRCC officers in Canada, and INM and consular officials in Mexico. IRCC states plainly: "No one can guarantee you a job or a visa to Canada." The same is true in the US and Mexico. Licensed lawyers and consultants are generally not allowed to promise results either.

If you want professional help, check the person's license first. Our guide shows how to verify a lawyer or consultant, and our notario fraud guide explains who cannot legally give US immigration advice.

• US Diversity Visa (DV) lottery: you can only enter at dvprogram.state.gov, and entry has been free. The State Department does not notify winners by email or letter; you check your result on the same site with your confirmation number. As of September 2026 the program is paused and DV-2027 registration never opened, so any message saying you won DV-2027, or offering to enter you for a fee, is fake. See the DV lottery page and its current status.
• Canada: there is no immigration lottery you can win by email. Some programs, such as International Experience Canada, pick candidates at random, but only from a pool you joined yourself, and results appear in your IRCC account.
• Mexico: there is no immigration lottery.

Scammers may fake the caller ID of a real agency, say there is a problem with your file, threaten arrest or deportation, and demand payment on the spot.

• USCIS says: "We will never ask you to transfer money to an individual. We do not accept Western Union, MoneyGram, PayPal, Venmo, or gift cards as payment for immigration fees. In addition, we will never ask you to pay fees to a person on the phone or by email."
• IRCC says it will never ask for any payment by telephone, ask you to deposit money into a personal bank account or use a private money transfer service, contact you from free email services, or start a conversation through social media.
• INM tells people to do their procedures personally through official channels, to ignore anyone who promises to speed up a case, and to pay only the fees set in Mexico's Federal Duties Law (Ley Federal de Derechos).

If you get a call like this, hang up. Then contact the agency using contact details from its official website, not the number that called you.

Keep every message, receipt, bank record and website address. You do not need to know for sure that it was a scam before you report it.

1. Stop paying. Scammers often ask for a second or third "fee".
2. Contact your bank or money transfer service right away and ask about stopping or reversing the payment.
3. Report it using the table above.
4. Change passwords for your email and any government accounts, and turn on two-step verification.
5. Watch for identity theft. In the US, identitytheft.gov has a recovery plan.
6. If something was filed in your name or you submitted documents a scammer gave you, talk to a licensed immigration lawyer (or in Canada, a lawyer or RCIC) before you contact the immigration agency.