What a tragedy! Canadian Chinese Xiaohongshu is looking for"lawyer"The Ministry of Justice sued 430 people for urging them to get visas!

This article is reprinted from Canada News Network (public account ID: cacnewsca)

The visa was not approved for a long time. A worried Chinese spent 600 yuan on Xiaohongshu to find a “Canadian lawyer” to help him get the visa. Unexpectedly, this step pushed me into a bigger pit.

What is shocking is that in addition to this Chinese, 430 people stepped on mine at the same time and were charged by the Canadian Ministry of Justice!

The story begins with a Chinese woman working as a management consultant in Canada.

Her name was Amber. After returning to China for vacation for two weeks, she was about to return to Toronto for work, but was stopped at the boarding gate. The reason was that her work permit had expired, and she didn’t even know it.

I have no choice but to reapply for a work permit in the country. Waiting and waiting, five weeks passed with no news.

Seeing that her paid leave was about to run out and she might lose her job, she panicked and ran to Xiaohongshu to search for strategies.

There, she found a man who called himself a “lawyer” and advertised that he could “forcibly urge” the Immigration Bureau to expedite processing of visa applications.

The charge was 600 Canadian dollars. Due to the emergency, Amber transferred the money without saying a word.

Little did she know at the time that what the other party submitted for her was a federal court injunction application (Mandamus), which is a court order that can force government officials to process the backlog of immigration documents within a reasonable time limit.

What she didn’t even know was that under Canadian law, it is illegal for unauthorized persons to file documents in federal court.

It seemed to go smoothly at first. The visa was approved within 48 hours. Amber was so grateful that she even sent a thank you letter to the “lawyer”.

However, the good times did not last long.

Recently, she suddenly found herself, along with 429 other people, being targeted by the Canadian Department of Justice.

These 430 people, most of whom are Chinese, applied for a study permit, work permit or visitor visa. What they have in common is that they all entrusted unauthorized “black agents” to submit injunction applications to the federal court on their own behalf in an attempt to pressure the Immigration Bureau through the court and speed up the review and approval.

How did the Department of Justice find out?

Because the format, wording, and style of these 430 documents were highly similar, and they also shared the same home address, phone number, and email account. They clearly claimed to have submitted them independently, but all the information was leaked.

Now, the Justice Department has applied to dismiss all 430 injunction cases, accusing them of using unauthorized agents to prepare court applications and making false statements.

Not only that, the Ministry of Justice also requires each of these applicants to pay 720 Canadian dollars in legal fees to the government.

For many of them, their visas have not yet been approved.

Another client, John, said his visitor visa application had been sitting in the Immigration Bureau for more than a year without any response.

After being introduced by a friend, he found the same agency. He only provided the immigration client number, name and application information. There was no contract and he had never met the person in person. Two months after the injunction was filed, the visa was obtained.

John said that the agent’s post on Xiaohongshu has been quietly deleted recently, and the words that originally promoted “helping you speed up your Canadian visa approval” have disappeared. Nowadays, intermediaries have changed their strategy and no longer submit directly for them. Instead, they send strategies and templates to clients so that they can “do it by themselves”.

According to Canadian law, only individuals who are self-represented, or licensed lawyers and authorized persons can appear in federal court or submit documents. Anyone else, even simply giving legal advice, is breaking the law.

The most unlucky ones are undoubtedly the parties involved. They repeatedly cry out for injustice and say that they have no idea that this is illegal.

“I really thought this person was just helping me,” Amber said. “My visa was approved within 48 hours, and I even went to thank him. He provided very valuable services. I believe that none of the 430 people knew what an injunction was.”

John’s attitude was more direct: “I’m just as angry at the Canadian immigration agency as I am at the agent.”

“My application was pending at the Immigration Bureau for so long before I went to find someone for help. But now the Immigration Bureau is chasing us instead of the agency. What sense does this make?”

Both men pointed out that the root of the problem is that immigration processing takes too long and is too opaque.

“It’s like a black box,” Amber said. “No one tells you where your application is stuck or what the problem is. When you call the immigration hotline, you go through a long voice menu and get disconnected directly. When you go to your local Congressman, they can only tell you ‘the application is still being processed,’ which is of no use.”

The numbers prove that Amber and John’s situation is not unique.

Immigration-related lawsuits in federal courts have surged from 7,782 in 2019 to 24,667 in 2024, reaching 21,581 in the first nine months of 2025 alone.

Court backlogs are growing and queues for hearings are getting longer.

The Department of Immigration’s response is to advise applicants to use the official website to check information, and that its “Preventing Immigration Fraud” page will be regularly promoted on social media.

But both Amber and John said they had no idea it was an issue that warranted a search.

Those 430 people who found “effort-saving methods” on Xiaohongshu are not bad people. They just found an outlet that seems to work in a system that is invisible to people.

Unexpectedly, that exit was a trap.

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