Canada is asking the court to dismiss hundreds of immigration cases. Here’s why
By
TORONTO STAR – January 26, 2026
Ottawa has asked the Federal Court to throw out hundreds of immigration cases en masse, alleging they were filed by unauthorized agents.
In a motion last month, the immigration minister argued that the 430 applications, seeking relief from court over delays, should be heard and dismissed collectively due to “irregularities” stemming from the “similar format, style and phrasing” in court filings.
The applicants also shared the same home addresses, phone numbers and email accounts despite claiming to have self-represented.
The case involves Chinese applicants who have applied for study, work or visitor permits. They have asked the court to review the processing delays of their individual files and to order the Immigration Department to fast-track the application if the delay was found to be unreasonable.
The use of unscrupulous “ghost agents” has posed an ongoing challenge for immigration officials and legal profession regulators because they operate behind the scenes and cannot be held accountable. Their incompetence can also lead to dire consequences for applicants and abuse of the immigration and legal systems.
Recently, immigration officials appear to have stepped up efforts to detect the involvement of unauthorized agents in applications — and have been going after the applicants as a deterrent. Last year, multiple refugee claims by Sikhs were flagged and rejected for lack of credibility because their narratives were “nearly word for word” identical.
Through an analysis of its database between January 2023 and November 2025, the government found that the 430 so-called mandamus applications — seeking a court order to compel officials to act — all shared the same contact information but claimed they were representing themselves on their own.
By law, a person can only self-represent or be represented before the Federal Court by a licensed lawyer or authorized individual. The government is challenging these cases because the applicants were allegedly untruthful to the court; it’s not contesting the merits of the immigration processing delays they faced.
“In this case, the evidence supports the (government’s) position that an unauthorized person or group of persons is acting on behalf of the Applicants,” said the government motion to dispose of the cases. “Doing so would promote the just, most expeditious and most economical resolution of the issues.”
The court, it added, has a duty to guarantee compliance with its rules and ensure that those who appear or prepare submissions before it are indeed authorized officers of the court.
Immigration lawyer Max Berger said it’s “unprecedented” for the Department of Justice to try to consolidate as many as 430 applications and have them dismissed for irregularities.
Based on his review of the government motion, some applicants — in one case, having waited 498 days for a visitor visa — seem to make “perfectly” good cases for mandamus. But he said it’s obvious that the same hand had prepared all of these applications, and the court is rightfully entitled to dismiss the applications for those irregularities, on the grounds that the applicants are committing fraud.
“What’s very interesting is that the Department of Justice is not referencing the boilerplate language to try to attack the substance of the applications,” said Berger, who is not involved in any of the 430 cases. “They’re just using it to show it’s got to be a single person who prepared all of these applications.”
While immigration officials are themselves notorious for using boilerplate language in refusal letters, he wonders if they would have challenged all these cases if the applicants had been represented by a lawyer, who happened to use the same template to prepare the applications.
Immigration-related cases make up the majority of the workload of the Federal Court, which has seen the number of new immigration proceedings skyrocketing in recent years, from 7,782 in 2019 to 24,667 in 2024. It already reached 21,581 in the first nine months of 2025. And the wait time for a hearing just keeps growing.
Immigration lawyer Jing Yang said unauthorized agents, often from the applicants’ own cultural communities, have jammed the system with poor-quality applications, contributing to the immigration backlogs, which in part lead to people appealing refusals and filing mandamus applications in court.
“Applicants and litigants don’t know if the people they use are legally trained and if they are licensed or regulated,” said Yang, who has been retained by a couple of the mandamus applicants after they were caught in the dragnet. “The applicants are the ones who pay the price if something goes wrong.”
Yang, who has discontinued the two clients’ court applications, said it’s buyer beware when it comes to the use of unauthorized representatives, even though the Immigration Department requires applicants to disclose the identity of their counsel, if they have one, as well as their licence numbers.
Earlier last year, the immigration minister successfully asked the court to consolidate and quash the proceedings initiated individually by 31 Cameroonian applicants, who shared the same contact information, identical passages citing the same non-existent case law, and virtually identical vocabulary. Seven people were each ordered to pay $720 to the government in costs.
Given the growing magnitude of the problem, Yang hopes authorities will take this seriously and go after the source of the problem — the ghost agents — rather than the victims.
“Now that AI is on the scene, I’m sure that people are going to be turning to AI to save having to pay the ghost consultant,” added Berger. “You can quote me on this. AI is going to be the next ghost consultant.”
The Immigration Department declined to comment while the matter is still before the court, but said it has proposed regulations to impose monetary penalties of up to $1.5 million against unauthorized immigration practitioners, and those involved in misrepresentation or counselling misrepresentation. Their names would also be publicized on its website under the new rules expected in 2026.
“The government is dedicated to protecting prospective newcomers from those who try to take advantage of them,” it said in a statement.