LW & Associates places pressure on Richmond School District for scrutinizing Residency Status

Richmond School District under fire for scrutinizing residency status

Is this due diligence or racial discrimination?

Richmond-based lawyer Lawrence Wong is alleging school district officials are unfairly over-scrutinizing the residency status of immigrant parents seeking to register their children in the public education system.

But the district claims it is merely doing its due diligence to ensure the system is not abused by non-residents, who should be paying international student fees.

Full article can be accessed here.

LW & Associates defends borrowers and provides comments on BC's money laundering scheme

B.C. vows crackdown after Globe investigation reveals money-laundering scheme 

Through millions of dollars in private lending and mortgages, people connected to the fentanyl trade are parking their illicit gains in the Vancouver-area property market – and using alleged threats, extortion and deception to make sure they get their money back. Kathy Tomlinson and Xiao Xu investigate

Full article by the Globe and Mail can be accessed here.

LW & Associates pursues class action for victims of largest immigration scam in Canadian history

The legal battle could have huge implications for potentially hundreds of Chinese immigrants who had hired Wang to obtain Canadian citizenship or permanent resident status.

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The legal battle currently brewing in Federal Court could have huge implications for potentially hundreds of Chinese immigrants who had hired Xun “Sunny” Wang, an unlicensed immigration consultant, to obtain Canadian citizenship or permanent resident status.

Wang, who operated New Can Consultants Ltd. and Wellong International Investments Ltd. out of offices in downtown Vancouver and Richmond, B.C., was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2015 and fined $900,000 after pleading guilty to multiple fraud-related charges. The scam involved making it appear as if his clients had spent the requisite number of days in Canada when, in fact, they had not.

To pull that off, clients’ passports were altered — typically by adding fake exit and entry stamps. To further the impression some of his clients were living in Canada, fake letters of employment or school admission letters were created.

At the time, the Canada Border Services Agency said it was “the single largest investigation of immigration fraud in British Columbia’s history” and noted that some 1,600 clients had paid Wang about $10 million for fraudulent services.

In the aftermath, investigators with CBSA’s Inland Enforcement Section pored through the list of Wang’s clients to identify those who misrepresented themselves in order to obtain or maintain permanent resident status in Canada. More than 500 were flagged for possible inadmissibility.

According to immigration lawyer Lawrence Wong, many subsequently received removal orders, some living outside Canada simply gave up their permanent resident status, while others are awaiting hearings or appeals. Only a handful have successfully appealed on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.

Wong believes the government has been unfairly lumping together individuals who knowingly conspired with Wang to deceive the government and those who were unaware of the fraud.

“You treat all his victims as if they were complicit? That doesn’t make sense,” Wong said Wednesday. “Effort has to be made to separate those that were complicit and weren’t complicit.”

Earlier this year, Wong went to Federal Court to file an application on behalf of two of Wang’s former clients — Chao Yuan Lin and Xiang Zhou — whose admissibility to Canada are being challenged. (Lin and Zhou, permanent residents of Canada since 2000 and 2004 respectively, had hired Wang to help them renew their permanent resident cards).

Wong, who is seeking to certify the case as a class action, is asking the court to declare that the government has misapplied the law.

“Despite the mountain of evidence of Mr. Wang’s fraudulent activities committed against his clients,” the federal government chose to treat those clients “as no less culpable and has been seeking to remove them from Canada by alleging they committed misrepresentation,” he wrote in the application.

If the government is successful at removing Lin, Zhou and other former clients of Wang from Canada, “the consequences could be devastating as many of these clients have Canadian spouses or Canadian-born young children.”

Full article by National Post can be accessed here.

LW & Associates on behalf of Vancouver parents continue lawsuit over Vancouver School Board

Vancouver parents continue lawsuit over trangender student policy

Three Vancouver parents are pressing ahead with a B.C. Supreme Court lawsuit demanding the Vancouver School Board change a transgender student policy that they say takes away people's right to know about any change in the gender identity or sexual orientation of their children.

Lawyer Masao Morinaga said on Monday that his clients' main concern is that the policy passed last year allows students to keep these matters secret from their parents. Under the policy, students can request that their conversations on gender identity or sexual orientation with school counsellors and staff be kept confidential.

The petition was filed last November and Mr. Morinaga said he hopes to schedule a hearing in Vancouver's B.C. Supreme Court in the next several months. He said he has affidavits from about 175 other parents, mostly from Vancouver's Chinese community, in support of the petition.

In an affidavit explaining the policy, Maureen Ciarniello, Vancouver's assistant superintendent, said students can feel unsafe sharing their gender identity or sexual orientation with their parents because they "sometimes fear that they will be kicked out of their families."

Full Globe and Mail article can be accessed here.

Federal Court asked to spare former clients of immigration consultant fraudster

Article by Nicholas Keung, Toronto Star

Former clients of an unlicensed consultant convicted in one of Canada’s biggest immigration scams have asked the court to spare them from being removed from Canada for “misrepresentation.”

In a proposed class action application filed with the Federal Court last week, Chao Yuan Lin and Xiang Zhou — two of Xun “Sunny” Wang’s former clients — said evidence at the man’s criminal trial indicated “Wang or his staff committed immigration fraud and not their clients.”

Wang, owner of New Can Consulting in British Columbia, was found guilty of immigration fraud in 2015 for filing fraudulent immigration applications for hundreds of clients, and was sentenced to seven years in prison. Last year, three of his former staff were also convicted of immigration fraud and were sentenced to 18 months in jail.

Wang’s services included helping clients apply for citizenship and renew what’s known as a permanent resident, or PR, card, a document required of non-citizen immigrants to enter Canada by commercial vehicle.

Wang falsified documents to make his clients appear to have met the residency requirement when they were physically out of the country in order to renew their PR card.

“Despite the mountain of evidence of Mr. Wang’s fraudulent activities committed against his clients and Canada Immigration, the respondent (public safety) minister decided to treat the clients of Mr. Wang as no less culpable and has been seeking to remove them from Canada by alleging that they committed misrepresentation,” said the court application represented by the lead claimants, Lin and Zhou.

The Immigration Department declined to comment on the class action application or reveal the number of Wang’s former clients whose immigration status is under review, as the matter is before the court.

In the court application, Lin claimed he was not aware of any suspicious or fraudulent activities of Wang, nor was he informed of any by the Canada Border Services Agency when he retained Wang to renew his PR card in 2013, a year after officials executed a warrant to search Wang’s office in Richmond, B.C.

According to the court submission, Lin was refused a travel document to return to Canada by Canadian officials in Beijing in 2014. He filed a successful appeal and obtained a new PR card in June 2016. Last month, however, the border agency told him he was inadmissible to Canada because he misrepresented himself on his PR card renewal, and he was referred to an admissibility hearing.

According to the submission, Zhou successfully renewed his PR card in 2010 through Wang’s company but was intercepted by border agents at the Vancouver International Airport a year later because he had failed to meet the minimum two-year residency requirement within a five-year period.

Zhou was issued a removal order but successfully appealed the decision, got his PR card renewed and sponsored his wife and child into Canada in 2013. Then last month, he too was informed by the border agency that he’s inadmissible to Canada for misrepresentation.

The court application asks that the permanent residents not have to go through the admissibility hearings for misrepresentation.

Both Lin and Zhou declined to comment.

Their lawyer, Lawrence Wong, said border officials identified about 2,000 of Wang’s clients during his criminal trial and hundreds of them had hired the unlicensed consultant for PR card renewal.

The court submission argues that misrepresentation in the PR card renewal does not imply his clients acquired their permanent resident status improperly and has nothing to do with the retention of the permanent status.

A PR card serves as proof of permanent resident status, but the status may remain without a valid card, the court application says.

“If the applicants made misrepresentation to renew their PR cards, then they should have their cards revoked or renewal applications denied. They should not lose their legally obtained PR status and be given a five-year ban from entering Canada,” the application says.

Another complaint the applicants have against the government, according to the application, was that their PR cards were successfully renewed by the Immigration Department but the public safety minister, who oversees the border enforcement agency, delayed “in shutting down the unlicensed and illegal activities of Mr. Wang” and “took it upon themselves to revisit the applicants’ cases.”