Toronto - On Thursday, January 22, Professor Audrey Macklin, an expert in regulatory and migration issues and a former member of the Immigration and Refugee Board, will join MP and NDP immigration critic Olivia Chow in a panel discussion at the Faculty of Law on the regulation of the Canadian immigration consultancy industry in Canada and abroad.
The panel will discuss how to ensure implementations of recommendations to properly regulate immigration consultants made in June 2008 by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.
In the fall of 2008 Faculty of Law students, in conjunction with the faculty's Downtown Legal Services clinic, set up a toll-free telephone hotline for new immigrants victimized by costly and ineffective immigration consultants. As a follow up to this service, third-year law student Joel Hechter has put together a panel of experts, who will address the current situation facing immigrants targeted by unscrupulous consultants and the relative lack of regulation of the industry.
Other panelists will include lawyer Elizabeth Long, co-founder of Long Mangalji Immigration Law Group; and migrant rights activist and local immigration consultant Katarina Onuschak. Michael Battista, a Toronto immigration and refugee lawyer, will be moderating the discussion.
What: Panel Discussion on Regulating Immigration Consultants
Who: Professor Audrey Macklin, MP Olivia Chow, immigration lawyers Elizabeth Long and Michael Battista, immigration consultant Katarina Onuschak.
When: Thursday January 22, 12:30-2:00 p.m
Where: Faculty of Law, 78 Queen's Park, Cassels Brock and Blackwell Classroom "B"
For more information, please contact:
Joel Hechter, student organizer
Joel.hechter@utoronto.ca
Laura Rosen Cohen, Communications Officer, Faculty of Law
laura.rosencohen@utoronto.ca
(416) 946-5722
