If you are qualified, motivated and living somewhere that does not recognise your qualification, you are one of the most approached people on the internet. Consultancies, agents, coaches, migration services, programmes, communities. Some are excellent. Some are honest and useless. Some are neither, and the third category is very good at looking like the first.
What follows is the list of questions we would want a member of our own family to ask. It applies to us as much as to anyone else, and we have tried to answer each one on this site in a way you can check.
1. What does this cost, in total, including the parts you have not mentioned?
Ask for the full number, not the entry price. Ask specifically about success fees, placement fees, deferred payments, membership renewals and premium tiers. An organisation that cannot give you a total in one sentence is either disorganised or is depending on the fact that you will not ask again later.
The most common trap is not an outright scam. It is a real service, priced against your desperation, for something you could have obtained yourself for a fraction of the money.
2. Are you licensed to give immigration advice?
In most countries this is regulated work. A programme that drifts into telling you which visa to apply for, or how to present your case, is either licensed or is breaking the rules on your behalf, which puts your application at risk rather than theirs. Ask for the licence. Honest organisations name a licensed practitioner and stop talking.
3. What exactly are you promising?
Listen for the difference between a promise and a description. Preparation, introductions, mentorship and coaching are things an organisation controls. Visas, jobs, salaries and residency are not. Anyone promising the second category is either lying to you or believes something untrue, and the outcome for you is the same.
4. Who pays you, and what for?
Follow the money, because it determines whose interests are served when the two sides diverge. If an organisation earns a commission per placement, it has a structural reason to push you towards whichever role closes fastest. That does not make the people bad. It makes the advice unreliable in exactly the moments when it matters most.
5. What happens if I fail, or if you fail me?
Ask directly. Do I get told why. Is there an appeal. Do you publish how many people do not complete. An organisation that has never thought about its failure cases has not been running long enough or honest enough to have noticed them.
6. Can I speak to someone who went through this and did not get what they hoped for?
Everyone can produce a success story. Very few can produce someone the programme did not work for, and the reaction to this question tells you more than the answer does. Discomfort is fine. Evasion is not.
7. What are you refusing to do?
This is the question we care about most, and it is the one almost nobody asks. An organisation that cannot list its refusals has not decided what it is, which means it will become whatever the next funding round rewards. Ask for the list. Ask when it was written. Ask what it would take to change it.
Applying this to us
Our answers, in order. Nothing, ever, to participants, and no third party may charge in our name. No, we are not licensed and we will not give immigration advice. We promise preparation, introductions and mentorship, and we promise no outcome. We are funded by donors and we take no fee from employers or participants. If we decline you, you receive written reasons. We will publish withdrawal categories including people we asked to leave. Our refusals are on the promises page, dated at founding.
We cannot yet answer question six honestly, because we have not run a cohort. When we can, that person's account will be published whether it flatters us or not.
