How to vet an immigration consultancy before you pay

Most families who ring us about a bad immigration contract ring after the money has gone. This kind of fraud is rarely crude: there is a contract, the office looks the part, and the consultant uses the right vocabulary. Everything below you can check yourself in an afternoon, before paying anyone.

Check that the company is real

Start with the business registration number. It sits at the top of every contract. Look it up on Vietnam's National Business Registration Portal and compare three things: whether the registered name matches the contract, whether the company is still trading, and whether its registered lines of business cover what it is actually selling you.

A surprising number of cases come apart at exactly this step. The entity signing the contract turns out not to be the entity on the signage, or to have been incorporated a few months ago.

Check that the consultant is licensed

Almost nobody does this, and it is the strongest check available. Several countries regulate immigration advice through individual licences, and publish the register so the public can search it.

• Canada: your consultant must be an RCIC, searchable by name on the register of the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants, the CICC. If the name is not there, that person may not be paid to advise on a Canadian file. The open routes themselves are on our Canada page.
• Australia: registered migration agents carry a MARA number, searchable on the MARA system.
• Malta: residence applications must be filed through an agent licensed by the Residency Malta Agency, and there is no self-filing route. Ask for the licence number and check it. Programme detail is on our Malta page.

Asking for a licence number is an ordinary question in this trade. Anyone who bristles at it has answered you.

Nobody can guarantee an outcome

This is the single clearest warning sign. The decision to grant a card or a visa belongs to the immigration authority of the country concerned. No consultancy, not even a good one, can take that decision on their behalf.

So when a contract carries a written guarantee of approval, or somebody says the file is covered, the response is not to negotiate the price. It is to stop. A well-prepared file improves the odds; certainty is not for sale.

Beware programmes that no longer exist

Some schemes are still being sold precisely because the names remain familiar:

• Maltese citizenship by investment: the Court of Justice of the EU ruled the scheme unlawful on 29 April 2025 and Malta repealed it. Anyone still offering it is selling something that does not exist. What remains, country by country, is on our citizenship pages.
• Cypriot citizenship by investment: closed in 2020, and taken off the statute book at the end of 2025. Cyprus still runs a residence programme, but residence is not a passport.
• The five-million-dollar US Gold Card: the figure is wrong. Executive Order 14351, published in the Federal Register on 24 September 2025, sets one million dollars for an individual donating on their own behalf. The five million figure belongs to a different card that has not been released.

Money and paperwork

• Never transfer to a personal account. Service fees go to the company account named in the contract.
• The contract should separate every line: what is the consultancy's own fee, what is passed through to a foreign authority, what is refundable on refusal and what is not. A full refund clause with no list of deductions almost always has deductions.
• Check every figure in the proposal against the destination country's own official portal. Capital thresholds, physical presence days, processing times, all of it is published.
• Keep the messages and the proposal documents. Verbal assurances are worth nothing in a dispute.

None of these four steps needs a lawyer. They need an afternoon and some patience. Do them first, and only then start choosing a country and a category. We cite a source for every figure on this site so you can check it yourself, and we set out how we work before any file is opened.

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The information in this article is for reference at the time of writing. It is not legal advice and no outcome is promised — immigration policy, tax rules and market conditions can change. For an assessment based on your family's specific circumstances, please request a consultation with the VNIS Investment team.