Every year, thousands of North Indian families hand over their savings—sometimes ₹4 lakh, sometimes ₹40 lakh or more—to anyone promising a foreign visa, college admission, or job. Many are cheated, losing their money to operators who vanish the moment a complaint is filed.

This crisis does not exist because Punjab lacks legislation. The Punjab Travel Professionals’ Regulation Act has been on the books in one form or another since 2012. It fails not because its punishments are lenient, but because its machinery was built to catch an offender who barely exists anymore, while exhausting its energy on consultants who already follow the rules.

Target touts

On paper, Punjab’s licensing regime is exhaustive. It covers eight categories, including travel agents, visa consultants, emigration advertisers, matrimonial facilitators, and IELTS coaching centres. In practice, the bulk of fraud is committed by freelance touts operating out of coffee shops, relatives collecting cash on someone else’s behalf, or operators existing purely as WhatsApp numbers and Instagram handles. None of them ever apply for a licence.

The result is a bizarre inversion: Honest consultants are inspected, verified, and re-verified at regular intervals, while the individuals actively scamming families remain untouched outside the system.

A new or renewal application requires tedious document scrutiny and police verification of office addresses, residences, and criminal antecedents. Yet, these safeguards fall almost entirely on those who have already registered. Worse, the process never actually tests competence. There is no minimum educational qualification, nor any assessment of working knowledge regarding immigration rules or professional ethics.

Fixing this requires no added bureaucracy: Introduce a minimum qualification (Class 12 or graduation), a short objective test, a structured training module on legal ethics, and a basic interview with an additional deputy commissioner (ADC) or superintendent of police (SP). The cost would be negligible, but the protection for a family’s first meeting with a consultant would far exceed yet another round of paperwork.

Reactionary raids

Enforcement currently works in sporadic bursts rather than steady watchfulness. The massive crackdown against 1,274 immigration firms in February 2025 followed the deportation of 104 Indians from the United States; the 2023 statewide drive followed reports of Punjabi students facing deportation from Canada over forged documents. Between these crises, official attention reverts to routine paperwork.

Licensed consultants are forced to submit monthly reports to the deputy commissioner—a reporting frequency demanded of no comparable profession, whether lawyers, doctors, or insurance agents. Monthly filings catch no unregistered fraudster; they merely waste productive hours. Renewals still demand fresh affidavits, three years of tax returns, and full police reports, even for consultants with spotless records. The state spends its energy re-checking the trustworthy instead of tracking the untraceable.

Accountability must also run deeper. When fraud occurs through a licensed agency, official responsibility shouldn’t end with the agent. The deputy superintendent of police (DSP) and station house officer (SHO) who signed off on the original verification should also be answerable. A law that holds only the licensee responsible while negligent official verification carries zero consequences will keep producing the same failures.

Digital smuggling

The most dangerous marketing rarely looks like a traditional scam. It thrives on social media as a confident guarantee: Reach a target country within days via illegal transit routes, fixed-price packages, or fake job offers. The moment an operator promises a guaranteed outcome, trust should go out the window—yet desperate families cannot verify these claims before their money disappears.

The human cost extends far beyond financial loss. Victims lured into illegal transit routes face treacherous terrain, unregistered borders, and physical danger. Those falling into smugglers’ hands endure extortion, violence, and sustained psychological abuse while families back home are threatened for additional payments.

An honest, licensed consultant who explains refusal risks, realistic timelines, and proper documentation cannot compete with an anonymous social media page promising a guaranteed visa. State authorities must systematically monitor these digital advertisements, collaborating with central emigration and overseas recruitment agencies to flag and remove deceptive posts before they reach the next family. Migrants lured into illegal routes must be treated primarily as victims—provided with consular assistance and safe, confidential channels to report abusers without fear of being prosecuted solely as immigration violators.

Punjab needs a smarter, sharper law, not a heavier one: One that directs its resources toward catching unregistered operators rather than endlessly re-verifying those who follow the rules. Punjab’s families deserve a system that protects them in practice, not just on paper. aliec.punjab@gmail.com

The writer is president of the Association of Licensed Immigration and Education Consultants, Mohali. Views expressed are personal.