Work · Checking an offer
Three governments publish lists that let you check a Canadian employer from a laptop in Gujarat, for nothing. Almost no page written in India mentions them, and the usual advice about spelling mistakes and email domains is no use against the forged letters actually circulating.
The short answer
You can check a Canadian job offer against three public government lists for free: ESDC's positive and negative Labour Market Impact Assessment employer lists, and IRCC's list of employers found non-compliant. Finding the employer corroborates the offer. Missing from the list proves nothing, because ESDC publishes the lists incomplete.
Run them in this order. Each is free, public, and takes a few minutes.
Employment and Social Development Canada publishes every employer issued a positive Labour Market Impact Assessment, by program stream, occupation and business location, updated each quarter on the open data portal.
ESDC — Positive Labour Market Impact Assessment Employers List
ESDC publishes the corresponding list of employers issued a negative Labour Market Impact Assessment, on the same schedule and in the same format.
ESDC — Negative Labour Market Impact Assessment Employers List
IRCC publishes every employer found non-compliant after an inspection, with the penalty and any ban on hiring temporary workers.
The lists are incomplete, and that cuts both ways
Both employer lists exclude personal names, including business names that use or contain a personal name, so ESDC states that the lists are not complete and do not reflect every employer that requested or received an LMIA.
So an employer you cannot find may be perfectly genuine. Use these lists to confirm something when they can, and never to convict an employer by absence. Somebody with a real offer from a small business trading under the owner's own name will never find it here.
Most people arrive at this subject asking whether the offer is real. There is a better question, and Canadian law has already answered it. Under IRPR 209.3, the employer:
must not, directly or indirectly, charge or recover from the foreign national any fees related to their recruitment, and must ensure that any person who recruited the foreign national does not, directly or indirectly, charge or recover those fees from them either
Read that twice, because it moves the whole problem. The duty is on the employer, not on you. If you pay for the job or for the LMIA behind it, the employer is in breach of a condition they are inspected against. Non-compliant employers are banned from hiring temporary workers, and IRCC publishes their names.
So paying does not buy you safety, it removes it
An offer you paid for is an offer from an employer already in breach, whether or not the LMIA is genuine. You would be arriving in Canada dependent on a permit tied to an employer with a live compliance problem, having spent the money that was supposed to settle you.
The Indian side of this has its own law, and it is stronger than most people realise: recruiting Indians for work abroad requires a licence, sub-agents are not permitted at all, and unregistered recruitment is treated seriously.
A great deal of the market for bought LMIAs was built on CRS points. An arranged job offer was worth 50 points for most skilled occupations and 200 for senior management, which made a five-figure payment look like an investment. IRCC removed them on 25 March 2025, for candidates already in the pool as well as new ones, expressly to take the incentive away.
From 3 November 2026 a job offer scores again, under different rules. The job has to be in one of the 186 occupations on IRCC's high-wage list, which goes by each occupation's median wage across Canada and not by the salary in your letter. A listed offer is worth 100, 70 or 50 points and no longer needs an LMIA. It does not stack on top of Canadian work experience either: IRCC counts whichever of the two is worth more.
The incentive is back, and the LMIA lists cannot see it
An offer worth up to 100 points is worth selling again, this time in the listed occupations. Because these offers do not need an LMIA, the two ESDC lists above will not confirm most of them. The check moves to IRCC instead: an officer has to be satisfied that the employer is actively running the business, needs the role, can meet the terms of the offer, and has complied with federal and provincial employment and recruitment laws, and that you can do the job.
An offer that fails that check takes your points with it. If your application relied on an offer that was not genuine, IRCC can find you inadmissible for misrepresentation, which keeps you out of Canada for five years and bars you from applying for permanent residence in that time.
There are consultancy pages in Ahmedabad still headlining a 50-point LMIA. That number ended in March 2025, and the points that replace it do not need an LMIA at all, so the headline is out of date twice over.
Off the list, an offer still counts for something
An offer outside the high-wage list adds nothing to your ranking score, but it can still matter for eligibility under the Federal Skilled Trades Program and for the Federal Skilled Worker Program points grid, and it still exempts some applicants from showing settlement funds.
You can run all three checks yourself and you should. What we add is the reading of the documents themselves: whether the LMIA number and the employer name on the letter agree with the published record, whether the occupation and location match, and whether the offer describes a permit that actually exists.
We do not find jobs and we take no fee from any worker for finding them work. That is a licensing position, not modesty: recruiting Indians for overseas employment requires a Registration Certificate from the Protector General of Emigrants, which we do not hold. Checking an offer you already have is a different thing, and it is part of the visa file.
You can check a Canadian job offer against three public government lists, free, in about twenty minutes. Employment and Social Development Canada publishes every employer issued a positive Labour Market Impact Assessment and every employer issued a negative one, both quarterly on the open data portal. IRCC publishes every employer found non-compliant after an inspection. Finding your employer on the positive list is genuine corroboration. Not finding them proves very little, because ESDC excludes employers whose business name is a personal name and says the lists are incomplete. An Express Entry offer made from 3 November 2026 does not need an LMIA, so the two ESDC lists may never show it at all. The stronger test is not about the lists at all: if anyone is asking you to pay for the job or the LMIA, the offer is unsafe whether or not it is genuine.
Paying for an LMIA-backed job offer puts the employer in breach of Canadian law, which is why it should end the conversation rather than start a negotiation. Under IRPR 209.3, the employer must not, directly or indirectly, charge or recover from the foreign national any fees related to their recruitment, and must ensure that any person who recruited the foreign national does not, directly or indirectly, charge or recover those fees from them either That means an offer you paid for is an offer from an employer who is already non-compliant, and non-compliant employers are banned from hiring temporary workers and published by IRCC. So the question is not whether the money buys you a real job. It is that paying makes the job itself unsafe even when the paperwork is genuine.
A job offer no longer gives a flat 50 CRS points. IRCC removed the old 50 and 200 point awards on 25 March 2025, for candidates already in the pool as well as new ones. From 3 November 2026 an offer scores again, but only when the job is in one of the 186 occupations on IRCC's high-wage list. There it is worth 100, 70 or 50 points depending on the occupation's median wage across Canada, and it no longer needs an LMIA. The points do not stack on top of Canadian work experience, because IRCC counts whichever of the two is worth more. An offer outside the high-wage list adds nothing to your ranking score, but it can still matter for eligibility under the Federal Skilled Trades Program and for the Federal Skilled Worker Program points grid, and it still exempts some applicants from showing settlement funds. Any Indian consultancy page still advertising a 50-point LMIA is describing a rule that ended in March 2025.
An employer missing from the LMIA list does not mean the offer is fake. ESDC excludes all personal names from both employer lists, including businesses trading under a personal name, and states that the lists are therefore not complete and do not reflect every employer that requested or received an LMIA. A quarter may also not have been published yet. So absence is not evidence of fraud, and treating it as proof will eventually cost somebody a genuine job. Use the lists as corroboration when they confirm something, and fall back on the other signals when they are silent: who is asking you for money, and what for.
We do not find jobs, and this is a licensing position rather than a limitation of our service. Recruiting Indians for overseas employment is a licensed business under the Emigration Act, 1983, requiring a Registration Certificate from the Protector General of Emigrants, which we do not hold. So we take no fee from any worker for finding them work, and we never will. What we do is the visa file, and checking an offer somebody has already received is part of that.
On video
The scam this page exists to stop, as it actually happens: a price negotiated for something that was never for sale.
An offer in your hand
We read the LMIA number and the employer name against ESDC's own list, check IRCC's non-compliant register, and tell you plainly what the documents do and do not establish. We take no fee from any worker for finding work, because we do not do that.
Three fields · about 30 seconds
