Who is allowed to give you immigration advice, and how to check

This guide names no requirement for any visa, deliberately. It is about the prior question, which is who you should be asking in the first place, because getting that wrong is what turns a difficult application into a permanent problem.

In several countries, giving immigration advice or assistance for a fee is restricted to people who are registered to do it.

• In Australia, the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority keeps a public register. Anybody charging you for immigration assistance should appear on it, by name and registration number.
• In the UK, GOV.UK publishes a service for finding a regulated immigration adviser.
• For recruitment out of India for overseas employment, registered agents are listed through eMigrate, under the Protector General of Emigrants.

Each of those is a page you can open yourself, on your own phone, in under a minute. Ask for the name and number, then look it up rather than taking a photograph of a certificate as proof of anything.

It is not mainly the fee. It is that there is no professional body to complain to, no requirement that they carry insurance, no obligation to keep your documents safe, and no standard of competence behind the advice. A poor application is not a neutral outcome either: a refusal sits on your record, and the next one is harder.

If anybody tells you to put something on a form that is not true, or to leave out something that is, stop there. Not because it might fail, but because misrepresentation is treated far more seriously than whatever it was meant to hide, and the consequence usually attaches to you rather than to the person who told you to do it. They will not be on the form.

• A guaranteed outcome. Nobody can guarantee a decision that is not theirs to make.
• "I know somebody inside." At best untrue, at worst an offer to do something illegal in your name.
• Being asked to hand over your passport for safekeeping.
• Cash only, no written agreement, no receipt, no itemised statement of what you are paying for.
• Pressure to decide before a deadline that only they know about.

Every form submitted, every document sent, every receipt, and the reference number for anything lodged. If you use somebody, get their advice in writing rather than over a call. If the relationship goes wrong, that file is the only version of events you control.