The unscrupulous businessman goes out to advertise his world-renowned product at a certain price.

After tens of thousands of orders, he realises that his company could have asked for more money.

He then tells all those people who ordered the product and paid the asking price that he has changed his mind.

They will now have to pay more to get the product, the businessman declares.

Surely the businessman is unfair, unscrupulous, devious and a cheat. He must be charged with fraud.

Now imagine that fraud of a businessman is your government.

Yes folks, shameless Ottawa has done the same thing to tens of thousands of potential migrants to Canada - many from impoverished backgrounds who have scrimped and saved for a new life in Canada.

The situation developed as Ottawa secretly began changing the rules for prospective immigrants last year.

While changing the rules, immigration officers at Canadian diplomatic missions worldwide were processing prospective immigrants under the old rules.

Then the government announced the new tougher rules would come into play retroactively.

That means thousands who passed the test under the old rules and paid fees up to C$1,000 each are now out of luck. To add salt to the wound, Ottawa is refusing to return their money.

The Chretien government, which boasts a sense of fairplay, now stands to pocket more than $100-million in non-refundable application fees from the disqualified foreign applicants.

The global outrage against this fraud has culminated in lawsuits being handled by over a dozen lawyers in Canada and around the world.

The suits allege that when the Canadian Immigration Department changed the criteria for immigration selection, the new, stricter rules unfairly excluded people who had applied before the new criteria were in place.

The suit aims to have Immigration Canada use the old criteria for applicants who applied before the new rules, or at a minimum refund the application fees and cover legal costs. The potential plaintiffs number from 30,000 to 40,000 applicants.

Even some Liberals MPs are aghast at the government's move to make the law retroactive and pocket the money.

To make matters worse, artificial backlogs were allowed to swell in countries like India and China as the mandarins in Ottawa rushed to put the new laws in place.

Jim Karygiannis, a Liberal MP, said the Canadian government will be "hoodwinking" the applicants out of their application fee with the new retroactive law while quashing their dreams of immigrating to Canada.

Gurmant Grewal, the Canadian Alliance MP for Surrey, said the non-refundable fee is "daylight robbery."

"You raise the bar and pocket the money. It is unfair and will damage Canada's reputation on the international stage."

In India, up to 30,000 people have been impacted by the new rules.

"It's like waiting in a queue for three years and when you finally get to the window, you are told that the rules have changed but they would be keeping your money," said B S Sandhu, chairman Worldwide Immigration Consultancy Services, who is leading a class action challenge in India.

In China, from where thousands of families have been impacted, a letter has been sent to the Immigration Minister.

It reads: "application fees charged represent a significant sacrifice to people in the Third World. It is simply crude to take fees from the pocket of a poor man with no intention of ever living up to his expectations."

The intransigence of Immigration Canada is also befuddling.

Instead of returning the money to the people who have been disqualified, it seems our politicians are willing to spend an equal amount or probably more fighting the cases in the courts.

Changing the immigration rules is not illegal. But it is definitely immoral for Ottawa to make it retroactive and pocket the application fees.

Ottawa, like the aforementioned unscrupulous businessman, should be in court charged with fraud.