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Orientation · 7 min of reading and practice
What you can verify about a course, what no school can back up, and why the fine everyone talks about does not exist where they say it does.
Look on your phone for an ad for a course on preparing immigration forms. Any one will do. Before you read on, write down exactly what it promises you and who could verify that promise.
By the end you will be able to
Almost everything they are going to promise you fits into two piles. In one go the facts someone publishes and that can be counted. In the other go the outcomes, which depend on your state, on your prices and on the people who come through your door. No school can back up the second pile, not even this one.
And it is not only a matter of decency. The Federal Trade Commission publishes a set of guides for vocational and distance education schools, and one of them names this exact case.
the availability of employment after graduation … the salary or salary range16 CFR 254.4(e), on misrepresenting employment outcomes · 2026-08-31
What this lesson does NOT qualify you to do
What everyone repeats
If a school promises salaries, the federal fine runs to 53,088 dollars.
The source says the opposite
That number circulates a lot and it does not come from there. 16 CFR 254.0(b) says that these guides "represent administrative interpretations of laws administered by the Federal Trade Commission". A guide carries no fine of its own. The same paragraph says something else. Practices contrary to the guides can end in corrective action by the Commission, under section 5 of its act, after an investigation. The consequence exists, but it arrives through the law, not through the guide.
The real consequence has a name and figures. In July 2024 the Federal Trade Commission took Career Step, an online training school, to court. The reason: advertising employment outcomes that did not hold up. The settlement was 43.5 million dollars: 15.7 in cash and 27.8 in cancelled student debt. Fewer than ten percent of the students in programs with required externships ever did one.
Here is an ad in its most common form: "Get certified in 4 weeks and start earning $3,000 a month preparing immigration forms". We are going to break it into three.
Note
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