An offer arrives for work abroad, with a salary well above what the role pays locally. Before it can proceed there is a fee: processing, visa handling, medical screening, training, accommodation deposit. Each is modest against the promised salary, which is what makes paying feel rational.
The legal position most people do not know
Many countries that send workers overseas prohibit or tightly cap charging recruitment fees to the worker. The employer pays the recruiter. A licensed agency asking you for a large placement fee is either breaking the rules of its own licence or is not licensed at all. That single fact disposes of a large share of these offers.
What the fees fund
In the clearest cases, nothing — the offer does not exist and the agency disappears. In a more damaging variant the job exists but is nothing like what was described: different role, lower pay, worse conditions, sometimes with documents retained on arrival. The fees paid before departure then become leverage, because the worker has already spent savings or borrowed to pay them.
Checks before paying anything
- Verify the agency on your country's recruitment or overseas-employment licensing register.
- Verify the employer independently — call the company's published switchboard, not a number from the recruiter.
- Ask for the employment contract in full, in a language you read, before paying anything.
- Refuse any payment to a personal account. A licensed business receives money in its own registered name.
- Check whether the destination country requires the employer to fund recruitment — many Gulf states do.
If you have already paid
Report to the labour or overseas-employment authority that licenses recruiters, as well as to the police. These authorities can suspend licences and sometimes order restitution, and they act on patterns, so your report matters even when your own money is not recovered. Keep the advertisement, the offer letter, the receipts and every message.