In order to answer this question, we need to know a lot about you. The information we require from you is needed to make a correct legal assessment enable us to make a preliminary assessment about your eligibility which can then be followed up with more specific advice in an initial consultation.
If you want to know whether a specific personal circumstance may make you ineligible to immigrate, we would be happy to hear from you before you complete the initial assessment process.
Before we can sign a contract to help you, we first need to make sure that we will be able to help you given the current immigration season in Canada, and that you have the correct understanding and expectation of your personal immigration options. The place to start is to book an appointment for assessment.
The whole process always starts with a one-on-one initial consultation with our Immigration consultant, Setareh Pourfar.
In the initial consultation, you will receive 1) a breakdown of your options 2) have an opportunity to discuss your personal circumstances as they relate to your eligibility to immigrate to Canada.
After an initial consultation, a retainer agreement (contract) will be sent to you should you choose to appoint Setareh Pourfar & Associates Inc.
If Setareh Pourfar & Associates Inc. is appointed, you will receive full instructions concerning all documents that are required for immigration purposes. You will begin to work with us to compile your application either in preparation of or alongside your immigration strategy (such as looking for work). Each family/ person’s strategy is different and so the process will vary.
For example, the process could include, obtaining a job offer, getting an LMIA (labour market impact assessment) or provincial nomination, applying for a work permit, and finally submitting a permanent residence application. Or if you are eligible for permanent residence without a job offer your process may include a provincial nomination application and a permanent residence application, or an express entry profile, invitation to apply and a permanent residence application.
While it is great that you are motivated to begin your new life in Canada, the important thing to focus on is going through the process properly to ensure the highest possibility of success for you and your family.
Since there are many different pathways to immigrate to Canada, the amount of time the process takes will vary depending on your immigration strategy and personal circumstances.
In addition to your personal immigration strategy, many factors can change how quickly an application may be submitted, such as finding employment, obtaining a particular document, technical or legal issues, etc. After submission of an application, the processing time of the application is out of our control. For example, we have seen some Permanent Residence Applications being processed in 2 months or less, while others could take 2 years depending on the stream of application. Frequently, where a client requires a job offer to be eligible to immigrate, they would come to Canada as temporary residence (on work permits) before their permanent residence application is approved or submitted.
While we could mention a variety of items you could prepare, the horse must come before the cart. Are you eligible to immigrate to Canada?
Figuring out what the process would be for you and committing to this life changing decision is most important. We are here to help.
This can only be determined in an initial consultation where the conclusion of the consultation might be that the applicant needs to confirm whether it is possible to obtain a specific document before the process can proceed.
We will need your (and your spouse/ partner’s) up-to-date CV for the initial assessment process.
Roughly speaking there are two ways that a person can go to Canada to work, one is as a permanent resident and the other is on an employer-specific work permit.
If you are not eligible to obtain permanent residence without a job offer, you will need to apply for an employer-specific work permit. In order to do this you must first obtain an “offer of arranged employment”.
An offer of arranged employment is a job offer, which is validated through either a LMIA (Labour Market Impact Assessment), or a provincial nomination – each on is a different type of application. In some cases, a job offer may be LMIA exempt which still requires an application to prove why that specific application should be LMIA exempt – such as inter-company transfers.
A job offer by itself (without a validation factor) will not be sufficient to support a work permit application.
Whether there is work in your occupation is a very complicated question and depends on a variety of economic and geographical factors.
For example, a large factor in whether there is a skill shortage in a given occupation depends on where in Canada you look for work. 9/10 times, large metropolitan hubs have saturated job markets whereas non-metropolitan areas experiencing growth will have labour shortages.
Overall, this is a topic which would be further discussed in an initial consultation.
Important Facts
We have a high volume of people wanting to immigrate for various reasons. Some of these people are not 100% serious about immigration to Canada yet. It takes time to make the decision to commit to this process, and we appreciate that. To assess this and ensure we prioritize our time with clients that are ready to commit to immigration, we require all potential clients to go through our initial assessment first.