How it works

The following information is provided to you for your general understanding about how your application will be prepared and processed in general. Each case or application is specific and unique and may involve in different steps. Your case’s processing steps will be discussed in the formal consultation with our consultant.

Immigration Pathways

Step 1: Personal Initial Consultation

Our team member cannot provide you with legal advice in regard to your immigration matters. The consultation is provided to you by our licensed immigration consultants.

If you are not in Markham or Greater Toronto Area (GTA), your consultation can be arranged through telephone or a video conference call.

You can fill out this online form and submit to our office.  Consultation fee of CAD $150.00 can be paid here pay now.

At the consultation, our consultant will carefully listen to you your case, ask your relevant questions, discuss your situation.  Then, she will provide you with advice on which options are available in your case, and steps of the process.  When there are more than one possible way to solve your questions, the consultant will explain to you in details the pros and the cons of each solution towards your particular circumstances. The approximate fees associated with different types of options and services will be provided to you in the consultation.

Step 2: Agreement for immigration services

It will be up to you to decide if you would like to retain us for your immigration application and which way you would like to proceed.

If you have made your decision to retain us, the consultant will prepare a Retainer/Service Agreement for you to sign. By signing of this agreement, you are officially retaining us to work on your immigration case and agreeing to pay the fees outlined in the agreement following the payment schedule set out therein.

It is your responsibility to read everything in the agreement.  You are encouraged to ask us for any questions or clarification before you are signing off the agreement.

Please be noted that there are mainly 4 types of fees will be outlined in the agreement, as described in the following:

  1. Professional service fees

Professional services fees are for the services you pay to us to work on your case and application.  It will be in the format of a block fee, with installment payments at milestones during the entire process of your immigration application.

  1. Administrative and Disbursement fees

Administrative and Disbursements including such as file opening, collecting of personal information, digital archiving of your file for up to 6 years of your file closing; printing, photocopying and binding fees related to your file; and courier or postage fees if applicable.

  1. Government fees

These are official fees that the government collects to process your application.  Your application will be returned without these fees paid.  IRCC’s list of fees can be found here (Fee list)

Some of immigration programs, mostly from provincial immigration offices, don’t charge processing fees. You can find the in formation from the provincial offices’ websites.

  1. Other fees not listed in the agreement

You may need to spend other fees on your application, such as translation fees if your documents are not in English or French; notary public fees if you need to notarize your documents; medical check fees required by the designated medical practitioners, etc., These fees vary from family to family, country to country, we won’t be able to list them in the agreement.

Step 3: Personal Information Form (PIF)

The first thing after your signing off the service/retainer agreement, our staff will ask you to fill out your Personal Information Form (PIF).  You need to provide the details about all your family members even they are not accompanying you to Canada.  All family members need to be included in the application for security and admissibility background check.  Any of the family members is inadmissible will deem you and all family members are inadmissible to Canada.  Also, inadmissibility of misrepresentation will result in a 5 years bar of restriction for all your family from filing any types of applications to enter Canada.

All questions in PIF please answer them truthfully and to the best of your knowledge.

Our office will review and check the completeness of your PIF, and then you will need to sign to confirm that all information you provide in the PIF is accurate.

Step 4: Collecting supporting documents

A personalized list of supporting documents will be generated based on your completed PIF.  The document checklist includes all the supporting documents we need from you to present your application the strongest possible way.  It is your responsibility to follow our instructions and provide all the required documents in the checklist.  You need to make sure to send us legible documents with good quality, and meet the requirements set out in the checklist.

 

Other than the mandatory required documents, we often ask you for other supporting documents which will increase the chance of your application being approved. Please follow our instruction and try your best to provide them.  If you ask us to submit your application without these documents, we will ask for your confirmation by signing off a Waiver Form with your acknowledgement that you understand that by not including these documents, your application has smaller chances of being approved.

Step 5: Preparing the submission

While all the required documents are received from you, our office will start to work the submission package and submission letter.  Our standard service level is 3 weeks to have your application prepared and submitted to government for processing.

 

Your application is not just having all the collected documents putting together, your application is prepared the best way to present your qualifications in a detailed and convincing way.

 

When we send you the prepared application forms, it is your responsibility to check all the information in the forms are accurate before signing off them.  Once your application submission package is finalized, it will be sent to the corresponding government office, such as IRCC visa post, ESDC for LMIA, and any of the provincial government offices.

Step 6: After your application is submitted & Case status update

Once your application is submitted, we have to wait for the corresponding government office to contact with us.

Acknowledgement of Receipt (AOR) usually will be provided to us by the corresponding government office (not all offices send out AOR though) after completeness check.  AOR can be received much quicker if the application is submitted online, if the application is submitted by paper, it usually takes around 3 months to receive AOR (some circumstances will significantly delay the process, for example, during COVID-19 pandemic,  AOR for paper applications takes more than 12 months to receive).  We will always forward you the AOR for your record.

Sometimes, during the processing period, the corresponding government office can request you to provide additional information or documents or provide up-to-date information if the pressing is long.  Additional Document Request (ADR) is usually given a deadline (can be from 7 days to 90 days depends on different circumstances).  In these cases, our office will inform you immediately and sometimes provide you with a checklist of documents if it is necessary. It is your responsibility to provide us the required information or documentation on time to meet the deadline.

Usually, the corresponding government office has standard processing time for different type of applications which can be found at their official websites.  We do not provide case status within the standard processing time, but we will inform you if we receive any correspondence from the government office.

If our consultant doesn’t hear from the processing office in an unusual long period of time regarding your application, especially the standard processing time is past, we will request a case status update to the corresponding government office and ask about the status of your application and the reason why it is delayed.  Please understand that not all of this type of inquiries will be answers by the government.

Please also understand that our office has no control over the processing time of your case.  Each application is unique, even for the same type of applications, some can be finalized much quicker than the standard processing time, and on the other side, some of the applications take much longer than the standard processing time.

Step 7: A decision is made on your application

Please understand that our firm is not the decision maker for your application, otherwise all of our clients’ applications would be approved.

Our responsibility and duty are to prepare and present your case in the best possible way, which will help increase the chance of being approved, and the corresponding government office will be likely to process your application in their prompt and efficient manner that helps lead to a favourable decision about your application.

If your application is approved, there are usually some additional steps you need to do, such as submitting your passport for a visa counterfoil.  In these cases, we will provide you with detailed instructions about the steps.

If your application is refused, we will order GCMS Notes from IRCC which will explain the details of the reasons being refused. We will help you analyze and diagnose the issues and provide you with the next possible solutions, for example, re-apply, file an appeal, or ask for leave of judicial review from Federal Court of Canada.  We will recommend you to another professional practitioner who can help with the next steps if we are not competent to continue.

Step 8: Come to Canada

Congratulations! 

We are proud to take you and your family to the end of your immigration journey with a positive result.  An instruction letter will be provided to you with the information on PR landing and post landing, students or workers entering the Point of Entry, and more.

We have our network of competent and reliable colleagues in other professional fields, please feel free to ask us for a referral if you need services from the following areas:

  • Banking         
  • Accounting
  • Insurance
  • Real estate
  • financial planning
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