Should I hire an immigration consultant?
When you are considering to apply for a Canadian visa, permit, permanent residence or Citizenship, you are making a decision whether to research complex immigration procedures, rules and policies and apply on your own, or to look for professional help with your immigration needs. You may wonder whether to hire an immigration consultant, and what type of services they can provide to you.
Imagine a few scenarios:
- You applied for Permanent Residence as a provincial nominee, and prepared your application all on your own or maybe with a guidance from a friend who already has done this in the past, once. Processing of this type of applications can take long, and the immigration officer may start the review many months after your submission. Then one day 9 months later you receive a rejection letter from IRCC for your application being incomplete. What does it mean for you? What do you do next. Precious time has elapsed, and your plans might be ruined. Could that situation been avoided should you receive professional guidance?
- In the second scenario you didn’t apply on your own, but trusted your file to an unlicensed person from the Telegram community of new immigrants. Despite unlicensed, that person has lots of positive reviews in the chat, sounds quite knowledgeable on a variety of topics, and charges a lower fee than a majority of the licensed immigration consultants in your area. That person submits an immigration application on your behalf, and as time elapses, doesn’t give you much update on the status of your file other than it being in process. That person can close the chat group, relocate, change the phone number. And one days he forwards to you a refusal letter, which could have been avoided should you have responded timely on a request letter from IRCC which you never saw before. You may be out of status by then, even not being eligible for status restoration.
Experienced immigration consultant would not let anything like that happen
In Canada, the only immigration consultants who can give you Canadian immigration advice in exchange for a fee or benefit are licensed immigration consultants, who are members in good standing with the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants. This membership is attained thorough a rigorous registration process that involves a completion of an accredited Immigration and Citizenship Law educational program, achieving a required score on a college-approved English or French language ability test, background verification, and a successful passing of an Entry to Practice test that that assesses your consultant’s knowledge and ability to apply specific immigration and citizenship legislation, regulations, procedures, and professional ethics and responsibilities. Immigration consultants undergo a specialized Practice Management Education, and are participating in Continuing Professional Development activities to stay current in the immigration field and to practice competently and ethically.
RCIC can help you by:
- Explaining immigration and citizenship options
- Choosing the best program for you
- Filling out and submitting your immigration or citizenship application
- Communicating with the Government of Canada on your behalf
- Representing you in an immigration or citizenship application or hearing, in certain cases.
To check if your immigration consultant is licensed by the College, search for them on CICC Public Register. To represent or advise you, your RCIC must be listed on the Public Register as ”Active.” Avoid unlicensed “ghost” consultants who are not bound by any professional obligations to keep your information confidential, to act in your best interests, to represent you competently and ethically.
