Natalia was a self-employed professional from a former Soviet republic. She wanted to come to Canada for a continuing education course. Because her course was to last less than 6 month, she could apply for a visitor visa instead of a more complicated study visa.
Although straightforward on paper, there were a few tricky parts with Natalia’s application. She had never travelled abroad, she was self-employed, and she wanted to come to study English to advance her career.
This may be surprising why these aspects made her application riskier, but it’s important to understand that Immigration Canada looks for any and all risk factors. For example: limited travel raises the question of why now and why Canada, self-employed – no job to return to, and course of English – what’s so special about the Canadian course that she couldn’t find elsewhere.
Natalia didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks – and that was her main reason to apply with an immigration lawyer. We crafted her application around professional development as the primary reason for her trip, and conducted an additional research into the specifics of her English course and its unique benefits to Natalia’s career. We also recommended that she improved her tourist profile and suggested for her to travel prior to applying.
So what happened?
Natalia took about a year to travel, which improved her profile. We then worked on her application for about 2 months (most of the delays were waiting for various documents), and once submitted the application was approved in 1 month.