Rjohns

Hi can anyone recommend immigration lawyers or consultants in BC who could help with our application for permanent residency? Does anyone have experience of using Goldman Associates.
Thanks in advance.

christmasoompa

I believe that Goldman are fine, but do you really need to use a consultant? Most on the forum just do the visa side of things themselves, unless you have complicated circumstances a consultant isn't necessary.

If you have specific questions you can post on here and there is always somebody that will try and help (including visa officers, a CBSA officer, immigration consultants, etc, that all give their time for free).

Or if you do need to use professional help and have something like a criminal record or medical issues, then a quick search of the forum should bring up some other companies to consider.

HTH, good luck.

scilly

I've seen posters on here saying you need a consultant or lawyer only if you have a very complicated case ....... eg, married 3 times, about to divorce again, dependent children, and a criminal record!!

It seems that you pay a lot of money, but you will still end up doing the work .............. the consultant or lawyer will ask you to get documents a, b, c, d etc and then send those to them.

You will do the running around and paying for copying, duplication, etc. ..... and spending just as much time as you would when doing it all by yourself.

Consultants or lawyers cannot get you entry into Canada any better than you can do yourself!

Vulcanoid

No idea about the specific one you ask. But broadly, the only truly useful consultant would be a mind-reading one.

If you don't qualify for a route, they can't contort it so that you do. If you do qualify, you can look it up yourself. And when it comes to the forms, they can physically type it in, but only what you tell them. So you might as well do it yourself rather than have them read out "What is your name?", and type what you say back into the "Name" field. Repeat for a dozen forms with twenty questions each.

As scilly & Christmasoompa said, if you have an extremely complicated case, they may have a use. Otherwise - they simply can't add anything, they can only write in what you tell them, so instead of you telling them, why don't you just tell CIC, who are the people who need it.

thefishnets

We are in the last stages of PGP application. Having been advised to get a lawyer to take it on board (by my sponsor) because of civil partnership (not a legal status for different sex parttners in UK) I have to say that the lawyers have done little but act as a conduit for forms with ONE exception. CIC submission for PGP is on 1st come basis and other documents have to be sent within time limits. Unless the sponsor can collate, check and send them it is very difficult. Sending documents over to us for signature by email was OK but getting 'signed originals' into CIC did present us with a problem.

Our experience is that it is not possible to send documents by courier from inside the UK. All the couriers demand a named recipient to sign for them and will not accept documents addressed to a Govt Dept. and using other mail methods to send paperwork to Canada is risky. We have had documents take up to 7 weeks to get there from UK and of course Royal Mail and Canadian Mail both blame each other for the delays. Neither is of much help if documents fail to arrive by deadlines.

Vulcanoid

? FedEx had no problem taking documents to 'CIC, Spousal immigration, 300 Robert Speck Parkway'. Of course, it took them a week to do overnight service, but still, the address wasn't a problem.

christmasoompa

+1. Ours was a FSW application and sent via FedEx to CIC in NS, no problem at all.

thefishnets

I rang Fedex and most other UK couriers but was told the same thing by all of them. Not possible to accept couriered documents unless a named recipient could be given - even if that person did not actually sign for it. I tried explaining, and asking how their service could be used to send commercial documentation (companies apparently don't mind giving a name). I was told the reason was because of liability issues for lost or undelivered packages by most couriers but one also said it was required by 'heightened security'.

The week long delivery would have stopped data getting there on time anyway. We were given 6 weeks to get the medicals done. Our medicals here in Wales have to be done (only CIC authorised doctors) at one hospital in Cardiff, staffed by part time doctors so an appointment took a month. The doctor then asked for a GP report (took a week to get one as my GP is a mother and part time) found out that The NHS will not email reports but after discussion I found out they can fax them!. After getting the report, the guy then demanded a consultants report (non-aggressive low level prostate cancer). !) I was lucky that my consultant was holding a clinic on the day I was told I needed the report and I managed to get him to dictate it that day. Typically, of course, it did take a week to get it 'typed up' because his secretary was off sick and only worked part time. It left me with 4 days to the deadline.

The most interesting aspect (apart from the sheer frustration of the process) was that the CIC authorised hospital emailed everything to their doctor because he had gone on holiday the day after my medical and completed the medical report from a hotel in Spain but told me that he had processed visa medicals from people travelling all around the world but Canada and New Zealand were the ones that gave applicants the most problems with 'unrealistic deadlines'

Never mind - it got done in the end - just in time.

AshMyl

TNT did the job for us. Got held a couple of days with customs query, but that is fairly standard.