Potential immigrants who are planning their future immigration are often bewildered by numerous offers of the immigration consultants, paralegals and law firms. They often promise that as soon as someone becomes their client, they would take care of everything and the immigration case will be processed faster and with higher chance of positive outcome. Sometimes they refer to their special relations with immigration authorities, laying stress that this fact will for sure play the most important role in the case.

Here we try to explain what is true and what is false when it comes to opening Yellow Pages and spending hours on the phone seeking for the right immigration assistance.

General case processing procedure

Any immigration cases are processed in similar way. In general, it is as follows:

1. An official request is submitted to Canadian immigration authorities. It can be an application for permanent residence under Federal Skilled Worker program, or a refugee claim, or any other application with intention to immigrate to Canada.
2. On the early stages of processing the case is being reviewed in general and it is either approved for further processing or rejected, if certain requirements are not met.
3. Next application goes through specific stages of processing, that are different for every immigration class. This can take significant time and may involve applicant in different activities, such as filing supplementary information, undergoing medical examination, attending interviews etc.
4. After all, decision is being made in the immigration case. It means that the applicant is either successfull, and will be granted a permanent resident status, or unsuccessfull (and case dismissed).
5. Applicant receives permanent resident visa (or visas, if his family members were included in the application).
6. Applicant arrives to Canada and after a formal landing procedure in the port of entry he becomes a permanent resident; his immigration case is deemed completed.

Possible third-party assistance before and during the process

Now let's see how can a third-party immigration consultant help on all these stages outlined above.

1. Submission process is usually quite simple provided that all necessary forms and supporting documents are prepared. Anyway, applicant may wish to be assisted on this stage: for example, to communicate with visa office, to manage fees payment, paperwork organizing and delivery, etc.
2. No real assistance can be provided by third-party when the case is being reviewed and undergoes preliminary assessment.
3. On different processing stages that require applicant's response an applicant can be assisted in various ways by helping to obtain and provide more information, advising when a multiple choice situation happens, preparation for being interviewed, writing explanation letters etc. Anyway, possible assistance here is always limited to the extent achievable by applicant himself.
4. By the point when a case decision is made, all possible assistance towards the positive outcome should already be done.
5. Usually it is very easy to get a visa after all. But even on this stage sometimes applicants encounter unpredictable difficulties, for example medical examination results (and visa) expire before applicant can enter Canada; or at the last moment additional information is requested - in fact there are numerous possible situations that can emerge even when everything seems to be complete.  In such situation (sometimes a time-critical one) professional assistance and advise can be very helpful.
6. Landing procedure is very simple. It involves only filling some forms in front of the immigration officer in the port of entry, and it is quite unlikely that any assistance is needed here.

Besides, professional help may play a very important role in the following:

1. When application and supporting documents are being prepared for submission. All immigration cases are to some extent different, and in most of them there are always some circumstances that can be presented differently and, therefore, influence the case in different ways.
   Professional advise here can be vitally important for those applicants who are not quite familiar with Canadian immigration laws.
2. When some changes need to be introduced while immigration case is being processed. Not always such changes are beneficial, and that is why professional advising and assisitance may be helpful.
3. One of the most stirring questions of every applicant after submission is "how're things going ?". There are some ways to look into the case in progress; one of them is obtaining CAIPS notes (CAIPS stands for "Computer Assisted Immigration Processing System"). In fact it is a detaied transcript of all case movements, but according to the law this information can be requested only by a person from within Canada. Besides, CAIPS notes themselves make extensive use of codes and abbreviations, which does not say much to those who is not familiar with the notation.
   This is one more situation when assistance may be required, either to request CAIPS file or to interpret it properly.