Hi.
I need help...
Hi. I’m going to try to explain my story and case, hoping for some help, because I just don’t know what to do next...
It all started when some people from my wife’s family went to Canada and since I’ve always wanted to go there ( My grand-parents lived in Toronto almost their entire life’s) so me and my wife decided to go to Canada on vacation and to see if we liked Canada as a place to start a new life.
On September 2011 we arrived in Toronto and we were planning to stay for 2/3 weeks, but after a short period of time we’ve decided to stay and started looking for an emigration lawyer in order to get some help with all the paper work.
We were new in the Country and we didn’t knew any laws or how the emigration laws worked and such, so we believed everything our lawyer (Immigration consultant actually) said to us.
We explain to the immigration consultant that we would like to work and live in Toronto, start a new life in Canada and at that point we were afraid that if we had to leave, it would be harder to come back. She (immigration consultant) told us that not being able to comeback was strong possibility and that the best way for us to stay in Canada and get our work permits and legalization was to claim for refugee protection. I’m not an expert on the subject but I did had a light idea that this was for people running from war and religious persecution and stuff like that…so I’ve asked if it would fit us and she said that we would apply for economic reasons, since my Country was a complete mess.
She explained us that it was the first step and we would not be approved, but was only to have the work cards and health care, but then we will had to apply to humanitarian and compassionate and that’s when we would (probably (she claimed around 80% chance of success)) obtain our legalization.
We went to do the medic exams and to immigration to do the refugee claim. We paid her and immigration and waited for the judge date…
Meanwhile… our work cards and health cards came… and I’ve started working and also did my wife. I’m not going to lie, before that, I was helping a guy sometimes, just for some pocket money, and to help to pay the costs of lawyer and immigration, but even that information was put on my case…I didn’t wanted to lie about anything. It was only a mean to survive until my work card arrived. A week after my work card arrived I’ve started working like any other person in Canada paying all my taxes. Even though we had health care, we never use it and we always paid doctors from our pocket because we were not in Canada to abuse the system. I could received welfare on the winter when work flow goes down, but I’ve choose not to, for the same reasons. I wanted Canada to realize that we were not there to take…we were there to be part of.
The court day came and we as expected were denied from refugee. We didn’t lied or invent any story’s . We told the true, we said that we did not feared no one or anything in our Country (Portugal) the only thing we fear is the actual economic, social and political situation of our Country. There isn’t any jobs, and now days it’s almost impossible to afford living in Portugal. Although his verdict, the judge said and wrote that the couple (we) was credible and he actually wished us good luck. (I can say from my heart that the judge liked us) After that we were told by our lawyer to wait and then apply for the humanitarian and compassionate process.
After that… no news for a long time… then about a year after we arrived in Canada (06/12/2012), we received a letter from the Canada Border Services Agency…
- “Our records indicate that you are the subject of a removal order that is force. You are required to present yourself at this office for an interview.”
We've start panicking and called our lawyer, she starts talking by saying that is nothing much…and we should not be worried. I disagreed with her and told her that I think it was very serious…then she starts saying that her husband has died the past month and that she has not being working much, bla,bla,bla… and that we should pass by her office to talk some more. We went there and we’ve been told that we should wait for the interview and that she was almost sure that it wasn’t serious.
At that time I wasn’t trusting her anymore, besides…for a long time people were saying to me that she wasn’t a good lawyer, that all she wanted was the money of people that are trying to get their papers, so I’ve decided to go and see another lawyer. This was an actual lawyer (not some consultant), that used to have a good reputation and had previously worked with my company with some claimed success.
This lawyer told us that we were in big trouble and we were being deported… and we only have one option in order to come back to Canada. First, we should sign a document declaring that he is now our lawyer so that the other consultant would send all our documents and paper work. Second, we should never, ever speak with the other lawyer again. Third, go to that interview already with plane tickets, showing that we have chosen to leave voluntarily. Forth, get married (We were commun law).
Then he told us that we had to do a new application based on a contract with my company, that my wife would be included on my contract application and that we might have around 70/80% chance of success. We had to put our entire life’s on paper…mine and my wife’s life story since kidengarden… everything…
Then my boss had to put the job offer online and on the news paper…I don’t remember what the name of that process. He told us that laws were different now, and that lawyers and boss’s are trying to negotiate with the ministry of immigration (Politics) to see if our case and others alike would have a bigger chance of success, because the Country needs people like us, hard working people, a young couple, that have already jobs, that had proven to adapt very well to Canada and in the community, good language skills and…honest. We had never lied or hide anything and I’m just saying this because we were told that a lot of people do… The only thing we wanted was the chance to live a normal life in a place we started calling home.
So, when the day of the interview came, we went there, said that we are leaving voluntarily and show the plane tickets as we were told… and that was it. After, on the lawyers office they told us to pay the application’s fees for both me and my wife, plus 500$ each for some document for immigration in order to try to “erase our previous refugee case” , plus lawyer’s fees…. Well let’s just say… a lot of money….all over again. They told us that we might have to wait from 3 for 4 months…it could be even 6 months and on the worst case’s maybe even 1 year.
On the 19/01/2013 we went on the plane and left Canada.
Back in Portugal in a Country deeply suncked on a economic crisis, with almost no jobs at all, where everything is getting more expensive by the day, we’ve just waited, and waited for THE letter from immigration in Paris.
We received the information from our lawyers that my contract(As a welder) has been approved 2 weeks after we arrived in Portugal. Then a strange thing happened.. we received a letter from Paris and we were finding a bit strange to be so soon. Of course that with my luck it could only be bad news…
Paris had refused our application…. It was a very sad day for us…
On both mine and my wife’s letters they point out this reason: “You have not satisfied me that you would leave Canada by the end of the period authorized for your stay. In reaching this decision, I considered several factors, including: (Your history of having contravened the conditions of admission on a previous stay in Canada.)”
( I’m not sure what it really means but I’ve thought that when we paid 500$each to “erase” the previous applications, it was for this not happening. Guess not)
My second reason for refusal was different from my wife’ though…
Mine said : “You were not able to demonstrate that you adequately meet the job requirements of your prospective employment.”
(Again I’m not sure what it really means, but before I left Canada I asked my lawyer if he wanted me to get a company’s certification document of my experience and he told me that there was no need… now I’m not so sure if he was right??)
On my wife’s case it said: “You have not demonstrated that you come within the exceptions under section 186 of the regulations exempting you from the requirement to obtain a work permit or that your employment in Canada comes within the exceptions to section 203 of the regulations. As a result, your offer of employment must be the subject of an economic effect determination before a work permit can be issue to you. Your employer in Canada should contact the local office of department of human resources and skills development Canada to begin this process.”
This for us as been very sad, nerve racking, depressing and expensive, but there are some things that makes it even worse. The feeling that we are being fooled again by another lawyer. I’m saying this because when we were in Toronto, the lawyer and all the assistants were very nice and understanding while we were there and haven’t paid yet…once we got in Portugal and they got their checks, they would not received or return our calls or reply our emails. We just wanted to know if there was any good news regarding our case and also we were still waiting for them to send us some documents of our marriage in order to change our status in Portugal, but they would always say…”oh the lawyer isn’t here” or “is in a meeting” and if we asked to talk to somebody else they would say the same thing…”not available at the moment” they would say to leave a number but they would never call us back… this happened for months. This is most frustrating since you’re 5000km away and there’s no way to speak with the people that have your “life” in their hands. In half a year we only spoke with them around 3 times and that was after trying very very hard. At one time I was starting to get upset and I asked them if there was need to ask a friend of mine to go to their office and make the questions I had in person, since they don’t take our calls or reply to my emails, so even after saying that the lawyer wasn’t there, suddenly he appears like magic and picks up the phone and starts being very rude saying that he hasn’t have time for me and he is not a babysitter and at the end he just said “ try call me next month or in 2 months time and maybe we will see if got time or news for you!” and he hangs up on me. For months and months we just wanted to ask 3 simple questions…
1- Did you manage to fix things like you said you will?
2- Are we going to be able to come back to Canada or not?
3- If yes, what do we have to do and how long would it probably take?
At that point I was about to give up… and call him back saying that it’s over, that I didn’t want someone like that taking care of our case, we are not criminals, we haven’t done anything wrong to deserved this treatment but…I looked at my wife that was crying asking me not to do it, so I’ve decided call my boss and tell him what’s going on.
But my boss didn’t like what I told him and agreed with me, and promised me that he would talk to the layer. A month later and my boss told me that the lawyer was always very busy and that he was going try some other time…(same old same old) This was 2 months ago…
Last week, my wife called the lawyer’s office one more time and after trying for 3 days she finally managed to speak to the lawyer’s assistant . She was told that my boss has schedule an appointment with the lawyer for next week and that they will probably discuss my case. They said also that they think we need to do a new application all over again.
At this moment I just don’t know what to do anymore… Because some friends in Toronto told me some people they know were not very happy with my lawyer’s recent work, and told me that they know a new lawyer there that supposedly is very good, so if I’m doing everything from scratch all over again I don’t know if I should stick with my lawyer or change to a new one.
The main reason why I’m writing all this, is because I’m tired of paying lawyers and immigration and not getting what I’ve paid for, not knowing what’s going on and what are our real options.
So, we came to Lyon France to try to find jobs, earn some money to pay for new applications, save some money in case we manage to go back to Toronto and to be close to Paris, where the citizenship and immigration Canada office is, in case we are called to go there. It’s only 4 hours away from here.
One of the things I would love most these days and what I would like to know if it’s possible, is to have a meeting with an immigration officer in Paris. Being able to have the information from the real source. I just would like one hour…one hour to explain our story and to know what our real chances are. Is this possible?
Yesterday, my wife’s boss call again… asking how’s things and when are we coming back. He really likes us both and we became friends over the time and he feels bad for what happened to us, and offered himself many times to go to immigration if needed. They really miss us and so do we. It’s the same thing with my boss…he likes me and says to me all the time that is needs me there. Even our landlord emails us asking when are we coming back, when we left he was very sad, saying that it was a shame that Canada is sending away young good honest hard working people and so many crooks stay. He said when we come back, to call him, that it’s going to be his pleasure to pick us up at the airport and told us not to worry about house because we would take us in. We made good friends there and we still have our car and all our stuff in another friend’s garage just waiting for us to return…
Me and my wife…we embraced Canada…and wanted to became Canadians one day. We felt happy living in Toronto and we were pleased to start a new beginning on that great Country. We felt devastated because we had tried to do everything right and after we were getting our life’s back on their feet , everything went down the drain…
We just want our life’s in Canada back…
I need help...
Hi. I’m going to try to explain my story and case, hoping for some help, because I just don’t know what to do next...
It all started when some people from my wife’s family went to Canada and since I’ve always wanted to go there ( My grand-parents lived in Toronto almost their entire life’s) so me and my wife decided to go to Canada on vacation and to see if we liked Canada as a place to start a new life.
On September 2011 we arrived in Toronto and we were planning to stay for 2/3 weeks, but after a short period of time we’ve decided to stay and started looking for an emigration lawyer in order to get some help with all the paper work.
We were new in the Country and we didn’t knew any laws or how the emigration laws worked and such, so we believed everything our lawyer (Immigration consultant actually) said to us.
We explain to the immigration consultant that we would like to work and live in Toronto, start a new life in Canada and at that point we were afraid that if we had to leave, it would be harder to come back. She (immigration consultant) told us that not being able to comeback was strong possibility and that the best way for us to stay in Canada and get our work permits and legalization was to claim for refugee protection. I’m not an expert on the subject but I did had a light idea that this was for people running from war and religious persecution and stuff like that…so I’ve asked if it would fit us and she said that we would apply for economic reasons, since my Country was a complete mess.
She explained us that it was the first step and we would not be approved, but was only to have the work cards and health care, but then we will had to apply to humanitarian and compassionate and that’s when we would (probably (she claimed around 80% chance of success)) obtain our legalization.
We went to do the medic exams and to immigration to do the refugee claim. We paid her and immigration and waited for the judge date…
Meanwhile… our work cards and health cards came… and I’ve started working and also did my wife. I’m not going to lie, before that, I was helping a guy sometimes, just for some pocket money, and to help to pay the costs of lawyer and immigration, but even that information was put on my case…I didn’t wanted to lie about anything. It was only a mean to survive until my work card arrived. A week after my work card arrived I’ve started working like any other person in Canada paying all my taxes. Even though we had health care, we never use it and we always paid doctors from our pocket because we were not in Canada to abuse the system. I could received welfare on the winter when work flow goes down, but I’ve choose not to, for the same reasons. I wanted Canada to realize that we were not there to take…we were there to be part of.
The court day came and we as expected were denied from refugee. We didn’t lied or invent any story’s . We told the true, we said that we did not feared no one or anything in our Country (Portugal) the only thing we fear is the actual economic, social and political situation of our Country. There isn’t any jobs, and now days it’s almost impossible to afford living in Portugal. Although his verdict, the judge said and wrote that the couple (we) was credible and he actually wished us good luck. (I can say from my heart that the judge liked us) After that we were told by our lawyer to wait and then apply for the humanitarian and compassionate process.
After that… no news for a long time… then about a year after we arrived in Canada (06/12/2012), we received a letter from the Canada Border Services Agency…
- “Our records indicate that you are the subject of a removal order that is force. You are required to present yourself at this office for an interview.”
We've start panicking and called our lawyer, she starts talking by saying that is nothing much…and we should not be worried. I disagreed with her and told her that I think it was very serious…then she starts saying that her husband has died the past month and that she has not being working much, bla,bla,bla… and that we should pass by her office to talk some more. We went there and we’ve been told that we should wait for the interview and that she was almost sure that it wasn’t serious.
At that time I wasn’t trusting her anymore, besides…for a long time people were saying to me that she wasn’t a good lawyer, that all she wanted was the money of people that are trying to get their papers, so I’ve decided to go and see another lawyer. This was an actual lawyer (not some consultant), that used to have a good reputation and had previously worked with my company with some claimed success.
This lawyer told us that we were in big trouble and we were being deported… and we only have one option in order to come back to Canada. First, we should sign a document declaring that he is now our lawyer so that the other consultant would send all our documents and paper work. Second, we should never, ever speak with the other lawyer again. Third, go to that interview already with plane tickets, showing that we have chosen to leave voluntarily. Forth, get married (We were commun law).
Then he told us that we had to do a new application based on a contract with my company, that my wife would be included on my contract application and that we might have around 70/80% chance of success. We had to put our entire life’s on paper…mine and my wife’s life story since kidengarden… everything…
Then my boss had to put the job offer online and on the news paper…I don’t remember what the name of that process. He told us that laws were different now, and that lawyers and boss’s are trying to negotiate with the ministry of immigration (Politics) to see if our case and others alike would have a bigger chance of success, because the Country needs people like us, hard working people, a young couple, that have already jobs, that had proven to adapt very well to Canada and in the community, good language skills and…honest. We had never lied or hide anything and I’m just saying this because we were told that a lot of people do… The only thing we wanted was the chance to live a normal life in a place we started calling home.
So, when the day of the interview came, we went there, said that we are leaving voluntarily and show the plane tickets as we were told… and that was it. After, on the lawyers office they told us to pay the application’s fees for both me and my wife, plus 500$ each for some document for immigration in order to try to “erase our previous refugee case” , plus lawyer’s fees…. Well let’s just say… a lot of money….all over again. They told us that we might have to wait from 3 for 4 months…it could be even 6 months and on the worst case’s maybe even 1 year.
On the 19/01/2013 we went on the plane and left Canada.
Back in Portugal in a Country deeply suncked on a economic crisis, with almost no jobs at all, where everything is getting more expensive by the day, we’ve just waited, and waited for THE letter from immigration in Paris.
We received the information from our lawyers that my contract(As a welder) has been approved 2 weeks after we arrived in Portugal. Then a strange thing happened.. we received a letter from Paris and we were finding a bit strange to be so soon. Of course that with my luck it could only be bad news…
Paris had refused our application…. It was a very sad day for us…
On both mine and my wife’s letters they point out this reason: “You have not satisfied me that you would leave Canada by the end of the period authorized for your stay. In reaching this decision, I considered several factors, including: (Your history of having contravened the conditions of admission on a previous stay in Canada.)”
( I’m not sure what it really means but I’ve thought that when we paid 500$each to “erase” the previous applications, it was for this not happening. Guess not)
My second reason for refusal was different from my wife’ though…
Mine said : “You were not able to demonstrate that you adequately meet the job requirements of your prospective employment.”
(Again I’m not sure what it really means, but before I left Canada I asked my lawyer if he wanted me to get a company’s certification document of my experience and he told me that there was no need… now I’m not so sure if he was right??)
On my wife’s case it said: “You have not demonstrated that you come within the exceptions under section 186 of the regulations exempting you from the requirement to obtain a work permit or that your employment in Canada comes within the exceptions to section 203 of the regulations. As a result, your offer of employment must be the subject of an economic effect determination before a work permit can be issue to you. Your employer in Canada should contact the local office of department of human resources and skills development Canada to begin this process.”
This for us as been very sad, nerve racking, depressing and expensive, but there are some things that makes it even worse. The feeling that we are being fooled again by another lawyer. I’m saying this because when we were in Toronto, the lawyer and all the assistants were very nice and understanding while we were there and haven’t paid yet…once we got in Portugal and they got their checks, they would not received or return our calls or reply our emails. We just wanted to know if there was any good news regarding our case and also we were still waiting for them to send us some documents of our marriage in order to change our status in Portugal, but they would always say…”oh the lawyer isn’t here” or “is in a meeting” and if we asked to talk to somebody else they would say the same thing…”not available at the moment” they would say to leave a number but they would never call us back… this happened for months. This is most frustrating since you’re 5000km away and there’s no way to speak with the people that have your “life” in their hands. In half a year we only spoke with them around 3 times and that was after trying very very hard. At one time I was starting to get upset and I asked them if there was need to ask a friend of mine to go to their office and make the questions I had in person, since they don’t take our calls or reply to my emails, so even after saying that the lawyer wasn’t there, suddenly he appears like magic and picks up the phone and starts being very rude saying that he hasn’t have time for me and he is not a babysitter and at the end he just said “ try call me next month or in 2 months time and maybe we will see if got time or news for you!” and he hangs up on me. For months and months we just wanted to ask 3 simple questions…
1- Did you manage to fix things like you said you will?
2- Are we going to be able to come back to Canada or not?
3- If yes, what do we have to do and how long would it probably take?
At that point I was about to give up… and call him back saying that it’s over, that I didn’t want someone like that taking care of our case, we are not criminals, we haven’t done anything wrong to deserved this treatment but…I looked at my wife that was crying asking me not to do it, so I’ve decided call my boss and tell him what’s going on.
But my boss didn’t like what I told him and agreed with me, and promised me that he would talk to the layer. A month later and my boss told me that the lawyer was always very busy and that he was going try some other time…(same old same old) This was 2 months ago…
Last week, my wife called the lawyer’s office one more time and after trying for 3 days she finally managed to speak to the lawyer’s assistant . She was told that my boss has schedule an appointment with the lawyer for next week and that they will probably discuss my case. They said also that they think we need to do a new application all over again.
At this moment I just don’t know what to do anymore… Because some friends in Toronto told me some people they know were not very happy with my lawyer’s recent work, and told me that they know a new lawyer there that supposedly is very good, so if I’m doing everything from scratch all over again I don’t know if I should stick with my lawyer or change to a new one.
The main reason why I’m writing all this, is because I’m tired of paying lawyers and immigration and not getting what I’ve paid for, not knowing what’s going on and what are our real options.
So, we came to Lyon France to try to find jobs, earn some money to pay for new applications, save some money in case we manage to go back to Toronto and to be close to Paris, where the citizenship and immigration Canada office is, in case we are called to go there. It’s only 4 hours away from here.
One of the things I would love most these days and what I would like to know if it’s possible, is to have a meeting with an immigration officer in Paris. Being able to have the information from the real source. I just would like one hour…one hour to explain our story and to know what our real chances are. Is this possible?
Yesterday, my wife’s boss call again… asking how’s things and when are we coming back. He really likes us both and we became friends over the time and he feels bad for what happened to us, and offered himself many times to go to immigration if needed. They really miss us and so do we. It’s the same thing with my boss…he likes me and says to me all the time that is needs me there. Even our landlord emails us asking when are we coming back, when we left he was very sad, saying that it was a shame that Canada is sending away young good honest hard working people and so many crooks stay. He said when we come back, to call him, that it’s going to be his pleasure to pick us up at the airport and told us not to worry about house because we would take us in. We made good friends there and we still have our car and all our stuff in another friend’s garage just waiting for us to return…
Me and my wife…we embraced Canada…and wanted to became Canadians one day. We felt happy living in Toronto and we were pleased to start a new beginning on that great Country. We felt devastated because we had tried to do everything right and after we were getting our life’s back on their feet , everything went down the drain…
We just want our life’s in Canada back…
