Dipen Parekh, Immigration Assistant

He prepares and assembles applications, reviews the evidence for gaps against the requirements of the stream being used, handles correspondence with IRCC, and schedules clients for document appointments.

That is the part of the work that decides most files. An application arrives at IRCC as a bundle of documents and is assessed on what is in it, so the assembly is not administrative tidying. It is where a file is either complete or already in trouble.

Across seven years, most of the categories the firm handles. On the permanent side that means the economic pathways, provincial nominations, and family sponsorship. On the temporary side, work permits with and without a labour market assessment, study permits, visitor visas and extensions.

The breadth matters more than it sounds, because the categories share evidence and diverge on tests. Proof of funds, relationship evidence and employment history are asked for in several streams and assessed against a different standard in each. Somebody who has assembled files in all of them recognises when a document that satisfied one programme will not satisfy another.

No, and the site says so rather than leaving it to be assumed. He is not licensed by the Law Society of Ontario or by the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants, so he does not advise on whether a matter is arguable, which programme to use, or what an officer is likely to do.

That assessment is the lawyer's or an RCIC's, and it happens at a consultation. What he does is everything that follows it, and the accuracy of that work is what the assessment then rests on.

An application that is complete on the checklist can still be thin on the substance an officer is assessing. Finding that gap before filing is far cheaper than answering it after a refusal, when the remedy is a Federal Court application rather than another document.

The economics are stark. A document supplied late in the assembly costs an email. The same document supplied after a refusal costs a judicial review, and the deadline for that runs from the day the refusal was received rather than from the day it was understood.