Interview with Vilma Filici - Immigration Inadmissibility PDF

Hi Velma thank you so much for joining us today I understand you're going to talk a little bit about inadmissibility with some illustrations from some case examples like well you know sometimes you sit with a client during a consultation and you get really happy because you know you're goin...

Hi Velma thank you so much for joining us today I understand you're going to talk a little bit about inadmissibility with some illustrations from some case examples like well you know sometimes you sit with a client during a consultation and you get really happy because you know you're going to be able to help them and it's an easy case but as you move along with the preparation of the case you find things out that you know will make the case a lot more difficult than what you initially thought. I just recently had a young man that got married to a Canadian citizen and we did the sponsorship application everything was wonderful he got his permanent residency and then when he after 3 years when he was applying for citizenship he came to see me. His citizenship application was started because he was charged with assault and so he came to see me and he received a letter from the basement ship asking him about his. Charges and he was just going through the court with the courts there with a criminal lawyer and so he came to tell me that the criminal lawyer had told them to plead guilty because it was the easiest way to deal with it and the least expensive so at that point I said you know a business is not as easy as your lawyer thinks because you know you are being if you're convicted it's going to be serious criminality and you're a permanent resident of Canada and you can lose your status and you can be deported from kind of a store at that point. The client asked me to speak with the lawyer and I did and I had sent him a letter explaining the difference actually the law and how this client would be negatively affect will be ported from Panama if he pled. So finally. And there was a withdraw all of the charges and and now he has received a fairness letter that we are preparing showing that you know the charges were withdrawn and they're Or they can be written citizenship application so we went from a very nice marriage to you know a marriage breakdown after. Their while and charges who were the permanent residents so you know you have to be aware so you have to be aware. You know the implications are a criminal conviction on a permanent resident of Canada I mean even though we don't practice criminal law but we have to know we now have to know that you know a conviction for which he could receive a certain amount of time would render him in admissible to Canada right so someone who is more junior had less experience maybe might not have even like that as an issue because someone comes into it's a straightforward citizenship publication he doesn't currently have any convictions but then all of sudden a sudden other information starts coming out during during conversation it never comes out at the beginning does it it's always it's always after a long conversation finally you get all of the full information and it it just shows you as well how it's very important to cooperate if there are other professionals involved in other aspects of the case it's important to keep that line of communication open because you can't assume that other professionals necessarily know about immigration yes that's true and it's also very important that the client understands that they have to consult you every step of the way. Right and it's important to encourage them to be honest with you as well because some people would think to themselves Oh well I don't think it's important or maybe I shouldn't mention it it's going to make me look bad and of course immigration is going to find out I mean if they do fingerprints they're obviously going to find out about the criminal history so we just recently had a case before the Immigration Appeals Division it was a young man and that was he he was then given a deportation order for serious criminality and we get to the hearing and the minister's Representatives said I have to give you some additional evidence you know and she provides she gives us. A new charge against our clients. And it had happened 2 days before the hearing and we were over there to argue you know that he was we have billeted you know he was no longer involved in criminality and blah blah blah and of course we had to stop we had to go speak with the client and when we asked them why didn't you call us and tell us about this and his answer was I don't think they would know about it it's only been 2. Possibly the worst reason ever. And you know it shows you that you can't you can't take anything for granted you have to ask clients constantly these basic questions to make sure you've got all the information I know but who would think that 2 days before the hearing he was going to get charged with you know I know offense very similar to the one he was charged with before so yeah but you can't you can't make this stuff up. You know where you are telling me is well over were talking earlier about misrepresentation situation as well or an accusation of misrepresentation yet again started out. Well if you're going to say it's a very. Go ahead we'll start that again go ahead you are also telling me earlier about a case of alleged misrepresentation against a client and again it started out as something that you thought was simple and of course it balloons into something much more complicated yes this gentleman came to see me because his previous spouse who had sponsored him to Canada reported him to immigration for misrepresentation and for having used her to take his statements and camera when I look at the. Accusations and I look at the case I thought this is really strange because he had been married to this woman for 9 years he had been together after they divorced for an additional 2 years and now I mean she reported him and so I said to him Don't worry about it you know everything is going to be fine and and I said you know we have we have proof that they have lived together that he really had tried to make the relationship work at some point they had the borstal ready and they were going to try their relationship once again and she had asked him to sign. As they can ration stating that he would not ask her for any of her inheritance money cusser parents and both asked him so we had all this documentation we prepared an affidavit we sent all the documentation so we get a letter stating. They were not going to proceed to write a map because they. Partment did not believe that there was any misrepresentation. So the the previous spouse reported him because she found out that he had carried somebody else in the country of origin as it was completely out of sight so there we clear. The Miss rap. Possibility then we started a sponsorship application for the spouse overseas and once people occasionally was in process almost concluded now my client this charged with assault sexual assault to his stepdaughter who is 30 years old. And so again like we are we're we now have a problem because if he gets convicted of a sexual offense he's no longer eligible to continue with the sponsorship office the wife and I would be right especially on a family member so a family member and so you know this case which also was supposed to be very very simple now is super complicated and now with Cove it you know of course he hasn't been able to proceed with the court case so the spouse is stuck overseas My client is desperate because now he has this criminal charge that he swears that you know it's all being abrogated by the previous house out of out of spite to try to stop the new wife from coming to an America and and I mean we're trying our best but this is the kind of situation that we find with clients and different cases we think that something is very simple and then it gets super complicated. Yeah and I guess one of the takeaways from that is that it's really important to even if you decide that you're going to sub specialize within the immigration field you still have to know a little bit about other areas of immigration at least enough to to know when there's going to be a problem and perhaps to bring in a co-counsel or somebody more senior who has some experience dealing with those complex issues so I really appreciate your time today Velma thank you so much for sharing those 2 very Illustrated cases with our students and thank you very much you're very welcome and I'm happy to be able to share the information for they were once all going to be.