How It Works

To receive immigration advice from NVISS, you first need to book a consultation. Please note that we cannot provide you with professional advice, without an appointment.

Please book a consultation with us by completing our assessment form or email us at contact@nviss.ca with your details.

We will then send you an email with instructions and available times for the consultation. You will need to pick a date and time that works for you, and provide any additional required information, such as further details about your case, a copy of your ID, etc.

Your consultation can be arranged through a video and/or audio internet service.

All consultations are paid. We will send you instructions on how to pay: you are required to pay in advance in order to proceed with the consultation meeting.

During your scheduled consultation, we will carefully listen to and discuss with you your case and your questions. Then, we will provide you with advice on which steps and options are available in your case. Sometimes there can be more than one possible way to solve your question, and we will explain to you the pros and the cons of each solution in the light of your particular circumstances.

It will be up to you to decide if you would like to proceed and which way you would like to proceed. We will also advise you of the approximate fees associated with the types of services that will be available in your case.

If you agree to proceed, and will decide upon a specific type of service you would like to receive from NVISS, you and your counsel will sign a Retainer Agreement for Immigration Services. By signing this document, you are officially hiring NVISS to work on your case, and are agreeing to pay the fees and follow the terms and conditions outlined therein. It is your responsibility to read everything in the Retainer Agreement carefully and to ask us any questions or ask for clarification about any of the points contained in the Retainer Agreement.

There are three types of fees, all of which will be outlined in your Retainer Agreement.

A: Professional fees
Professional fees are what you are paying to us for the work we do for you. These can be either in the form of a flat fee (i.e., you are paying a fixed amount for all the work performed on your specific file, regardless of how much time is spent on it) or on hourly basis (you are paying us per hour of work for the time we spent on your file). These options you can discuss with us at the consultation.

B: Government processing fees
These are the official fees that the government collects to process your application(s). They are not for our work, but for the government to process your application(s). Without these, the government will not review you application. You can check the list of the fees on the IRCC website.

C: Disbursements
There may be other fees associated with your application(s). For example, translation fees (if you need to translate any documents, you need to pay the translator), printing and photocopying fees (if we need to print a lot of pages for your application), courier fees (the fee for the courier or for Canada Post to mail you application to the government), taxes, if applicable, etc.

The fees will be outlined in your Retainer Agreement for Immigration Services, and you will be billed according to the plan outlined in your Retainer Agreement.

After you sign the Retainer Agreement for Immigration Services with NVISS, we will email you a personalised list of documents we will need from you in order to prepare your application and present your case in the strongest possible way.

It is your responsibility to carefully follow our instructions and attentively read the documents that we are asking from you. We cannot submit your application, if you are not providing us with the necessary evidence and documents. The success of your application or your case for a big part depends on your ability to provide strong evidence and follow our instructions.

Our instructions will also contain requirements on how to send us documents (which ones we need as originals, and which ones as photocopies, etc.). It is your responsibility to provide us with good high quality legible documents.

There are two main types of documents that we will ask from you.

A. Documents that are part of the government requirements

For each type of application, there exists a strict list of documents that the government requires from you to provide. Failure to provide these will result in your application being returned without the officer even reviewing your details.

NVISS cannot submit an application to the government without these documents. For instance, a copy of your passport is required for an application for Temporary Resident Visa (TRV). If you are not providing us with that document, and are asking us to submit your application “as is”, without the required document, we will not and cannot submit it.

B. Documents that will increase the chances of your application being approved

Although these documents may not be required by the government and the government will process your application without these, the chances of your application being approved without them will be significantly reduced.

If you ask us to submit your application without these documents, we will ask for your confirmation in writing that you understand the risks involved in doing so and you understand that by not providing these documents, your application has small chances of being approved.

Once we receive all the required documents from you, our counsel will work on the submission letter. For some simple applications, this may be only a few pages and be completed in less than an hour. In more complex applications, this can be up to several dozen pages, with extensive research and case law, which may make take several days to write.

It is important to understand that this is an essential part of your application, as in it we are convincing the government to approve your application. We are not simply putting your documents together and adding our seal on it, we are ensuring that your situation is presented in a detailed and convincing way.

Once we have all the documents from you, all the signed forms and counsel’s submission letter is complete, we will send the application to the responsible government office. The courier or post fees will apply. Some applications can be submitted online through a government portal or by email. We always keep an electronic copy of the whole application package for our and your records.

After your application is submitted, we have to wait for the appropriate government office to communicate with us. Usually, before they make a decision, they send an acknowledgment of receipt (AOR) and sometimes can request that you supply additional information or documentation. When they do that, they usually give a deadline of 7, 30 or 60 days depending on the type of application. We immediately inform you about such requests with a detailed explanation of what it is the government requires from you, and it is your responsibility to provide this documentation to us on time before the deadline.

If your application is approved, there are often additional steps the government will ask you to do in order to finalize it. We will provide you with detailed instructions and explanation about any such steps.

If we do not hear from the government in an unusually long period of time regarding your application, especially if it is past the official government processing times, we will send a status update request to the government asking them about the status of your application and why it is delayed.

Please note that NVISS is a private business entity which is completely separate from the government. Therefore, we do not make decisions about your application/case.

Our duty is to represent you and prepare you application or case in the best possible way, so that the government will be likely to decide your case favourably or approve your application.

The responsible government entities that deal with your immigration files could be Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC), the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) and Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB), depending on your case.

The processing times for your application is something that we have no control over apart from submitting reminders or enquiries to the government about your file.

For different types of immigration applications, you can check the government processing times on the IRCC website.