Hi,
Spoke to a lawyer. He suggested not getting married in Russia. Instead, come to Canada as a tourist (since visa is open), then get married on Canadian soil, then apply for inland sponsorship while in Canada. It'll take ~12 months, while visa stay is 6 months, but while PR application is in progress, one can apply for a 2 yr work permit, which will pretty much extend her stay until PR application is done processing.
I was surprised that it's pretty easy to get married in Canada if you're Canadian and she is not, but apparently that's the way it is - just go to the city hall, sign the papers, in several weeks you receive the marriage certificate.
She'd need to bring police clearance certificate and labor book (translated) to Canada, and that's about all is needed for the application. Also, the medical exam. Can this be done while already in Canada? I guess if that's done abroad, then it needs to be translated, thus an extra step to do.
The original plan of marrying in Russia, then coming as a tourist would possibly involve lying at the border, since the officer might question her ties in Canada and Russia, and if she were to say she's married and coming to Canada as a tourist to get sponsored - that will be a negative factor.
I suppose I'll go the way he suggested. From your experience, can the application be successfully done individually, or do I need to involve a paralegal? Their cost is around 5.5k. TBH I didn't check the actual application yet, but I know that it's a bunch of docs that need to be submitted (above) as well as call logs, photos, chats.
I'm not well versed enough to comment on what the lawyer recommended, but maybe some of the senior people here will be able to.
I would also recommend getting everything you have to have translated translated in Russia. It is much cheaper!
Also, you had mentioned the workbook. This may not apply to you, but my wife had worked under the table (I read somewhere recently that something like 50% of salaries are paid that way in Russia lol), and so she had worked (you have to mention that in the Schedule A), but didn't have anything in her workbook, so we couldn't provide that. We added a letter explaining that while she did work, she did so for cash, talked about how that's normal in Russia and not something she ever gave a second thought to, that it's not something she'll do in Canada, etc. Everything worked out for us! I just wanted to mention that in case you get into that kind of situation and are worried about what to do.
Another potential issue is the police certificate is only valid for a certain amount of time (6 months, I think). I'm not sure what she would have to do if they wanted another one and she was in Canada. Maybe the embassy can do it, I'm not sure.
The medical exam we did in Moscow was sent directly by them to IRCC and did not need to be translated.
Re: hiring someone to help, I think the majority of this forum would recommend you do it yourself if your case is straightforward. It's very expensive to hire someone, and realistically, you're probably going to end up doing a decent amount of the work yourself anyway. They'll give advice along the way, but you also run the risk of them giving bad advice and hurting your application. If you really really need to speak to a lawyer about something specific, you can always pay 200-300 for an hour and get your answers there. Another downside is that you won't have access to your GCKEY, which is the system through which IRCC communicates with you. The lawyer adds a middleman to the equation and that can slow things down, depending on how good/bad the lawyer is at getting back to you. (I know you said paralegal, but I'm not familiar with how that would work so I'm talking about a lawyer haha)
If I were you, I'd try to do it myself. Put your application together, try to figure stuff out/ask here if you get stuck, and if at that point you really feel as though you can't do it alone, then get someone. But definitely at least try to do it yourself. It's a lot of work, but for straightforward cases, it isn't complicated. More tedious than anything.
Good luck!
