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Hayles1980

Full Member
Feb 19, 2016
36
1
Toronto, Ontario
Category........
Visa Office......
Etobicoke
Job Offer........
Pre-Assessed..
Tomorrow morning we are going for our spousal sponsorship interview at CIC Etobicoke. After meeting with our lawyer today, we discovered that our application has multiple errors (many incorrect dates etc.) made by his paralegal who typed it. We think this is the reason we were flagged for an interview.

Has anyone experienced this before? Hard to blame someone else for errors like that during the interview. We have two four-inch binders filled with evidence that we have lived together for 5 years, including over thirty-five letters of support from Ontario government officials, prominent business people, and numerous family members. We have a joint bank account, over 25 cards, even benefit cards from my place of employment were his clearly says 'spouse' on it. Not to mention numerous photos, emails, receipts for major purchases, a sworn statement from our landlord that we both reside there, and copies of hotel reservations from weekends away together.

The letter requesting the interview states that we did not include enough evidence, but I believe this is due to the terrible paralegal who worked for our lawyer. She even accidentally included a page of her random notes about us meeting in our application package. She has since been fired, but this does not help us. Our lawyer is coming to the interview, and I hope he will be permitted to explain the situation to the officer.

If this is not enough, does anyone have any suggestions what else we might want to bring? :-X
 
Your lawyer owes you a full refund, IMHO.

What a pitiful excuse for `professional' help.



It sounds like you have plenty of solid proof. Good luck tomorrow!
 
It's ridiculous, the common-law statutory declaration says we moved in together June 1st 2011 (wrong) and for some reason it has an end date that we stopped living together on January 31st 2011. We apparently broke up before we moved in together after building a time machine.

And it's not confirmed or notarized by the lawyer either, Just blank other than our signatures and the wacky impossible dates.
 
Think your lawyer should be rescheduling his day to make himself available for your interview and explain his shabby performance (pro-bono). Nice to blame the paralegal, but it's his responsibility to make sure it's done right in the first place!
 
Buletruck said:
Think your lawyer should be rescheduling his day to make himself available for your interview and explain his shabby performance (pro-bono). Nice to blame the paralegal, but it's his responsibility to make sure it's done right in the first place!

Unfortunately as crappy as the lawyer or paralegal are, in the end it is the OPs responsibility to ensure that what they signed is actually true and correct. The OP signed and swore that the statutory declaration is true
And correct, that's a big no no.
 
Agreed. Did you sign blank forms or something and the paralegal fill them in later?!
 
We provided them with all of the accurate information, then they typed the forms. We were called in when they were completed to sign them all. My own fault for not going through it, but we were presented them in a pile with a bunch of those red 'sign here' stickers and only given a few minutes to do it. Very hard lesson to learn, i don't know how we are going to explain this to the officer. It sounds like a shady and flimsy excuse.

We both know all of the correct dates, and our lawyer is coming with us. He better damn well explain.
 
It definitely doesn't look good for you if you signed all those documents with incorrect information. If the officer were really mean, they could theoretically slap you with misrepresentation.

Good luck. I hope things work out for you.
 
I am trying to calm myself down, my anxiety level
Is through the roof. I'm a professional chef and am good with high stress situations, but this is a whole other level. I feel like I'm going to vomit.

The lawyer says he is drafting new pages without errors to re-submit today. We have so much evidence I don't see how they could possibly reject us. But I know there is still a chance and that's what's making me sick.
 
Hayles1980 said:
I am trying to calm myself down, my anxiety level
Is through the roof. I'm a professional chef and am good with high stress situations, but this is a whole other level. I feel like I'm going to vomit.

The lawyer says he is drafting new pages without errors to re-submit today. We have so much evidence I don't see how they could possibly reject us. But I know there is still a chance and that's what's making me sick.

Get as much as you can in print, have they admitted to wrong doing in email for example? Try to get stuff like that, once it's all said and done and your process is finished, spend a couple of hundred bucks on consulting a lawyer and see if you can sue these morons.

What's the first letter of the name of the law firm? I understand if you don't wanna say their full name but just curious to know if it's the same firm I had horrible experience with.

Also, how did the interview go?