Here is a list of five immi­gra­tion mis­takes to avoid… and why.

Lying when filling-up the per­ma­nent res­i­dence appli­ca­tion – Peo­ple make mis­takes, we can all under­stand that. The prob­lem is that “mis­takes” you make when fill­ing out the per­ma­nent res­i­dence appli­ca­tion can have huge con­se­quences – it’s called mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion and yes, you can lose your per­ma­nent res­i­dent sta­tus for that. Case in point, peo­ple who fail to dis­close the birth of a child or a mar­riage. They usu­ally hope to immi­grate to Canada eas­ily on their own and even­tu­ally spon­sor their rel­a­tives, hus­band, wife, kids. Prob­lem is, if you didn’t dis­close your depen­dents on the immi­gra­tion papers prior to land­ing, they don’t exist to Cit­i­zen­ship and Immi­gra­tion. Not only you can be charged with mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion, but you won’t be able to spon­sor rel­a­tives that don’t exist.

Apply­ing for cit­i­zen­ship before meet­ing the require­ments – I can never under­stand that one. In order to be eli­gi­ble to apply for cit­i­zen­ship, you must “have at least three years of res­i­dency in Canada within four years imme­di­ately pre­ced­ing the date of appli­ca­tion” and “be phys­i­cally present in Canada for 1,095 days in a four year period”. Yet, there are always peo­ple who apply for cit­i­zen­ship before they meet these require­ments, and then they com­plain they received a res­i­dency ques­tion­naire or that their appli­ca­tion is scru­ti­nized. Well, duh. A Cana­dian pass­port is a great thing to have but why jeop­ar­diz­ing every­thing because you are not patient enough?

Being con­vinced that immi­grat­ing is a right – Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for mobil­ity rights and I don’t sup­port closed doors or gate-keepers poli­cies. But over­all, I think Canada is pretty fair when it comes to immi­gra­tion: the coun­try wel­comes 250,000 new­com­ers every year, and has sev­eral immi­gra­tion cat­e­gories in which you may qual­ify. Immi­grat­ing to Canada is much eas­ier than immi­grat­ing to the USA or most West­ern Europe coun­tries. Yet, not every­body can immi­grate to Canada, the same way not every­body can be a top model or a foot­ball player. Deal with it. Immi­grat­ing is not a right but a priv­i­lege. And since we are it, drop the atti­tude – it doesn’t help, really. I’m tired of peo­ple who want to sue the Cana­dian gov­ern­ment because their appli­ca­tion have been denied.

Fail­ing to com­ply with the res­i­dency oblig­a­tion – In order to main­tain per­ma­nent res­i­dence sta­tus, landed immi­grants must live in Canada for two years for every five-year period. Yet, some peo­ple just land in Canada and then go back home. Years later (usu­ally when their per­ma­nent res­i­dent card is about to expire), they won­der if they lost their sta­tus. You bet they did. Because per­ma­nent sta­tus is intended for peo­ple who actu­ally want to live in Canada! I find these kind of sit­u­a­tion heart-breaking – why work so hard to obtain per­ma­nent res­i­dence to not use it? Once you lost your per­ma­nent res­i­dent sta­tus, you have to reap­ply again from the scratch.

Doing research based on one and only source – I inter­viewed immi­grants from all around the world ear­lier this year, and they all rec­om­mended prospec­tive immi­grants to do research on their adop­tive coun­try before­hand. I would fur­ther rec­om­mend you to gather infor­ma­tion from dif­fer­ent sources. Offi­cial sources, such as gov­ern­ment of Canada web­sites, will give you the most up-to-date straight-to-the-fact info and doc­u­ments. How­ever, don’t for­get that most of these facts are sta­tis­tic and don’t really tell the other half of the story. Guillermo recently wrote a very good arti­cle on the sub­ject “Los blogs, la inmi­gración y ‘la última milla’” (in Span­ish), in which he explains that new Cana­di­ans’ blogs and immi­gra­tion web­sites are the “last mile” that con­nect prospec­tive immi­grants with the real­ity. Most immi­grants won’t “sell” you Canada – they will pro­vide real snap­shots of their daily lives and expe­ri­ence, and will include you in their network.