# Do it alone or use expert help??



## Maplesyrup (Jun 19, 2011)

Hi All,

a little bit of background first, we are oringally from England, have been living and working in the Middle East for just over 8 years, we are a married couple with a 10 year old son, my husband is a Chef and I have been a TA at my son's school for the past 5 years. 

We are looking to the future and want to move to Canada in a couple of years time when my husbands contract ends. We want to move Toronto for the access to family in Florida and the UK.

When you took the plunge to immigrate did you do all the paperwork yourself or did you use an immigration expert? If you did it yourself is it quite straight forward? If you got help do you recommend the company? I guess the reason we are asking is that we have moved around a fair bit and we would probably need paper work from each country and we don't have a Canadian Embassy in the country we now reside in!!

I hope this makes some sort of sense to you.
Thanks for reading, any help will be appreciated.


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## Jan74 (Jul 18, 2011)

Considering your husband is on "The list", it should be fairly straightforward a process for you.

If there were any complicating circumstances, I'd say use professional help. I have several friends who applied before the rules changes and all of them had no difficulty completing the forms. I have looked at the forms, and they are fairly easy too. (I'm on a temporary worker visa, not permanent resident yet).

You do need paperwork for every country and city you've lived in for over 6 months, yes. But you can do that without getting an immigration agent per se, you could just hire someone in each of those places to get you the paperwork, if necessary (I did that for police records in another city here in Brazil for the temporary worker thing).

As for the no Canadian Embassy there, the CIC site will tell you where the closest immigration center is, and that is where you should file.


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## Maplesyrup (Jun 19, 2011)

Thanks Jan74, when we looked at the paperwork it did look straight forward think we might have just needed some reassurance, the new school that my son attends might be able to help with regards to police checks as they did them for me when I applied to work there, so will ask when he goes back in September.

Just one more quick question, is it for every country that you have ever worked in or is it for the past X number of years?? 

Thanks again


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## Jan74 (Jul 18, 2011)

Everywhere you've been longer than 6 months, for the police check.


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