We are often asked whether businesspeople can visit Canada for exploratory reasons before committing to going through the business immigration application process. Reasons for travel can vary: some businesspeople may need a visa to explore the potential region of future business and meet with vendors, sellers, real estate agents, etc. While for others, it is simply to visit the Canadian affiliate of the company where they currently work.
Below, we share our most recent success story that explains how our team successfully executed a Business Visitor Visa for our client, allowing her to obtain approval in just 4 weeks after submitting!
Find out how your company can hire foreign workers
Background of the Case
Our client, Ms. B, is a talented Data Scientist residing in the USA for the last 6 years. She is a citizen of India and initially came to the USA to obtain a master's degree. Ms. B holds almost 20 years of experience working in the tech industry, specifically focusing on Data Science.
Ms. B currently works for a US-based company with 2 affiliated offices in Canada. Ms. B was asked to travel to Canada to meet the Canadian Data Scientists team, attend business meetings to plan for project timelines and deliverables, instruct and train the Canadian team on the proprietary machine learning model and its evaluation metrics and conduct site visits to see how business is operated in Canada.
Ms. B's company approached us in May 2023, we signed a service agreement on May 26, 2023, and on May 29, 2023, we started working on her application.
Timeline of the Case
- May 26, 2023 – we signed a retainer agreement to represent Ms. B with her Business Visitor Visa;
- May 29, 2023 – we shared a personalized document checklist for Ms. B outlining all documents that she had to provide for this application;
- June 1, 2023 – upon reception of all documents, we drafted support letters that had to be signed by Ms. B's company in the USA and Canada;
- June 2, 2023 – support letters and application forms were sent for review and signature;
- June 5, 2023 – while waiting on signed items from the client, we prepared the application to be ready for submission;
- June 12, 2023 – all documents were received;
- June 14, 2023 – application for a Business Visitor Visa was submitted; and
- July 19, 2023 – application was approved, and a passport was requested for visa issuance;
Throughout the application processing time, IRCC didn't ask for any additional documents and didn't have any questions about the application. Ms. B only had to submit her biometric information as a mandatory part of the process.
Congratulations to our client for such speedy approval! We wish her a safe trip and productive meetings in Canada!
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
