Mark Holthe 0:04
Music. This episode of the Canadian immigration podcast is sponsored by the Canadian immigration Institute, one of the best sources of video content on Canadian immigration to help you navigate your way through the Canadian immigration process. Head on over to the YouTube channel, where there's tons of video content, and you can join mark yes myself in a number of live video streams, Q and A's all designed to help you navigate your way through this crazy Canadian immigration process. When you're done there, like and subscribe and then head on over to the Canadian Immigration institute.com where you can find all those awesome DIY courses that I've been talking about. Thank you, Canadian immigration Institute. You are the sponsor of this amazing little podcast. You
Unknown Speaker 0:59
music.
Sponsor 1:05
The Canadian immigration process can be complex and frustrating with the Canadian Immigration Department making it virtually impossible to speak to an officer. There are few places to turn to for trusted information. The Canadian immigration podcast was created to fill this void by offering the latest on immigration law, policy and practice. Please welcome ex immigration officer and Canadian immigration lawyer Mark Holthe as he is joined by industry leaders across Canada sharing insight to help you along your way.
Mark Holthe 1:51
All right, everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Canadian immigration podcast. I'm here with my guest as always, and my co host, I really should say. Alicia Backman Buhari, how are you, Alicia,
Alicia Backman-Beharry 2:02
I'm doing well, Mark, and we're we're trying to work through some of these issues on Express Entry, some of these things that over the years, we keep getting asked again and again. Or on the flip side, sometimes we see the horror stories of people who tried to do things on their own, or maybe they didn't have a really good source of advice, and they come back and unfortunately they've got procedural fairness letters or refusals.
Mark Holthe 2:26
Yeah, this happens way more than people actually realize. I think because we're kind of in the trenches, we see it a little bit more, because people come to see us when things go south. Now, immigration goes out of their way to try to make it seem like it is so easy that there's no issues. If you just follow the instructions, all will be well. And theoretically, that's the case. But inevitably, every single person has some little nuance, some little fact, some little scenario that causes their situation to not line up perfectly with the ideal situation. And so that is what we're trying to help you avoid at this stage, is those situations where, because of your unique situation, your facts, it then results in you doing something that gets your application returned as being incomplete, which is just as bad as a full refusal or an actual refusal. And as Alicia said, Sometimes we're fortunate enough that we get procedural fairness letters. But usually you guys, that is not the case when it comes to express entry. Usually they just refuse. So today we're going to talk about reference letters, and this is probably one of the most discussed topics online. Why? Because it is probably one of the most important parts of the whole process. So Alicia, why do you need to prove work experience within the context of an Express Entry application? What's the big deal
Alicia Backman-Beharry 3:47
about it? So work experience, no matter how you slice or dice, it, is a minimum requirement for eligibility, either for Federal Skilled Trades or for federal skilled worker or for the Canadian Experience Class. So any way you look at it, you must prove work experience in any sort of Express Entry application, and it has to be high skilled work experience for CEC or FSW. So when we're looking at work experience, not only does it have to be high skilled, but it also has to be within the last period of time. And so we know for Federal Skilled Worker, they're looking at the last 10 year period of time. And we know for CEC, we normally need to have that within the last three years. And then, of course, we've now have targeted draws. And so then you've got an added layer of trying to prove work experience that you have completed within the last three years for at least six months. So these are reasons why work experience becomes super important for Express Entry,
Mark Holthe 4:43
indeed. And so once we know that it's required, then the most difficult part is actually proving it, and not just proving it, but proving it in the exact way that immigration wants you to present the information. So today we're going to talk about. The documentation that's required because we don't include in our applications just a reference letter. We always include other supporting documentation to substantiate what's in that letter. We're also going to talk about the specific details that must be included in that reference letter. What if you can't get a reference letter, which happens on occasion, or what if yours is deficient? We're going to cover some of our most essential tips, and then we'll wrap up with a little tool that we've created. It's a custom GPT within our Express Entry accelerator. And we have some other resources in the course that we want to show you as well, for those of you who have not yet subscribed to it, but if we slide over here, Alicia, let's talk about specifically kind of the documentation that immigration wants us to include when we are proving our work history.
Alicia Backman-Beharry 5:51
And you know, as an aside to depending on the type of work experience you've claimed, there's going to be a bunch of upload spots if you get your eapr. And sometimes people are really confused about, what's the offer of employment, what's the letter of employment? What's the letter of arranged employment? How do we prove all these things? But in general, when you're trying to prove this work experience, it's important that that letter actually meets all of these requirements that are set out in the completeness check. And so this is where it's going to be quite specific, so it's not and a lot of people now, we've got companies who are online. We've got companies that have virtual offices, and this is still pretty old school, because it still wants to have a whole bunch of company contact information on an official company letterhead that has the employee's full name, the company's full contact information, and they literally say address, telephone number and email address, and then the name, title and signature. And usually this is the immediate supervisor or the personnel HR officer at the company. And so it can't just be signed by anybody. It's usually your
Mark Holthe 6:57
friend, your buddy. They have to actually have authority to, you know, to bind the company like they have to have the authority to confirm and be a representative the company. They can't just be the average employee.
Alicia Backman-Beharry 7:12
And then the other thing too is that often, if people have been at a company for a relatively long period of time, they usually have had their job title and their salary and their hours, maybe even shift over the years. And so depending on how you enter your work history, the eapr fields are going to populate a document checklist for a number of different positions. And it gets confusing, because if you don't have the smart checklist, it's going to say employment, 12345, and you got to figure out what's what, but it's nice to have one letter from the employer that lists every single position that you've held. So what was the start date, what was the end date, what was the job title, what were your job duties, what was the pay specifically, and what were the benefits for each of those roles. And so this is really important, because often companies will put the last employment position, and they may not break it down in terms of what was the previous position and what were the hours, and what were the job duties for each of those previous positions, and what was the salary plus benefits for previous positions as well?
Mark Holthe 8:23
Yeah. And one pro tip I'll give you guys is when you're breaking it down, sometimes jobs cross over between different not codes, and when you're doing that, those absolutely have to be broken down into separate positions within your work history section. Now you can have one letter that covers all of them, but when they, especially when they shift between different not codes, that's a different a different work history that you need to indicate. Now some, in some cases, you might be moving from some software engineer level one to level two, and it's not, you know, advancing through different knock codes. But even in those circumstances, when it's maybe not a knockout jump, I still like to break those down, and once again, you can use the same reference letter. I also want to point out one other thing here, as we're going through what Alicia is talking about, immigration asks for each of these pieces in the reference letter, because they are designed to establish or confirm a certain aspect that is required within the regulations a certain a certain piece of the puzzle, if you will. So job duties are specifically designed. The duties themselves to help you determine what your proper not code is, and the not code is a part of you selecting your primary occupation to be assessed under each of the programs. So we could spend a whole podcast episode talking about the all of the ins and outs of not code selection. And I think we probably should, Alicia, but I do want to point out that in our Express Entry accelerator and well, if we have some time at the end, I might talk a little bit about it. But those of you who are watching this on our YouTube channel, the. Entry. Accelerator course is one that we've created to help people navigate their way through this process. When you feel like you just want to try to do it on your own. And within the accelerator course, we've actually created a little custom GPT to help people build out their reference letter. Now, in some cases, you don't have any input, the employer just will give it to you, and you just cross your fingers if they've done it. If they've done it right. There's tools and resources in the core, in the course that we provide people to give to their employers, to ask them to specifically include all of these essential things that Alicia is talking about. We'll just jump back here with that are essential within the letter itself. But this custom GPT will not only help you to build the reference letter. But when you upload your duties and or even a reference letter that you've already had completed, it can help to narrow down the knock codes. Now never, ever Are you going to rely exclusively on chat, GPT, or whatever other you know, AI tool to help you determine your knock you're going to go through. You're going to match it up. And we also have in our course what something we call the knock selection tool, which is specifically designed to help individuals identify their proper NOC in a way and present it in a way that officers get. And can, you know, basically say, yeah, you've got the right one. So you can see all the lessons here is, I'm just scrolling through the actual course, and you'll see that we have a section on records of employment, and each of these sections comes with a full video talking about everything. But at the end of each of these sections, you will see that we have a ton of sample reference letters, just to illustrate that the form in which the letter comes you know, how it's phrased, how it's organized is not as important as the actual content that is broken down here in the completeness check. But when it comes to the actual lesson here, we have a bunch of resources, including what we call our NOx selection tools. And so these are just a way in which we present our information to officers that are kind of like a cover letter, almost like a letter of explanation that goes with the reference letter and other supporting documents that we use when we're presenting this information to IRCC to get them to basically agree with us. And so Alicia is as we go through this. And actually, let me just jump back here as well to our to our list each of these pieces, like I said, duties is to help establish the Knock Code. The dates worked is a part of determining if you've actually met the one year minimum of work experience through either the foreign worker program or through the Canadian Experience Class. The number of hours worked is to determine if you're actually working full time. And Alicia, what is full time? In terms of full time work? How many hours do they typically look for? And this is something that's often missed in reference, letters,
Alicia Backman-Beharry 12:48
yeah. And this is so, you know, this is a nice, tidy little paragraph, and it seems like it should be straightforward, but just like Mark said, every single one of these words, like we see, things go wrong with each of these aspects all the time, and hours of work is one of the big ones. So just like Mark said, you know, if your job title and your job duties change significantly, yeah, you're going to break that out into a different period of work. Also, it specifically asks, What were your number of hours in that position, and if your hours were changing significantly, like if you were working only 15 hours a week, and then later on, you were working 40 or 32 or something like that, it's incumbent upon you not to just try to say I was working full time that whole time. If there were periods of time where you were not meeting so full time, according to IRCC, is 30 hours a week. And this can get super complex depending on the type of work that people are doing. Because I've worked with a number of people who were in healthcare, who had shift work. I've worked with field workers who, you know, like land surveying technicians, who are two weeks on two weeks off. There's a lot of different occupations where teachers
Mark Holthe 13:54
with the summers off, yeah, you know, ship ship crew that are traveling around the world that are six months on six months off. That's a real issue.
Alicia Backman-Beharry 14:03
Yeah, like cooks, people who are working a number of different part time jobs like this can get super, super complex, and it's really important that if you are not working 40 hours a week, you are making sure that you are specifying that in a different period of employment and putting the actual numbers of hours that you were working for that job, because otherwise immigration can legitimately say you're misrepresenting. You're trying to claim work experience that you don't have the hours based on your pay stubs and based on your employment letters to back up the number of weeks, months, years that you're claiming, and that becomes super serious. So make sure that you are very detailed about those hours of work per week for each position, and that you're making sure by cross referencing your pay stubs, your time sheets, your records of employment, your T fours, your W twos, if you're in the US, go through and do your document homework and work with your employer. To make sure that everybody's on the same page with what were your hours for that period of work? Yeah,
Mark Holthe 15:05
and just to reiterate, everyone, well, how does IRCC even know if you've got periods of work that's less than 30 hours? Well, your pay slips, so if you've submitted those, understand that they will cross reference. And Alicia, you brought up a couple points that I want to address as well as we're finalizing this kind of content issue, consistency is critical. So like Alicia said, consistency between your reference letter, your payslips, pay stubs, the information that you've contained in your Express Entry application, if you say you were working in one location, well, your personal history should reflect that if you've indicated that you are, yeah, once again, working in one area, well, I suspect that you're probably going to be living in that area, so immigration will cross reference that obviously no gaps in when you're you know when you're including your personal history and your address history. But sometimes work, you know, can be an issue if you're working virtually, or if you're required to relocate to a different location anytime we have those shifts, you know, if you're working for the same company, same position, but you're asked to then move to a different country and work there, well, that's a different that's a different record, a different entry in the work history section. So be aware of all of that and make sure there's consistency. And then let's stretch it even further, Alicia, if you're in Canada and now you're applying for Express Entry and you're trying to claim foreign work experience that you did not mention in your study permit application because your consultant told you not to list it because it wasn't aligned with your your study plan. Well, that's going to be an issue, and we see a lot of that, including allegations of misrep and at the least, we see immigration basically refusing to accept the work history. And so these are all things to be aware of. And
Alicia Backman-Beharry 16:48
and the inverse is also true. Mark like sometimes if people are claiming inside Canada a high skilled Canadian work experience, and all of a sudden they go work remotely from outside Canada for two months, well, they're no longer in physically inside Canada, and that's a problem, and they need to hide like carve that out of their Canadian work history, otherwise they could be found to have misrepresented the situation. So there are lots of moving parts here. The other thing that I've been seeing, and I'm sure you've been seeing two Mark recently, is who is the employer of record. So sometimes somebody will put, here's the name of my employer when they do their Express Entry profile, and then they ask their HR, or they ask their employer for their letter of reference, and it comes back on a totally different corporate letterhead. They don't even realize that they're actually employed by the parent company. They've got pay stubs from a different, you know, payroll company. So there's a lot of things that can start to go sideways, when you start to drill down
Mark Holthe 17:42
absolutely and when you have these issues, you guys, when something doesn't quite line up before you submit your eapr, you do have the opportunity to correct or modify or adjust anything that was listed in your profile differently. You do have that ability, but letters of explanation are the secret sauce that can help smooth over any of these issues that you may have, and by putting it out there, being proactive and disclosing anything that is inconsistent, you're gonna really reduce the likelihood of a finding of misrepresentation, and you can clarify things for officers Alicia. I can't tell you how many times people have come to me and told me about problems in previous applications, or how an answer in this Express Entry application is not going to be consistent, and whether or not they should alert immigration to the inconsistency. Well, my response now is, oh my goodness, there is absolutely something going on on the other side with IRCC that is allowing them to more quickly and readily screen previous applications and look for inconsistencies in what you're putting in your application now, and it is far better to be proactive disclose it set kind of the framework, the parameters upon which you want the officer to understand what's happened, versus letting them find things out themselves and feel like they caught you in a lie, and then already have their mind almost set as to whether or not you are someone they can believe. And when you are proactive and you disclose things in advance, it changes the mindset of an officer. It really does. No longer are they starting to question whether you're trying to pull a fast one on them. They start to think, Okay, well, this person is disclosing this. This this could be an issue, but at least I know that they're honest and forthright. And then guess what happens? If there's any other area where there's a little bit of uncertainty, the officer, more often than not, is going to give you the benefit of the doubt, and that's how we operate within our practice. And if a client comes to me, Alicia, and says, Hey, I don't want to disclose it, well, Mark doesn't represent them. They're off on their own. All right, so we've covered the documentation required. I want to highlight as well as the duties and responsibilities you guys, if you have tax documents, I will include those as well, whether they're in Canada or not. Now, the instructions within the completeness check specifically states that if you have work. Spirits in Canada, you're to include your t4 tax slips and notices of assessment for by CRA. But if you are not in if, even if you're not in Canada, and you have those available, I will do that. It's just one more third party piece of evidence that can support your work history. So Alicia, what if I can't get a reference letter we see this? Or what if, these essential duties that we see, I should say, these essential components that we have listed here, what if that you can't get something? Well, what are the main ones? It's maybe duties are not very good, so when you're providing the duties and responsibilities, maybe they need to be corrected, or they're not as fulsome as you would hope. Another one is the hours of work that often isn't listed in a reference letter, and even the pay isn't listed in a reference letter. So what options do people have? Alicia, when, when they run into this issue? Yeah,
Alicia Backman-Beharry 20:51
and this is where you got to be. Just kind of be on your toes and think about what other alternative evidence can you gather? And so a lot of times, companies don't put their salary and benefits on their employment letter. Sometimes they have a separate benefits booklet. Or sometimes you can go to the HR portal for your company and print out here the benefits, right, vision and vacation and all the rest of it. Sometimes there's ways where you're looking at, okay, well, I also have an appendix or an annex that has my job duties in full detail, right? So there are different ways. Sometimes people go back to their employment contracts. Sometimes, if it's not possible, it really depends on the employer. Some large scale employers are loath to put anything in writing about what your role was specifically, or to feel like they're recommending you. And so sometimes they're very tight lipped or very constrained in what they will put in a reference letter, and then it's a matter of trying to gather alternative evidence and put it all together. And so sometimes you would need to go get letters from your past supervisor. Often people say, Well, wait a minute, my supervisors left the country. They're no longer working for the same employer. What do I do? Well, get a letter from your current HR or direct supervisor, and then go back to your past supervisor and say, you know, can you write me a personal reference letter that explains you were employed at the company? Here was your position. These were the dates you worked. I was directly reporting to you. And you can speak in your personal knowledge about what I did on a daily basis. And sometimes you might need to do a combination of these things and then package all this information in a logical way,
Mark Holthe 22:29
you bet. All right, Alicia, we're going to dive into our essential tips, and we'll probably wrap up with those. So these are going to be kind of rapid fire. And so right off the bat, one of the things that I wanted to to bring up was just the importance of how you describe the duties in your reference letter. You do not want to copy and paste the knock description that, nor the duties that are listed in there verbatim into your reference letter. Officers will question because companies don't just copy that, especially if they're an Indian company, they don't just copy the duties. So if anyone your consultant, your other representative. Someone tells you it's just easier that way than you know you've got the right duties. Don't believe them. It needs to be a natural way of describing the position as your company normally would. So that's kind of a red flag. So So yes, you want to make sure that everything is lined up properly, 100% you want to make sure that everything is organized well. And that kind of leads into my next tip, which is just the importance of not just uploading a reference letter. I never upload just a reference letter. I always have what I call my my document specific letter of explanation, which is, we have lots of samples in the course, but those, those cover letters, if you will, describe all the documents that you're including and also any explanations if there's an issue, maybe the company was bought out by another company, and so there's a change in ownership. Maybe your your your title that you described in your profile is different than the actual one listed in the reference letter. So that's where this cover letter can really be effective in pointing an officer to any issues that you identify. And remember, it's all about being proactive. And then one other little tip is just use like, don't be afraid to highlight information and wherever you need to explain things, if you can get that explanation inside your employer reference letter, that's wonderful. I love that. So if there's any changes in the company structure, try to include it in the reference letter, so that the employer is describing the change. And if there is something that you want to point out, well, don't hesitate to have the employer underline that piece of the reference letter to highlight it for the officer. And then, of course, for yourself, you want to make it very, very visible and apparent. You don't need to write a big essay, but just really point first, get the information that's most important first in that little cover letter, or your letter of explanation. And that will go a long ways to helping to just make sure that there's no miscommunication between what you're trying to share with the officer and how they're interpreting your information. Alicia, other tips. I've got a few more, but I don't want to hog my the tip list here.
Alicia Backman-Beharry 24:55
Yeah. I mean, explain, explain gaps. If you had a period of time where you were. Working if you went on leave, if there was unpaid I always ask people, was there any like temporary layoff, or did you have any unpaid vacation? Because you cannot claim work experience if you were not paid. And so this is important. And again, when we're talking about employment letters, we are talking about a legal employee employer relationship. So this is not self employment situations. That's kind of a whole other ball of wax. And you can only claim self employed for outside Canada, foreign work experience, but we are talking about employment, and so if there are gaps in employment, or if there's unpaid periods, if you had to go on layoff and then the company had to hire you back, which is important, because I always also ask, were you authorized to work for all this period of time because you can't claim work experience for points that you are unauthorized to work if you're in Canada. And so check, be careful about what were the dates. Lots of people were students, and sometimes they work part time for a company, and then they got a PGWP, and then that turned into maybe an LMIA based work permit. Double check all those dates, right? Like you're not allowed to claim the time period where you're still a full time student. You must stop working as soon as you're notified of completion of your studies, up until the date that you submit your PGWP. Cross reference all this stuff with your employment letters to make sure that you're not offside. You
Mark Holthe 26:16
bet. All right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna finish off with just a couple quick tips. The last one that I have? Well, one of the last ones that flows into another issue is do what you can to try to keep the communication lines open with previous employers. So there's nothing more challenging than needing a reference letter and then the people at the company, you just don't have any contact with them anymore. Often we leave employment, and then that's it, and that's fine, but you may need something from them in the future. And what goes with that is once you finish your work history, and I know we're talking about hindsight here, and maybe a lot of you are past this, but if you're just looking into this, you're considering Express Entry, try to get your reference letters as soon as you can after you end employment with them, if you're no longer working from the comp for the company, but you have a a perfectly completed reference letter that might be a couple years old. It's okay, because the date will be after you finished work. So that reference letter doesn't necessarily expire. Obviously, you want to try to get it updated if, if there's an opportunity to do that and your current employment, you want to make sure that is, I never get the current reference letters issued until after the ITA has been given, so that it is the most current reference letter that you can get. But just keep those things in mind. And, you know, sometimes, like we talked about, you can't get the reference letter and or there, or there's deficiencies and problems. And I just wanted to highlight, once again, within the work, the reference letter section, within the course here, we have, like, a whole bunch of tools that we use to help assist you in securing a reference letter that works, which is really the end goal here. And so we've got a document that provides instructions for your employer. We have a checklist to make sure you're not missing anything from your record of employment, which is your reference letter, job duties, tax documents, etc, you know, one What if I can't get a reference letter? And we've got a brainstorm list of, I don't know, 25 to 30 different things you can use to help prove your your work history, or to shore up any aspects of your letter that are maybe insufficient. And then we have our NOx selection tool. We've got a little template to guide you in how we structure it. And then we have a whole other section on, you know, calculating your hours of work for CEC and FSW sample reference letters. But one thing I want to point out with the sample of reference letters, at least the ones that we use as a template, please, please avoid, and this will be the last little thing, I say avoid using sample reference letter templates that you've seen online, 90% of the other people who also go to that site will use that. And then immigration is looking at reference letters that look the same follow the same format across all these different employers for different people. And then they start to wonder, Is this legitimate? So the letter, the form in which it is structured, needs to be consistent with what the company would normally do. You should not be submitting reference letters for multiple different companies that you've drafted yourself, that all have the exact same format, the same font, the same structure of bulleted lists. They should all look unique to their own company. It's just a way of ensuring an officer doesn't question genuineness. So there's so much more that we could talk about within this section. These are very volatile areas within applications and where many, many people get tripped up. We've only kind of scratched the surface, but like I said the course, the Express Entry accelerator was specifically designed to help navigate your way through this. And there's a link in the description if you want to join us, every two weeks, I meet Wednesdays from four to 6pm Mountain Time for a master class where you can come and ask me anything else that doesn't fit within, maybe the, you know, the overview that I've covered within the course. But the course has, I think, over 70 lessons or something like that, and it covers. Every aspect of the whole process. So I'd love for you to subscribe and join me on that, and we can help you walk through that process. However, at our law firm, understand you guys, if you say, You know what, I just want the peace of mind of retaining Alicia to help me with my application or mark it all starts just by clicking on, speak to a lawyer, and then we do a little consultation, and then after that, if we feel like it's a good fit, then away we go and we we can assist you with your application. I also encourage you to just check out, if you haven't, the about us section and our approach and how we work with our clients, which I think is pretty awesome. All right. Alicia, anything else before we before we wrap up? Last
Alicia Backman-Beharry 30:39
thing I'll throw in there is translations. So if you're dealing with foreign work experience, with foreign employers who do not speak English, and you have a letter written entirely in English, make sure that you go and get that properly translated, get it in the original language, because if an officer were to call that person and they don't speak a word of English, you've got a problem. So make sure that if you are dealing with any language other than English, it's written in that first language, you include the original document plus the certified translation, and then sometimes the translators have a stamped, certified copy as well. So just be careful if your employer doesn't speak English or French.
Mark Holthe 31:15
Awesome. Thanks so much, Alicia, and thanks everyone for tuning in today. See you later.
Sponsor 31:23
Thank you for listening to the Canadian immigration podcast. Your trusted source for information on Canadian immigration law, policy and practice. If you would like to book a legal consultation, please visit www dot Holthe law.com you can also find lots more helpful information on our Canadian immigration Institute YouTube channel, where you can join mark on one of his many Canadian immigration live Q and A's See you soon, and all the best as you navigate this crazy world we call Canadian immigration. You.
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