January 13, 2014:

When assignees and transferees, coming to Canada, arrive at the destination city airports, they are filled with a combination of excitement and, frequently, fatigue. Fatigued or not, they must still clear through immigration and obtain their work permits. If properly prepared, they will have all their documentation, and know what to say and do with the immigration officials. In the majority of cases, transferees/assignees obtain their work permits at this point without difficulty. Even more fatigued and anxious, the transferees/assignees leave the immigration area, work permit in hand, grab their bags and are ready to go.

Or are they?

The growing reality is that in many instances these work permits are prepared hastily by immigration officials, without proper diligence given to all key data that is required for later registrations. Without this key data being either properly completed, or in some cases not completed at all, a future registration may be impeded.

Range of errors can cause serious challenges to transferees/assignees

This issue is quite serious. When a work permit does not match the transferee’s identification or documents, he/she may not be able to get a Social Insurance Number or Health Insurance and their child may not be able to register in school.

There are a range of errors that are made on these work permits. It is not uncommon for a transferee’s name to be misspelled, for the work permit start and end dates to be incorrect, for dependents not to be listed, and, most commonly, for the work location to be left blank or completed incorrectly. In some instances, the transferee/assignee may realize there are errors, but because they are tired and not confident that they should challenge an immigration official, choose to say nothing.

It is extremely important that this information be checked immediately at the airport before the transferee departs, because if it is not, and if there are errors on a work permit, it can be difficult and time consuming to amend a work permit later down the road.

Airport Pick-up Service and Work Permit Audit is easy to implement

It used to be the case that a friendly face, and someone who can check the assignee and family into their temporary accommodation was an excellent support service for a corporation to provide. Now, with these increasing errors, the Airport Pick-up and Work Permit Audit have become crucial. All Points strongly recommends an Airport Pick-Up Service to catch these errors. All Points counsellors are trained to review every work permit to ensure all details are correct. If not, the counsellor and assignee/family return to Canadian Immigration immediately to have the information corrected. An Airport Pick-up and Work Permit review might be more costly than paying for an airport taxi, but in the face of work permit errors that may result in time-consuming visits to a consulate to rectify, delays in obtaining Social Insurance Numbers and health insurance and getting kids enrolled in school, an Airport Pick-up and Work Permit review can easily pay for itself many times over, leaving your assignee to be immediately productive and ready to start his/her new assignment.