Adapting to change: Top Ten Immigration Boutiques

Canada’s immigration boutiques have spent the last decade adapting to a toughening of the rules governing business immigration with stiffer penalties but they have benefited from new initiatives meant to make coming to Canada easier and faster. At the same time, anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S. is attracting more immigrants to Canada and stimulating business.

Barbara Jo Caruso was a partner at Gowling WLG for 13 years before leaving to start Corporate Immigration Law Firm, an experience, she says, that provided her a “wonderful foundation.” But the smaller setting allows more agility in addressing client needs.

“I don’t let anybody cross the border without me speaking to them first. That’s my policy,” she says. “That service and outreach and availability after hours, because the borders are open 24/7, is I think what distinguishes my firm and the difference that you can provide when you are a boutique as opposed to being in a larger setting with more structure and you’re not as nimble.”

Caruso has also had more intimate access to the frontlines of Canada’s immigration system than her downtown Toronto office can provide. While a student, she worked as a customs officer for the Canadian government. 

A lot has changed in the 30 years since Caruso says the chief priority of a customs officer was to facilitate the quick and efficient flow of people across the border. That has been superseded, in the post-9/11 world, by enforcement and prevention and keeping unsavoury characters and products out. 

It is not just the Donald Trump presidency, walls and politically partisan jousting over “irregular border crossings” that signify a more rigid immigration philosophy. 

The Conservative government halted the federal investor program, where prospective immigrants would give the government a large loan and receive permanent residency, a practice critics cast as essentially purchasing citizenship.

In 2015, the Conservative government also made reforms to the temporary foreign worker program, after lawmakers were moved by scandals over the mistreatment of migrant workers and concerns about the Canadian unemployed, heightened by the toll on Alberta from the steep drop in oil prices.

Caruso says the investor program had “integrity issues” and understands the government’s reservations, but she says it doesn’t mean Canada should abandon entrepreneurs and business immigrants altogether. With the approaching exodus of baby boomers from the workforce, a great number of businesses will need new leaders.

“We have something like a trillion dollars worth of small businesses in Canada that will need to transfer to new ownership in the next decade,” she says. “One way to deal with it to address it would be to have a federal business program that addressed and facilitated entrepreneurs and business immigrants, so I definitely see that there is a gap there.”

Corporate Immigration Law Firm has clients ranging from mining and chemical companies to entertainers and models and from engineering, construction and automotive manufacturing to restaurants and management consulting firms.

Caruso just welcomed Joel Guberman and Lainie Appleby of Deloitte’s Guberman Garson LLP. With 60 years of combined experience, Caruso is excited for the addition.

Immigration is one of the defining aspects of the Trump ascendency and now, as president, his policies, such as the renegotiation of NAFTA and strict border control, are creating space for Canada to grow, say Evan and Stephen Green, senior partners at Green and Spiegel.

“Canada, right now, [has] a very unique opportunity, given the fact that things are so negative south of the border,” says Evan. “This is a unique time and a unique opportunity for Canada to expand its multi-national business base.”

For the Toronto firm that’s been practising immigration law since 1962, the Greens say the Trump administration’s policies and the fear among corporations about their ability to get their people into the United States has created a boon for Canadian immigration lawyers.

Apart from the nasty side, where Green says the firm is seeing a lot of “really negative and erroneous things happening at the border,” new, stringent U.S. policy is bouncing business up to Canada. Companies are “near-shoring,” using Canada as a base to position their employees for their concerns south of the 49th.

“As a result of that, now, our firm has had exceptional growth,” Green says. “I always joke if you see this middleaged white guy at a Donald Trump rally — me — yelling ‘Four more years!’ it’s because business has never been better.”

Avi Gomberg, partner at Gomberg Dalfen S.E.N.C., is seeing a lot of business from near-shoring at his Montreal boutique.

Gomberg Dalfen consists of five lawyers, five paralegals and one legal assistant. Like Caruso, Gomberg spent his early years at a large firm and says the boutique treatment involved more “personalized, one-on-one service.”

“So, it’s not a assembly-line, crazy-volume practice. There are some practices out there that are set up” that way, he says.

High-skilled professionals from India, China and Iran especially, many of whom have been educated in the United States,  who either cannot get in or their work status is coming to an end are turning to Canada, Gomberg says.

“There’s more work for us. I mean, I find it a little sad, because these are excellent people,” he says. 

“It’s good for Canada.”

As for policy-makers north of the border, the delay experienced by Green and Spiegel clients was alleviated, Green says, by the 2017 Global Skills Strategy, which was created to hasten employers bringing foreign workers into the country. While processing typically took 14 weeks, it now can take two or three, says Green.

The Global Skills Strategy and the reforms to the temporary foreign worker program are providing a good balance between facilitating the entry of foreign workers and placing responsibilities on employers to train and hire Canadians, says Green.

Another area the Greens say will be a growth area is the complications at the U.S. border that those working in the legal cannabis industry are likely to experience.

“Really, it’s as if they are attaining their livelihood off the proceeds of crime because it’s considered a crime in the United States,” says Green. “So, people are going to have to be very careful.” 

Quebec has its own immigration system and the only place in Canada to have access to a program like the former federal investor program. Quebec recently announced that net-asset requirements will be raised to $2 million and the investment will be raised to $1.2 million.

A controversial aspect of this program is that the vast majority of immigrants who use it do not stay in Quebec, but since the federal government no longer has a similar option, many will apply through Quebec and immediately head to another province.

“Quebec knows that most of them are leaving,” says Gomberg. 

“But they’re happy to be getting $1.2 million interest free for five years.”

Other provinces have complained because while they don’t receive the $1.2 million interest-free loan from the immigrant they then must pay for the health care of this particularly older class of new Canadian, says Gomberg.

How we did it

Canadian Lawyer asked lawyers, in-house counsel and clients from across Canada to vote on the top corporate and immigration law boutiques. They were asked to rank their top firms from a preliminary list, with a chance to nominate a firm that was not included. To be considered in the vote, firms were required to have at least 80 per cent of their business come from corporate and immigration law. The final rankings were determined through a points system, in which firms were rewarded on a sliding scale for the number of first to 10th-place votes received.

Top 10 immigration boutiques (listed alphabetically)

Bellissimo Law Group PC 

Toronto 

bellissimolawgroup.com 

Bellissimo Law Group PC is a recognized name in Canadian immigration with a focus on Canadian inadmissibility law and litigation. The firm’s work has resulted in success at every level of the immigration process including the Supreme Court of Canada. BLG PC is at the forefront of legal publications and is responsible for several national publications including Canadian Citizenship and Immigration Inadmissibility Law, Immigration Law Reporter and ImmQuest, all published by Thomson Reuters. BLG PC’s founder and principal lawyer, Mario Bellissimo, is certified as a specialist in citizenship and immigration law and refugee protection by the Law Society of Ontario. Bellissimo has taught several immigration law courses, lectured across Canada and appears frequently in the media on breaking citizenship, immigration and refugee stories. He acts on a pro bono basis for Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children and Pro Bono Law Ontario and is national immigration law and policy advisor for COSTI Immigration Resettlement Services.