Janet filed to sponsor her family who fled Syria when the war broke down (under Refugee Sponsorship). She didn’t have enough money to retain legal representation to help her with the sponsorship application and followed the instructions on the Immigration Canada website. She was approved as a Sponsor and her family were promptly interviewed by Immigration Canada. All was going well.
Since Janet was the main Sponsor in the application she was the one who was also responsible for the settlement money that were put aside for the refugee family life in Canada. These funds were held by Janet in trust for the refugee family at Janet’s bank.
One day as Janet was online banking she mistakenly moved some of the funds from the Refugee trust account to her own personal account. Once she uncovered the mistake (a few months later) she promptly returned the funds to the trust account. Unfortunately for Janet, during the same time Immigration Canada requested an updated copy of the trust bank account to ensure that the funds were still available for the refugee family. When Janet sent the updated bank statement to Immigration Canada, she received a letter from Immigration Canada that they had concerns with the availability of the money. In addition, Immigration Canada suspected that Janet lied in her application and misrepresented the availability of the money for the refugee family.
Janet came to Legally Canadian for help to reply to Immigration Canada about the banking error. In Janet’s case it was important to show that this banking error was simply an error and not Janet’s attempt to remove money from the Refugee trust account. It was also important to show that despite this banking error Janet still had more than enough money to put aside for the refugee family. Otherwise, there was a good chance that the Sponsorship application would have been denied, and Janet could not have sponsored them again.
So what happened?
We prepared a very detailed response with a sworn statement to show Immigration Canada that there was no intentional attempt to take the money away from the refugee family. The family has since landed in Canada and have settled into their new life safely.