Kay-Marie Fletch­er

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Like many Caribbean na­tion­als, Ka­iande De­von­ish once set out with a clear ca­reer path, one root­ed in sci­ence, pre­ci­sion, and struc­ture. Trained as a chem­i­cal en­gi­neer, the tran­si­tion in­to Cana­di­an im­mi­gra­tion law was not part of the orig­i­nal plan.

But through per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence and a grow­ing aware­ness of the chal­lenges faced by mi­grants, that shift be­came a call­ing.

Hav­ing per­son­al­ly mi­grat­ed to Cana­da through the Ex­press En­try sys­tem, De­von­ish` ex­pe­ri­enced the im­mi­gra­tion jour­ney from both a pro­fes­sion­al and deeply per­son­al per­spec­tive.

From ed­u­ca­tion­al cre­den­tial as­sess­ments and lan­guage test­ing to un­der­stand­ing CRS scores, doc­u­men­ta­tion re­quire­ments, and the un­cer­tain­ty many ap­pli­cants face, the process pro­vid­ed first-hand in­sight in­to the re­al­i­ties be­hind Cana­da’s im­mi­gra­tion sys­tem.

That ex­pe­ri­ence not on­ly strength­ened her un­der­stand­ing of the process but al­so shaped a pas­sion for help­ing oth­ers nav­i­gate it cor­rect­ly, hon­est­ly, and strate­gi­cal­ly.

Af­ter mi­grat­ing to Cana­da, De­von­ish quick­ly recog­nised a trou­bling pat­tern: many in­di­vid­u­als were mak­ing life-al­ter­ing im­mi­gra­tion de­ci­sions based on in­com­plete, mis­lead­ing, or in some cas­es, en­tire­ly false ad­vice. In her own words, “That’s where every­thing changed for me. I saw peo­ple spend­ing thou­sands of dol­lars, trust­ing the wrong sources, and un­for­tu­nate­ly fac­ing re­fusals or even bans for mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion. I re­alised there was a re­al need for hon­est, eth­i­cal im­mi­gra­tion guid­ance.” To­day, De­von­ish is a li­cenced Cana­di­an im­mi­gra­tion con­sul­tant in Cana­da with a clear mis­sion to pro­vide ac­cu­rate, trans­par­ent, and strate­gic ad­vice to in­di­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies look­ing to build a fu­ture abroad.

“What worked ten years ago sim­ply does not work to­day... Im­mi­gra­tion is no longer just about meet­ing ba­sic re­quire­ments; it’s about strat­e­gy, tim­ing, and un­der­stand­ing pol­i­cy shifts.” With evolv­ing cri­te­ria, in­creased doc­u­men­ta­tion re­quire­ments, and fre­quent pol­i­cy up­dates, ap­pli­cants who re­ly on out­dat­ed in­for­ma­tion of­ten find them­selves at a dis­ad­van­tage.

It is es­ti­mat­ed that be­tween 2020 and 2026, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4,000 T&T na­tion­als will have ob­tained Cana­di­an per­ma­nent res­i­dence, re­flect­ing a steady up­ward trend fol­low­ing the COVID-19 slow­down.

Da­ta showed most ap­pli­cants from T&T fall with­in the 25 to 44 age range. Many are em­ployed in fields such as health­care, en­gi­neer­ing, teach­ing skilled trades in­clud­ing weld­ing, plumbers, car­pen­try, etc, and peo­ple with pro­fi­cien­cy in french sec­tors where Cana­da con­tin­ues to face labour short­ages.

For De­von­ish, this work is not on­ly about pa­per­work but al­so about help­ing peo­ple find a new home and re­alise their dreams.

“My goal is sim­ple: to give peo­ple clar­i­ty. Even if the an­swer is not what they want to hear, it will al­ways be the truth.” This in­spired her start­ed an In­sta­gram se­ries called “Im­mi­gra­tion Sim­pli­fied” where she broke down dif­fer­ent im­mi­gra­tion path­ways and give gen­er­al ad­vice on el­i­gi­bil­i­ty and costs. That com­mit­ment has res­onat­ed with many of her Caribbean clients, par­tic­u­lar­ly those nav­i­gat­ing their op­tions for the first time.