Rakhmad Sobirov

10/12/2026

Canada has a talent shortage. Not everywhere.

In some sectors right now, there are rooms full of qualified people already here, waiting for an interview.

If you're planning a move or a hire around the shortage story, that matters a lot.

One employer short on staff in one city tells you about that city. Pretty much nothing else.

So we look locally.

We check wages, how long jobs sit open and how many qualified locals are already applying.

In a flat, crowded field, newcomers compete with people who know the local market and have Canadian references too.

We say this on the first call. Better then than after the family's moved.

As immigration lawyers, we don't assume an employer needs you just because you qualify for the program.

When a client's plan leans on a national shortage headline, we go check the actual job postings in their city first.

10/07/2026

250,000 visas. Gone in one announcement.

The State Department confirmed it this week. A quarter million revocations since January. Overstays, criminal records, fraud, about 2,300 tied to birth tourism alone.

A lot of those people had built real lives around that stamp. Leases signed. Kids enrolled. Payroll running.

A business owner asked the Sobirovs team this week whether Canadian permanent residence can disappear the same way.

Short answer: no.

A visa is permission. A desk somewhere can pull it back, and the holder finds out after the fact.

Canadian PR is a legal status with a real process behind it. Losing it takes a hearing. There are appeal rights. The two ways it actually happens: missing the residency requirement (730 days in Canada over 5 years) or misrepresentation on the original file.

No one loses Canadian PR in a press release.

That distinction sounds like fine print until 250,000 families absorb the news in a single week.

Entrepreneurs still building around renewable work permits are carrying more risk than they probably realize. The status type matters more than the country name on the permit.

10/07/2026

Some founders applying for Canadian work permits are already Canadian citizens.

They just don't know it yet.

Bill C-3 passed on December 15, 2025. It removed the first-generation limit on citizenship by descent. IRCC's own guidance now says that in many cases, a person born outside Canada before that date to a Canadian parent is automatically a citizen. No application. Already Canadian, just waiting on a certificate.

Last week, IRCC's internal officer training materials became public through an access to information request. One worked example: a hypothetical American, born in 1998, whose grandparent was Canadian. Under current law, he is Canadian.

If you're a founder or executive planning a move to Canada and a grandparent was born here, you may not need a work permit at all.

No LMIA. No intra-company transfer. No employer, no category, no processing queue. You'd apply for proof of citizenship, then work anywhere in Canada, for anyone, including yourself.

This is the law. It's been the law since December. A lot of founders it applies to are still sitting in work permit queues.

So before I touch a work permit file, my first question is whether you already have status.

Is there a Canadian birth certificate anywhere in your family tree?

10/07/2026

The Start-Up Visa is closed and Canada's federal business target is 500 people a year. So what's actually open, and does your plan still work? Bring your questions.

🔴 LIVE: Wednesday, October 7 · 10:30 AM ET (Toronto)
📲 Ask in the live chat, or leave your question in the comments now

In this Ask Me Anything:
- Which provincial entrepreneur streams are open in 2026, and which are closed
- Buying an existing business: the 3 tests and the real budget
- C11 and intra-company transfer: when they bridge to PR and when they don't
- What to do if you're stuck in the Start-Up Visa backlog

Watch before the LIVE:
▶ Don't Buy a Business for Canadian Immigration Until You Watch This: https://youtu.be/YvUH7w8GkDw
▶ Every Open Business Immigration Program, Ranked: https://youtu.be/ZnuarpP0UuU

Rakhmad Sobirov, Managing Lawyer, Sobirovs Law Firm
▶ Strategy session: https://calendly.com/sobirovslaw/strategy-meeting
🌐 www.sobirovs.com · ✉️ [email protected] · ☎️ +1 416 895 3026
Subscribe for weekly immigration updates.

General information, not legal advice. Answers on the LIVE are not a substitute for a review of your file.

10/05/2026

🇦🇷 Argentina just announced it will sell citizenship for $350,000.

That headline is getting a lot of attention. The details underneath it are getting very little.

I spent time reading the actual structure of the program: the pricing, the bond route, the fiscal pressure driving the timeline, and the due diligence framework that, as of today, does not exist in writing.

I put my full analysis in a new article. No conclusions dressed up as facts. Just what the numbers say and what questions still need answers before any serious investor should move.

I also did a brief comparison of Argentina vs Canada.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/argentina-sell-citizenship-350000-should-you-buy-rakhmad-sobirov--oku8c

10/04/2026

10/03/2026

Are you tired of seeing negative videos about Canada? Then subscribe for unrelated Canadian positive content at random hours of the day.

10/02/2026

Alberta wants to change who picks you as potential Canadian.

For years the plan was simple: apply, wait on Ottawa, move. Now Alberta wants to select its own candidates, and the province someone picks may soon matter more than the program they chose.

Quick background. Ottawa cut provincial nominee spots roughly in half for 2025. Alberta got far less than it asked for. Premier Smith wants the kind of control Quebec has held for decades.

That fight will run for months.

For the person actually building a file right now, it changes less than the headlines suggest.

The real question is whether the rules hold still long enough to plan around. That's the thing that actually costs people.

Rakhmad tells clients this a lot. A strict rule is workable. A business owner can clear a high bar if the bar stays put. It's the bar that keeps moving that blows up a file, and those usually don't come with much warning.

Provincial streams already pause and reopen with little notice. More provincial control could mean steadier local rules. Or it could mean more moving parts. That part is genuinely unknown right now, and anyone claiming otherwise is selling certainty, not strategy.

So the actual homework for anyone mid-file: look at how stable a province's program has been over the last few years. This month's headline tells you almost nothing about that.

Build the file strong enough to survive a rule change. Because one is probably coming.

09/30/2026

Your PR file is complete. IRCC has everything. And it hasn't moved in months.

Here's what's actually happening. As of July 31, about 255,000 economic PR applications were sitting unfinalized. IRCC splits them into two groups. Seventy-eight percent are being actively processed. Twenty-two percent are waiting for room under the yearly admission targets.

That second group isn't a processing delay. It's a quota hold.

Those files are done. Submitted, reviewed, complete. They're sitting in line waiting for a seat in the Immigration Levels Plan, which the government tables before Parliament by November 1 each year. That plan is what decides how many people Canada admits in each category. Family class: 41% in that hold. Protection: 42%. Economic class has its own slice of that 22%.

A lot of applicants think it's a staffing issue, so they send another document, another web form, another follow-up email. If the file is in that quota hold, none of that changes anything. The only thing that moves it is the annual allocation decision. And that comes once a year, tied to the November calendar.

So before I tell a client to wait, I ask what status they can hold in the meantime. A work permit they control. A business that keeps running. A plan that isn't dependent on a number being announced in November and hoping their category gets enough room.

Some files need time because processing is genuinely slow. Others are stuck in a structural hold that no follow-up will fix. Knowing which one you're in changes what you do next.