By Jagdeesh Mann
Postmedia News

Nestled somewhere between the world of a high-flight Hollywood agent and the lowly tour guide is the working day of the professional immigration consultant.
The questions a consultant fields at the front of the bus are endless: what are the job opportunities, what do the locals like to do, does it really rain ALL winter?
And so is the anxiety of their clients over eventual rejection versus acceptance.
Manpreet Sekhon, the owner of Surrey-based Phoenix Immigration Consulting Services, knows what it’s like to answer those worrying calls late into the evening.
As an immigration consultant with over six years of experience, she has learned how to calmly puck-handle through a labyrinth of overlapping government departments, both in Canada and abroad.
It has also taught her what each client needs to make the process as smooth as possible, from the mothering words to salve a family class migrant to the cold hard data needed for economic investors to crunch through.
“There is no greater feeling than helping someone fulfill their dream,” says Sekhon from her office. “My clients all eventually become family. The glow on their faces is all the thanks I need when they come to express their thanks and blessings.”
Perhaps this balancing act comes easy for Sekhon due to the many personal victories she has claimed along the way to forging her own new life in the Lower Mainland.
As a youth, she migrated with her family to Vancouver from Faridkot, India, where her father was the sitting Mayor.
While Vancouver and Faridkot are roughly the same population, culturally they couldn’t have been further apart.
The transition to life in East Vancouver took some years, but the biggest shock came when she returned to India a few years later and found the locals calling her Canadian.
Sekhon felt like she no longer fit in anywhere - she had just discovered an immigrant’s sense of eternal dislocation.
That experience aids her today in understanding the journey her clients are beginning.
Eventually she settled into a career with the BC government, but when her position was downsized in 2003, she suddenly found herself again facing new beginnings.
With a young son at the time, Sekhon had to build a career close to home which would also allow her control her time while still making a good income. With the steady encouragement of her mentor, Harbinder Singh Sewak and her well wishers in BC Gov’t, Mike Carter and Chris Nelson, she enrolled in 2004 in UBCs one-year long Immigration Practitioner Certificate Program.
“At the time, the federal government launched the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants (CSIC),” Sekhon explains. “To become a full-member, one needed to pass the Full Membership Exam, which also has a language skills component. I was the first Indo-Canadian in Western Canada to gain that recognition.”
That achievement encouraged her to keep going to the point where today she employs two others and helps dozens of families, students, nannies, investment class migrants and young professionals each year.
She has also been contracted by local Canadian companies who have needed to hire foreign workers.
And between all these files she still finds time to do pro-bono work for women in the Indo-Canadian community who have been defrauded for immigration purposes.
Looking ahead, Sekhon brims with confidence about the future. When not spending time watching her son play hockey, she plans her days around working on more complicated and difficult case files, and helping those who need it most.
“When I first started walking down this road I had very little resources, just the desire to rise up,” she recalls. “That’s why I named my company Phoenix Immigration. From ashes I was able to re-create myself.”
“Now I help other people do the same; life is so beautiful that way.”

Company: Phoenix Immigration Consulting Services
Owner: Manpreet Sekhon
Number of employees: 2
Years in operation: 6 years
Email: [email protected]