Whether you are a company or an individual, managing an immigration file has a cost, and it sometimes happens to be underestimated. Let’s focus here on the different notions to have in mind when you launch an immigration application in France!

Note that we will only give the costs from the immigration point of view: the tax obligations / HR / social security related to the hiring of a foreign employee are not mentioned in this article.

Legal costs

If you want to go through an expert who can provide you with advice, analysis and management of your immigration file from A to Z, the cost will vary according to the country of origin / destination, the type of procedure, the number of people traveling, etc. This price, which may appear as an important budget, should above all be considered as an investment, since the role of this expert will be:

• to prevent you from getting lost in research and misunderstandings that will waste your time and energy, by showing you the right way forward;
• to manage the procedure by optimizing the costs that we will discuss later, since he will be able to anticipate or even circumvent them (knowing for example that such a document is not necessary for such an administration of such a country, contrary to what is indicated) and avoid duplication (concrete example: requesting a birth certificate too early in a procedure often involves paying a first application.... and a second, when one realizes that the documents are outdated and can no longer be used!);
• to have a global vision of the procedure and its implications: an immigration procedure often goes through 5/7 different stages, each of them involving costs. The role of this immigration expert is to anticipate these steps and the costs associated with them.
• Concrete case: on a work permit procedure to Brazil managed on the one hand by an individual and on the other by an immigration expert, the cost savings can reach 40% when managed by the expert. Not included in this calculation is the economy of hair pulled out and migraines, of course.
• Concretely, paying an expert has a cost but greatly helps you save time, energy and money.

Translations/legalizations

This is perhaps the second largest budget in an immigration process. In many cases, documents such as diplomas, civil acts, extracts from criminal records must be legalized and translated before being usable in the host country. The step of determining which legalization is necessary already requires expertise and time: managing travel/calls/emails to the various authorities to understand how it works requires a few long hours and a lot of patience. Once you understand how it works ("Ah? I had to have it stamped first by office 24 of Building C which is at the other end of the city? Can I go and come back? Ah, you close in 10min and reopen only in 4 days...."), you will have to pay the legalization fees which, depending on the document and the country, vary markedly. These documents will then have to be translated. Generally, your immigration expert works with several translators and can offer you the most interesting rate (this is what we do at Oui Immigration) for a translation that will be recognized by the authorities of the country concerned. If you need a quote for legalizations / translations of documents, do not hesitate to contact us to get an idea of the budget to be expected!

Government Fees

Government fees are the fees imposed by a country's authorities to issue work permits, visas, work permits, residence permits, etc. They can cover different aspects of the immigration process, such as application processing, security checks, consular and administrative services, fees related to medical examinations, obtaining civil documents or criminal record extracts, etc. These fees vary depending on the type of visa, immigration category and host country. Government fees can be a significant budget in an immigration file. Concrete example for the United States: to obtain an intra-group work permit, it will be necessary to anticipate a budget of about 5000 €, solely dedicated to government costs and which will be used to pay for the management of the request, an "Anti-Fraud" fee, the express processing service (15 days instead of several months), plus the price of the visa at the Consulate. For France, it will generally be necessary to pay 99 € per visa, 200 € per residence permit and do not forget, for employers recruiting a foreign employee, the OFII tax.

Miscellaneous expenses

"Miscellaneous expenses" may include:

• Travel expenses
• Courier costs
• The cost of biometric photos, photocopies....

And all the other "small fees" that must be taken into account: if you or your employees have to go to the Consulate or any other authority to obtain documents or apply for a visa, travel will have a cost; if the documents have to be sent from one country to another, express courier services will have to be used; if the photos provided do not meet the criteria, they will have to be redone.

To summarize: an immigration file has a certain cost, which is generally quickly paid for by the expertise of the person you want to mobilize. And above all, going through an expert like Oui Immigration will allow you to reduce these expenses ... and your stress!

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