Educational Credential Assessment (ECA) in immigration processes: What it is and how it works

The additional assessment of credentials that the department of Citizenship and Immigration to Canada has put in place after the recent changes to the system of permanent residency, has created a lot of confusion among applicants. The biggest confusion is when applicants think that this process is to revalidate their professional credentials and that by obtaining a letter from the agency that is in charge of this evaluation, applicants are granted the permission to practice in their fields once they immigrate to Canada.

The Educational Credential Assessment (ECA) was proposed because if someone wanted to claim points for a certain level of education, these points were granted only if the education was indeed obtained. In previous economic programs, points were granted when individuals claimed they had an educational level of BA, Masters, or PhD. but some individuals obtained these educational credentials in a fraudulent manner.

To put a stop to this situation, CIC called in a specialized agency to receive and check the authenticity of these documents. The main goal of the ECA is to compare, not revalidate education. This comparative process can be used, among other things, to fulfil a requirement under certain immigration programs that grant points for academic credentials.

If, at the time when you are uploading your immigration profile under any scheme you plan to obtain points for education in your country of origin, you must keep in mind this evaluation, because if not, your points in this area will be zero.

The agencies that were named by the government to conduct this assessment, require that your educational institution in your country of origin sends a sealed envelope with all your academic documents directly to the agency in charge in Canada, otherwise, it is difficult for the agency to check the authenticity of the documents that will be evaluated.

If you have specific questions on how this program works and how to undertake it, contact us today.

We also offer translation services from Spanish to English, in case your institution only offers the documents in Spanish, we could directly provide the translations to the Canadian agencies through our translation services.