📍 Editor’s Note
👋 Hiya,
There is a specific kind of anxiety that hits Nigerian professionals in Canada around the three-year mark. You have been here long enough to know how things work. You have a job, a routine, people you trust. And then someone asks — sometimes a family member, sometimes just a voice in your own head — "so when are you getting citizenship?" And you realize you have been meaning to look into it for months, and you still do not quite know how the process actually works.
That is what we built the citizenship piece for this week. Alongside that:
What happens when you file the wrong kind of proof application and the document chain falls apart?
A practical pre-departure guide for students who are still treating their visa approval as the finish line rather than the starting one.
And on Abraham’s List this week is ApplyBoard; a Waterloo-based, $4B valuation, and probably the most directly relevant company we’ve featured for anyone who has ever had to navigate the international student application process. Can’t wait for you to dig in.
— Dami
THIS WEEK'S TOP STORY
How to Get Canadian Citizenship in 2026 Without Getting Lost in the Process
1,095 days of physical presence. A fee that went up to $653 in March. A citizenship test that is now online-first by default. And the most expensive mistake in the process: treating a citizenship-by-descent case like a standard grant application, or vice versa. This is the citizenship guide that explains what actually matters in 2026, without assuming you already know how the system works.
CITIZENSHIP
Proof of Canadian Citizenship Applications Are Getting More Attention.
Here’s How to Avoid the Mistakes That Slow Them Down.
More eligible people, more returned files. Canada’s 2025 citizenship-by-descent changes created a new wave of proof applications and a new wave of people learning the hard way that qualifying is not the same as filing correctly. The wrong photo format. A black-and-white copy where colour was required. A missing marriage certificate that breaks the descent chain. Pre-1994 Quebec records that require special handling. Blank fields where N/A should have gone. Any one of these can send a complete-looking file back to the start of a 12-month queue. This piece is about not being in that group
STUDENTS
What International Students Should Actually Sort Out Before Landing in Canada
A study permit approval is not the same thing as being ready to arrive. The documents that cleared your application may need rechecking as a travel system, not just as individual files. Your accommodation plan may have more fraud risk than you realise if you are paying deposits from abroad. Your finances may be strong enough for the visa threshold but not strong enough for the actual first month. And your weather research may be the difference between functioning and just surviving the first semester. This is the pre-departure guide for the students who are still treating the visa as the destination
ABRAHAM’S LIST 🔥 |
This Week: ApplyBoard Vancouver, BC · LegalTech · Series F · Founded 2008 If you have ever tried to navigate international student applications the traditional way: emailing schools directly, translating credential requirements, figuring out which programs are actually realistic for your profile — you already understand the problem ApplyBoard was built to solve. Martin Basiri founded the company in Waterloo in 2015 after experiencing that confusion himself as an international student from Iran. The platform now connects students in over 150 countries with more than 1,500 educational institutions across Canada, the US, the UK, and Australia. |
Valuation | $4B |
Total Funding | $475M |
Risk Level | Medium — Series C, pre-IPO, education sector exposure |
Equity Upside | 2–3x |
Clients | 1,200+ |
Best For | Product, Engineering, EdTech professionals |
Why Abraham’s List? Each week, we spotlight one Canadian startup that aligns with you and may just get you out of the trenches
I think it’s very prudent that our three pieces this week are all, in some way, about the same thing: the gap between where you are and where you want to be in Canada, and what precision looks like when you’re trying to close it. I hope they’ve all been helpful to your next moves!
See you next week,
The New Local Team