François Jean-Denis: the teacher, now in immigration
Jean Numa Goudou ·
Graduate of the École Normale Supérieure, François Jean-Denis led a life as a teacher for 12 years in Haiti before a serious incident violently pushed him out of his country.
A graduate of the École Normale Supérieure faculty, François Jean-Denis led a teacher's life for 12 years in Haiti before a serious incident violently pushed him out of his country.
At Collège Canado, in Sacré-Cœur, at Lycée français, at Saint-François d'Assise, he taught French, history, geography, even Latin. He prepared students in their final year for the French baccalaureate.
The year 2001 marked the return to power of Jean Bertrand Aristide and his Lavalas chimères. "One Wednesday, I still remember it as if it were yesterday," he says, "I was going to pick up my son from school at the Frères de Saint-Louis, and I witnessed a horrible scene on rue du Centre: Chimères dismembering a living man before my eyes."
At that time, François had held Canadian residency for a few months and resisted the idea of leaving his teaching life. "When I saw that, I said to myself: ah... I must leave, and I was right," he believes today in hindsight.
A start in insurance
But in Canada, his qualifications were not immediately recognized. To put bread and butter on the table, the teacher sold insurance for companies working as a financial security advisor.
"Every time I went to see people, they always had immigration forms to fill out. They would tell me: ah, fill this out for me and then we'll talk about insurance," which he would simply do.
Meanwhile, teaching smiled on him again in Canada. He found a position as a French teacher at École Nicolas in Gatineau. He left insurance behind, but not immigration.
Pioneer
In 2004, a first cohort of immigration consultants was to be trained under the instigation of the federal government. François Jean-Denis took advantage of this and became one of the pioneers among people, other than lawyers and notaries, who could represent a person before Immigration Canada.
While he was teaching in Gatineau, a snowstorm forced the schools to close and the principal of his school wrote a note to parents to inform them.
"His note had at least forty French errors," he recalls, "the students would tell me: you correct us, but look at what the principal writes."
François went straight to the principal's office to advise him to have his messages proofread before distributing official communications, which he took badly. "What country are you from?" he asked him. "You come from Haiti. If you're so good at French and your country has so many problems. Why don't you go help your country instead," the principal retorted.
Words that irritated François. He announced on the spot his resignation at the end of the school year, which he did. In June 2010, he permanently left teaching to devote himself solely to immigration. It should be noted that the earthquake in Haiti had just occurred.
Popularizing immigration
The consultant is not stingy with information about immigration. He shares it through all the networks he can find: radio, social media today. Everything. "But before, every week in 2009, I sent emails to summarize immigration information," François confides in an interview with Intexto.
"Today, lawyers tell me: you're preventing us from working. You give too much information."
François estimates he has helped several thousand people resolve their immigration files in Canada. Currently, he averages three hearings per week, or about 150 to 200 cases per year. Besides the Haitian community, he counts among his clients numerous communities such as nationals from Venezuela, in crisis.
His firm, Vision Max Services, is a victim of its success since the media attention on immigration issues. "People call a lot to verify information, we're like a kind of fact-checker. The phone never stops ringing. People call from everywhere," which creates an accessibility problem.