If an alien can travel to meet us, and we have nowhere near the technology that we could travel to them, then yes they are far beyond our level of technology.
Since the question mentioned “civilization”, these are sapient beings, not just microbes or animals of some sort. While there’s still a chance of primitive life in our solar system, sapient life pretty much implies travel from outside the solar system and we can only do that in our fiction
How so? Aliens aren’t going to suddenly come into existence and have super-human technology in that same instant.
If an alien can travel to meet us, and we have nowhere near the technology that we could travel to them, then yes they are far beyond our level of technology.
Since the question mentioned “civilization”, these are sapient beings, not just microbes or animals of some sort. While there’s still a chance of primitive life in our solar system, sapient life pretty much implies travel from outside the solar system and we can only do that in our fiction