Canada Blog: From Work Permit To Permanent Residence

It took a long time before I decided to continue writing about our life in Canada. I wasn’t writing too much because many interesting and (sometimes) disturbing things were happening here, but now it looks like everything is fine again so it is time to tell our story here (see this and other following posts)

So, as you maybe noticed in this post’s subject, I’ve changed my work place. It was quite a painful process because my new employer is a company from the US. Actually, there were many factors which made this process painful and one of them was the fact that we didn’t know (we weren’t sure) that a US company could hire non-canadian citizens who are temporary canadian residents now. At the end we’ve retained really great lawyers (the best immigration lawyer in Canada and one of the best in the world) and they’ve helped us to fill all papers and make it easy to switch to the new employer.

My new employer is Scribd.com - online document publishing company which is in top-500 sites in the Internet now (and growing). My primary duties there as a Scalability Expert are “simple” - our site needs to be able to keep up with growing popularity of the service. I still work remotely from Totonto, company’s head office is located in San Francisco, California.

So, here we are, I’ve started writing new posts again And, to emphasize the major idea of the post I’d like to say it again: if you’re not a canadian citizen, you CAN switch to a new employer even if it is non-canadian company (at least it works for the US companies).

I’m going to apply for PR really soon, and thankt to my employer I’ll apply with 10 points for arranged employment. But as all people on Earth we’re pretty lazy and don’t like an idea of waiting few months for HRSDC confirmation letter… Today I called to CIC hotline and asked them how can we apply w/o this letter and they said, that if I have a valid work permit now, I can apply with photocopy of my WP attached now and then, when I’ll get new WP, I can send its photocopy to them. So, I don’t need to have a WP valid for at least one year from application date as mentioned in official docs.

Tomorrow I’m going to review all my paper ready for application and will describe this process thoroughly here. Stay tuned

I was going to fly to US at the end on May and it was my first visit to this country. So, entire visa system of US was really new for me and because it is little bit messy I want to describe it here in this short article.

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I will simply list here links to some useful sites with forums about Canada immigration and work permit abtainment process. If you know some different sites, please, notify me about them.

• http://www.canadaworkpermit.com/ - company provides companies and individuals with solutions for temporary or permanent migration for the purpose of employment and business in Canada. Site has great forum about workers immigration.
• misc.immigration.canada - Very active newsgroup about Canada immigration.
• http://www.immigration.ca/ - Canada immigration layer COLIN R. SINGER. Site has very active forums and some set of articles about immigration.
• http://www.canada-city.ca/ - Site about Canada, Canadian cities and some facts about live in Canada. Site has active immigration forum.
• http://www.russiancanada.com/ - Large portal of Russians in Canada with great forum.
• http://www.canada.ru/ - Russian site about immigration with very active forum.

Last Update: 2006-05-21

This week I have received letter from my prospective employer about some specifics in work permit obtaining process for IT workers. As you can see at Canada Immigration site, IT workers does not need to have job confirmation from HRSDC because for IT workers this confirmation is replaced by letter from employer with job offer and detailed description of position (with NOC code) and salary.

In response to the need of employers to fill critical shortages in the software industry, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) collaborated with Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC), Industry Canada and the Software Human Resource Council (SHRC) on the development of a pilot project to streamline the entry of workers whose skills are in high demand in the software industry and whose entry into the Canadian labour market would have no negative impact on Canadian job seekers and workers. Under normal circumstances, a foreign worker who wishes to work in Canada requires an employment authorization from CIC and a validated job offer from a local HRSDC office. If the HRSDC office determines that there are no Canadian citizens or permanent residents available to fill the position, the job offer to the foreign worker is validated and the worker may then apply for an employment authorization for admission to Canada.

Under the pilot project, the job-specific confirmation was replaced by a national confirmation letter which states, among other things, that certain software positions cannot be filled by Canadian citizens or permanent residents. The national confirmation letter removed the delay associated with the job-specific confirmation process.

To qualify for this simplified process, the job being offered must fit within one of specified job descriptions.

For your convenience, you can use following checklist to prepare yourself for applying for Canada Work Permit:

• Work Permit application form with three photographs
• Personal Information Form
• Use of a Representative Form [if applicable]:
• Offer of employment for job in Canada, stating:
  • duration of employment
  • nature of work to be performed
  • salary to be paid in Canada
• Letters of reference from your current and previous employers, including:
  • start and end dates of employment
  • description of nature of work performed
  • job title
• Educational documents related to your IT/ computer studies:
  • including marksheets
  • highlighting computer related courses
• CAQ if destined to Québec

If you want, you can download or read online very detailed guide about Applying for a Work Permit outside Canada by CIC Canada.

In one of my next posts I will say about Ukrainian specifics and how to write letter of reference. So, you can subscribe to RSS-feed of this site and you will get next articles directly from your RSS-reader.