Hi

I need some help, and hope this is the right place to ask.

I am looking to come to Canada. I have over 16 years IT experience and 5 years in Social Housing in the UK. I also have a Degree in Education Studies.

The help i need is as follows:

1. I want to find a job and get an offer to apply for a work permit before I come to Canada. I am finding this difficult. I have contacted and applied for numerous jobs in the Newmarket area of Ontario and get no replies. How can I find a job with an offer to get a permit.

2. I currently have a friends son staying with me because of problems at home. She would like him to come with me as he would have a better life in Canada, and like me get the chance of a fresh start. he is 14. What would I have to do to enable this to happen.

My main concern is getting there. I really want to be able to find a job and then come out. My other option, which would take up a chunk of my money already saved for this, is to come on vacation for a few weeks and see what happens job wise. Can i therefore apply for a work permit when I am there, and could I arrange, if my friends lad is with me, for schooling for him.

Any help would be gratefully received.

You should adopt your friends son while in england. This way he becomes a dependant of you for you application, it is easier doing it now rather than when you send in your app.

As for jobs i have no easy answer for you but just keep trying

Also your post could be better answered here in the canadian immigration forum as there are expets in there from time to time.

Even travelling with your friends child without some sort of legal dcoument waiver might be nigh on impossible unless you have some legal guardian status and can prove it at immigration. Even married parents get hassled sometimes if only one is travelling with the kids.

The job thing is a toughy. Unless you have a real scarce skill, or work in an area with an obvious shortfall here (like trucking, contractor etc), its really hard to land a job requireing an employer to get a work permit from afar...its hard enough for people with PR status who are not physically present in Canada to do

Emmigrating with him will be impossible unless he become a legal dependent, and then having both natural parents agree to the move might be necessary too.

Sorry to be so pesimistic, but thats life. Perhaps more optimistic answers could be found in the canadain immigration (nitty gritty details) forum.

Good Luck.

Hi

Many thanks, I am in the process of going through the guardianship stuff at the moment, that is bad enough and invasive.

I will have to check out what can be done. I know I have an aunt and uncle in newmarket, (my mums brother) And they have said something about custodian schemes if I was to apply for a work permit form him. Incidently they may be sponsoring my residency application.

I think my best bet is go over for a vacation in January as planned, which I assume I just need letters from his parents giving permission, and see how the land lies. Hopefully then I can go jobhunting and find out how I can legally get the lad in to school etc.

The special guardianship rules here in the UK mean that it may well be mid next year before that is completed. it is the samre process as fostering and adoption, even though he is distantly related.

My work skills are varried, i have a degree in education studies, 15 years youth and community work experience, 10 + years social housing and supported housing, and over 15 + years IT management (part time and contract) I am also an ordianed minister with the OEC in the UK, again I have 2 + years with that, part time, doing funerals, weddings, baptisms and marrigaes (both types M/F and same gender.)

Again many thanks


Paul

You might want to check into that...I not at all sure Uncles / Aunts can sponsor unless there is no other family in canada, and if there is an uncle and aunt, that may count as family?

Study permits at that age without a legal guardian also legaly present in canada might be a problem. Best to check this plan with the expert consultant types in the canadian immigration area of this forum.

The ordained minister thing might be a quick way into canada. Special rules apply to the (practicing) clergy as I recall wrt work permit requirements.

Here is a previous thread about job hunting in the computer field.

I believe it would be difficult to get a work permit on the basis of a job in the IT field. In order for you to get a work permit, Human Resources and Social Development Canada (HRSDC) has to issue a favourable Labour Market Opinion (LMO). They'll only do that if the employer can demonstrate he/she has jumped through lots of hoops, e.g., he/she has advertised the position and has not been able to find an able and willing Canadian resident to fill it. I don't believe IT people are in sufficiently short supply in Canada that you are likely to receive a favourable LMO.

Even if you do manage to get to Canada on a work permit with an adopted son, be aware that schooling policies vary from province to province and sometimes from city to city within the same province. Some public (meaning government-funded) school boards treat children of work permit holders the same as they treat Canadian citizens and permanent residents. That is, they provide them with an education that is, to all intents and purposes, free. But some school districts treat children of work permit holders as foreign students. In those cases they charge tuition of approximately C$10,000 per student per year.

Quite some time ago I did some Internet research on behalf of a poster who was bound for Ontario on a work permit. That search revealed that the whole of Ontario treated children of work permit holders as if they were local residents for tuition purposes. That is, they provided them with schooling that was close to being free.

The Calgary Board of Education, which I have found out by making more than one phone call to CBE, is rather odd in my estimation. They provide free schooling to birth children of work permit holders, but they do not provide it to adopted children of work permit holders.

No, your young friend would not be able to arrive in Canada on holiday and register for school. If he was not accompanying you to Canada when you came here on a work permit or permanent residence visa, he would need a student visa in order to study in Canada. If he came to Canada on a student visa, he would be regarded as a foreign student and would have to pay tuition fees in the order of C$10,000 per annum.

You could familiarise yourself with the different ways of getting to Canada if you read the Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) website.

It would be helpful to use CIC's self-assessment tool to find out if you would earn enough points to be granted a permanent residence visa.

Here is a list of commonly used acronyms. It helps to be familiar with the alphabet soup when you discuss Canadian immigration.

Just before posting my message, I previewed it. At that point I saw that you had responded while I'd been typing. It's good to hear that you will be coming to Canada in January. Then you can verify a lot of immigration-related information for yourself.

Now I'm going to say something that I very rarely say. You might consider hiring an immigration consultant or immigration lawyer. I say the opposite to most people. Some folks pay good money for an immigration lawyer when they could have handled their application on their own. Having an immigration lawyer does not save you from having to do tons of paper work. Even if you have an immigration lawyer, it is still you who has to track down the necessary documents, and there are heaps of them. All an immigration lawyer can do is make sure you have dotted all your i's and crossed all your t's. If your application is a straightforward one, and if you are methodical, you ought to be able to do it on your own.

But I suspect your case is sufficiently complicated that you would benefit from consulting someone who really knows the ins and outs of the Canadian immigration system. There are a few good immigration consultants who post on the Canadian Immigration forum here at British Expats. In addition to that, if you do a search on the Canadian Immigration forum, you'll find messages in which posters have mentioned immigration consultants with whom they have been satisfied. It is worth doing some research before selecting an immigration consultant because some of them are charlatans.

Hope that helps.