scott_b

Hi!

I recently visited Toronto for an interview and was lucky enough to have received a job offer. (I am a web developer)

It would be great if somebody could advise me on a few things:

1. How long can I expect the process to take? The company wish for me to start in the next 2-3 months and have agreed to work with an immigration lawyer. What are the chances the application will be processed in this time frame?
   
2. My girlfriend will be remaining in the UK to finish university. We currently share a flat. It's entirely possible that I will need to keep a bank account open to help cover half the rent after I have moved (approximately £400 a month). Has anybody done similar and if so what was your experience of transferring funds between Canada and the UK? Are there any accounts that are well suited to this?
   
3. How do you deal with the greatly reduced vacation time? I will be dropping from 6 weeks in the UK to 2 weeks over there (of which I will undoubtedly spend all of it visiting family/friends in the UK!)

Any help would be much appreciated.

chanceUK

negotiate more vacation

scootb

I didn't even have to negotiate,and have a weeks more holiday than I did in the UK,plus more bank holidays
LMO usually takes around 3 months.
Never sent a penny back to the UK.

angeljaye

Hi, we are in the same situation. My husband accepted a job in Montreal on a work permit basis at the beginning of July. They expected his start date to be Sept 3rd, then 9th & now it's booked for 23rd as permit isn't quite through yet. We are staying in Uk for further 2 months & while I sort out the move & rental of our property & will therefore need monies to be sent home. We have been advised to open an account with MoneyCorp as the charges are lower than normal banks so this is what we've done. My husband immediately negotiated vacation time same as uk and his company agreed without complaint.
Good luck :-)

Aviator

Depends on how badly the op wants/needs the job vs how badly they want him. If he has specialist demand skill-set they may go for it. If not they wish him luck with the job search and move on to the next candidate.

With transfer of funds, larger sums use an FX broker, small amounts write a cheque on your UK account and deposit it into your Canadian account.

haggis88

my company have been waiting on LMOs coming through for 2 guys from the UK since June...and they don't expect to see them before Xmas

Andy18913

My LMO application was sent in around the begining of May and the positive yes was issued on 28th June. So that was about 8 Weeks. That was in Ontario. Hope that helps. Sorry meant to say, that was in the construction industry.

KellieLouise

Hi, we arrived in Ontario a few weeks ago and have had to do some transferring between our Canadian and UK accounts. The cost has been quite high with RBC, but we discovered after opening an account with them that HSBC also have branches here. Although we haven't used them, my understanding is that if you open an English account with HSBC they can get you all set up with an account in Canada before you arrive and the cost to transfer money should be a lot lower. I might be wrong on this as we didn't actually do it ourselves, but you should be able to go into your local HSBC branch and ask some questions, which is better than waiting until you get over here.
Hope this helps!

Aviator

I have had a GBP account with HSBC and found them to be the most unhelpful bank to deal with with very poor FX rates. Stopped using the account. Been with RBC for 20+ years, they have always been helpful and on small amounts I have got excellent FX rates (for cheques), close to the FX brokers offered, although I have had to negotiate on occasion.

scott_b

Thanks for all the replies so far everyone!

Looks like the LMO process varies quite wildly so will report back my findings if everything goes smoothly.

You convinced me to negotiate some extra vacation and have received a new offer of a few weeks of "working from home" and will get an increase in vacation time next year too.

scott_b

So a little update on my situation. HRSDC contacted my prospective employer saying that we'll need to re-apply for the LMO as they needed to advertise the job to the Job Bank website and be explicit regarding salary.

The company have had the job advertised on workopolis, linkedin and their own site since August. Within software development it's not the norm to be explicit with regards to salary on offer.

Oh well, after 19 weeks of waiting it looks like I have another 8-12 weeks of waiting! >_<

Andy18913

Hang in there Scott hopefully this time. One of the changes they made last year around May time was it has to be on job bank as well as the other places. As you have found out it can be on 3-4 other places but if not on job bank it will get refused.

As for the salary. I had two LMO refused because of salary issues. Your salary has to be over the average for your job in the area you want to work. The second time I was refused was because the rate was something like 40 cents under the average for the job I was applying for. My employer uped it by $1 yes honestly $1 and the LMO came back 6-7 weeks later as a positive yes.

I hope this works out for you. If you have any questions feel free to pm me.

christmasoompa

Did they really not realise it had to be advertised on Job Bank or state the salary?!

If they missed that requirement, maybe suggest that they have another read of the HRSDC webpage setting out exactly what the advert must say etc - you don't want them rejecting it again because some daft person didn't bother to check the requirements!

Good luck.