DanA769

Hi there, new to this forum

Myself and my spouse wish to emigrate to Canada, we are both in our mid twenties and have the following

Myself a Sciences MSc with 2 years of technical work experience in Research and a year of work as a school sciences technician and her with a BSc and 2 years experience as a Registered Nurse.

We both would love to emigrate and work in Canada and start a new portion of our lives, were just a little stuck on how to get started, I believe to apply for express entry we would need work experience within Canada (Sorry if I am wrong, quite confused!). Ive also heard of the IEC and also the getting of a work permit so we can apply for jobs and get experience within Canada for Express?

Hopefully anyone out there can provide us with a little help and shine some light on the situation or opportunities

Many thanks and sorry for the long post, thanks for having me on this forum

Dan

christmasoompa

Hi, and welcome to BE.

Fab. Do look in to what your wife will need to do to work as a nurse in Canada - unfortunately it's a lengthy and costly process. There are lots of threads on the forum with good advice on them, so have a search and you should find some helpful info.

You are wrong! There's no requirement to have work experience in Canada for any visa route other than the Canadian Experience Class, which is only one of the 3 visa routes that come under Express Entry. There's no requirement for Canadian experience for a Federal Skilled Worker or Provincial Nominee Program application.

So if you're eligible for Express Entry, you could apply for that now, and that would be a fairly quick and easy way to get Permanent Residency. Just check that you're scoring enough on the CRS, you'll need to be above approx 450-480 as a rough guide.

Yep, that's another really good option as you're young enough. It's a 2 year temporary visa, but you could try and get PR underway before it expires. The visas for this year have almost all gone, but as it'll probably take your wife a year or more to be able to work in Canada, you could apply under next year's program?

HTH a bit, best of luck.

Shakyuk

My girlfriend is a nurse (degree qualified) and I have a BSc and MSc so you're sounding quite similar to us points wise for express entry.

However express entry requires and English test, credentials assessment (independent checking that your qualifications are equivalent to Canadian), a much longer form to complete plus police reports, medicals etc.

IEC requires much less, in fact I applied in about 10 minutes, the form is that short! If selected you'd then get 2 years to try it out and see if it is for you.

You're probably best looking at where you'd want to work and if your skills are i demand anywhere then you can focus on one area. From what I've read online many parts of Canada are struggling with the affects of the financial crisis, oil and commodities crash, much more so than the UK is.

Engineer_abroad

I agree with all the advice so far that IEC is the quickest and cheapest way. Assuming you use it to work in your field (which would almost certainly make it skilled) you would raise your points by having Canadian experience which would open up the CEC immigration route for you in addition to the others.

To provide some reassurance the company I work for has a number of junior engineers on IEC at the moment.

As Shakyuk has said you need to have a look at which regions would interest you and where your skills will be in most demand.