Steven and Gill Hannah

Hiya.

I am new to this forum. My husband and I are hoping to move out to Canada as soon as we can get the process started.

Trying to read and understand where to start is mind boggling

Firstly can you apply for a visa before either of us have a job offer?

A little bit about us : we are 26 and 30 and planing to move to Ontario. Toronto/Hamilton/ Burlington area or round about there.

I am a registered staff nurse with 6 years full time experience with a degree and my husband is an instrumentation engineer with about 9 years experience.

We are coming out in the end of September to stay with friends who have moved out in march and they just love it which is making me jealous lol.

My husband is hoping to speak with a company he used to work with here in scotland but obviously he is not guaranted a job offer.

So the question is: what is the first thing we should look into?

Help help lol

Thanks gill

Mikeypm

Someone may correct me but your options would be the IEC 1 working holiday visa, if your partner got a job offer he could get an LMO get a temp Work Permit and depending on his NOC skill level you may be able to get a spousal work permit. You are aware as a nurse you will need to study for the locally recognised certifications and so that can take time and is not as simple as walking into a job. Also in Canada they have technicians and Peng accredited engineers so may well be your husband may need to do some certification to get his foot in the door with employers.

Steven and Gill Hannah

Thanks for getting back :-)

Yeah Iv looked into me having to do exams etc for me to do nursing which I will start once I know more about the visas etc.


So how does a working holiday visa work?

Like for example if your working visa is for a year and by the end of the year your company don't need you anymore - do you have to go back home or can u try and apply for permanent resisdancy visa

Former Lancastrian

There are over 50 ways to get PR status. Basically the IEC programme allows UK citizens between 18 to 30 (still can apply if 30) to get an open work permit and work anywhere in Canada except in jobs that require a medical exam i.e nursing, daycare, teaching young children. You can apply for 2 x IEC programmes if eligible. Then you start talking about Canadian Experience Class, Federal Skilled Workers and PNP programmes.

Read this link re different ways to obtain PR
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/index.asp

Silverdragon102

Also not easy to register with the provincial college of RN's. You are required to be general trained with clinical and theory hours on your transcripts in Paeds, Mental Health, Obstetrics and Adult. Most provinces require some form of assessment and most seem to follow by required to do some courses.

Mikeypm

Your best bet would be to look into getting IEC and perhaps doing work outside your field and then whilst out there getting recertified. Once the IEC runs out it does not lead to any other visa, so you would need to use one of the other visa streams as suggested by FL. Another route would be going out on IEC and then recertify and find an employer prepared to support you through TWP or The PNP stream

Ailsa n Dave

You do not need a job to apply but it helps, a job is the quickest way to get over.

Steve's experiance would I think fall under either mechanical engineer or Instrument technician (most likely both over the past 10 years). Both of which are on the list for FSW applications.

You would have to start working on this now though, it takes a long time to pull together everything you need. You will need to get qualifications approved by a recognised body in Canada and you will both need to sit an IELTS english exam (they run them at Glasgow Uni). The principle applicant needs to get job references for the past 10 years... These things take a while so it wouldn't do any harm to kick these things off now.

Also make sure you have enough points... See the points scoring here, you should I think be fine but check!!: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigra.../apply-who.asp

It all seams very daunting to start with... but you just take it one step at a time and you get there

Good luck and happy researching!

Steven and Gill Hannah

Hiya.

Thanks that as cleared it up a bit about applying if u have job :-)

Yeah it is all daunting lol

Who is it you contact to get your qualifications approved? I keep reading that you need to get them approved but can't find who you contact. Coz as soon as that is done we will know if either of us have to do any courses to better out qualifications.

With my nursing iv read that our scottish training doesn't really mean much over in Canada. But I'll keep trying to find out more about this.

September can't come quick enough.

But I will try and convince Steven to start the ball rolling properly. I just think he's anxious lol

Ailsa n Dave

Try this link for your education assessment stuff:
http://www.icascanada.ca/fsw/home.aspx, there is a seperate one for medical stuff which might be more relevant for your nursing qualifications here: http://mcc.ca/2013/07/physiciansappl...s-maintenance/

This is the link for the IELTS exam at Glasgow uni: you will both have to do this, the fact you have been educated in english is irrelevent:
http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/mlc/languagecentre/ielts/

It takes about 3 hours and is 45mins each for reading, writing, listening and speaking. Some people study for it, I didn't and had no problem. You guys won't have any issues.

Steven and Gill Hannah

Thanks so much.

That is a great help

I prob will have a wee study of it just incase lol (Steven wont)

Sounds like you are all loving it over there.

Dave n Ailsa

I'm so excited for you guys!

As has been said, it's a long daunting process, and can get quite frustrating, even depressing at times, but holy crap, it's been worth it for us, lol.

Since Steve told me you guys were thinking about coming over, I keep seeing things that I think you'd be interested in. Today for example, we were out on a drive to a local zoo, and on the way back we passed a very cool riverside park, with boat launches. People were parked up all the way along, with boats and barbies, with speedboats towing water ski-ers along the river, and jet skis etc.
I could imagine me and Steve fixing up a boat for that, lol.

I spend a few minutes each night, on my deck, looking up at the stars and remembering back to the grey misery I left behind, thanking my amazing wife for making this dream come true for our family. I KNOW it was worth the hassle and stress, I hope you feel the way we do when you come over.

But back to researching...

There's only so much you can get from google and streetview, lol, but I used it as much as I could and it did help to a certain degree. Another thing I did, was join some car club forums while still in Glasgow. When we landed, I already had a group of friends who were happy to help with the integration process. You will find that networking here is CRUCIAL to success. We've even made good friends while out walking the dog at the local dog park. And hey, you even have a Husky, so you're already ahead of the game, lol.

You can message me here, or on FB if you have any questions, any time.