Canadian Experience

Your experience working in Canada can qualify you to become a permanent resident
If you’ve worked in Canada legally for a year or more, on an open work permit through your partner, working holiday visa, post-graduation work permit, or NAFTA work permit, you may qualify to become a permanent resident through Express Entry.

What kind of work did you do?

Not every job qualifies you for Express Entry’s Canadian Experience Class (EE CEC) and work done on a student visa doesn’t count. In order for work to qualify for the skilled worker program, it needs to be in a qualifying profession:

  • Skill Level 0: Management – almost any type of job that includes manager or supervisor in the title
  • Skill Level A: Professional – most office jobs
  • Skill Level B: Technical – these jobs often require an Associate’s degree or apprenticeship of some kind

You can check the skill level of your job to make sure you’ll qualify.

Did you go to school in Canada?

The most common route from student visa to Canadian citizenship is to use the post graduation work permit to get the experience required for Express Entry’s Canadian Experience Class. Most Canadian graduates will qualify for Express Entry after a year of working full-time.

How is this different from the Federal Skilled Worker Class?

If you’re applying for the Canadian Experience Class while living and working in Canada you won’t need to show proof of funds, since you’re already settled.

You will have to show that you’re working legally (as in, providing a copy of your current work permit) and have paid your taxes.

You’ll only need to document your qualifying work experience in Canada. This saves you from having to dig up documents on every other job you’ve had since you turned 18.

All the ways you can move to Canada, legally

Your passport isn’t enough to allow you to move to Canada.

If you’re looking to immigrate to Canada, there are a number of pathways to permanent residency and citizenship.

Have skills

If your score is high enough, you can have PR status within 6 months.

Marry a Canadian

Marriage doesn’t automatically get you a Canadian passport, sorry.

Take a working holiday

If you’re under 35, you can try out living in Canada for up to two years.

What you need to know

There are a lot of things to think about before moving to another country.

Other options

There are a lot of ways to move to Canada. See which is the best fit for you.

Can you move to Canada?

Take the quiz and find out in 5 minutes.
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Serious about moving?

Get the full story in our book. Find out everything you need to know about moving to Canada without an immigration attorney, from applying for residency, to getting across the border, and getting settled in your new life.
Learn more
Buy now

The definitive guide to Express Entry

Do you qualify for Canada’s skilled worker program? It doesn’t require a job offer or even a degree if you have what they’re looking for.

How Express Entry Works

Exactly how Canada’s skilled worker program works, including how much it cost us and the timeline for our application.

Express Entry document checklist

A comprehensive list of the documents you’ll need for Express Entry, with or without a spouse.

How to improve your CRS score

These 9 ways will bump up your comprehensive ranking system (CRS) points without breaking the rules.

Moving to Canada
You get your visa to move to Canada.

What comes next?

  • Declaring yourself a landed immigrant
  • Getting pets across the border
  • Moving your things through customs without owing duties
  • Getting new IDs, enrolling in health insurance, and getting your SIN
GET STARTED

Canada is just like home.

Except for when it’s not. We share what we’ve learned to save you some trouble.

  • Healthcare in Canada
  • Finding a job in Canada
  • Canadian salaries
  • Cross-border banking
  • Understanding currency conversion
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Living in Canada
Living in Toronto

Welcome to Toronto

Toronto is Canada’s largest city, it’s financial capital, and a place where over 50% of residents were born abroad.

LEARN MORE

There’s more to being Canadian than watching hockey and saying ‘eh.’

Canada isn’t just a colder US, it’s got a culture and history of it’s own. They’re just too modest to brag about it.

  • Becoming a Canadian citizen How long it takes, whether or not you have to give up your US citizenship, and other things you should know before making a decision.
  • Kingdom of Canada How exactly did Canada wind up with a queen and what is a dominion?
  • Canadian Federal Government A 101 guide to Canadian politics
GET STARTED
Becoming Canadian

Overwhelmed?

There are so many immigration pathways and scenarios, it can be confusing to figure out the best choice for you — or even what programs you qualify for.

Luckily, we have a simple quiz that will help you sort through the options.

Take the quiz
Get the book

We moved to Canada without an immigration attorney or consultant and you can, too.

Now that we’ve successfully immigrated to Canada from the US using the Express Entry program, we’ve writing the guides we wish we’d had.

Get the full story

What other prospective immigrants have said about our book,
Moving to Canada: A detailed immigration guide from two Americans who’ve done it.

If you want the step by step process on how to immigrate to Canada, here it is. I found the book easy to read, inspiring, and very informative.

Laura J.I.

Useful for getting a general overview of the process all in one place, rather than searching around the internet.

R. Marshall

This book is clearly exhaustively-researched. Each section gives detailed information on how to begin the process of moving to Canada, with super informative with real-world examples and step-by-step instructions. I found the section on health care and taxes especially informative!

Briana Rubin

We are an American couple planning our immigration to Canada through the Express Entry program. This book has been very helpful to aid us in planning and organizing all the steps and timelines for the immigration process. It also has lots of other great information about the actual moving, landing, and transitioning process. If you are a professional looking to navigate through the Canadian immigration program this book is well worth the read. We actually are using it as a reference as well, keeping pages bookmarked and using the spreadsheets and timelines, costs, etc as a model for our own documents.

G.B.

 

A lot of the other books about moving to Canada talk about what it’s like to live in Canada, whereas this book talks about how to actually get there. A must have for anybody thinking about immigrating.

Carter

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