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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
- Toronto neighborhood guide for new residents from a New York perspective
- How to rent an apartment in Toronto without a credit history and without getting scammed
- Buying a condo in Toronto as a newcomer without standard documentation
- Setting up your first home in Canada Hydro, metered internet, and how to furnish your apartment.
- How to survive your first Canadian winter It's really not that bad.
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
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.
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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