Canada for Summer 2015

JellyBeans92

Hi All,

Myself and a friend are looking to head to Canada for the summer. We'll both be finished college and would be looking for some seasonal work but also maybe something more permanent too.

My field is IT, hers is equine/horses but both of us would be open to other kinds of work such as office admin, hospitality etc. We're not 100% keen on going over with no ideas or nothing at all lined up and atm all we can seem to find are the camp counsellor type openings..

Any suggestions of where to look and what could be good to look for would be really helpful, as we'd hate to waste time and effort applying for visas with no plan.

Faith

Are you talking about only going over for a summer? Canada does not offer short J1-type visas like the USA does. You can get a 2 year visa, no longer and no shorter. It would be a total waste, in my opinion, to only use a few months of a 24 month visa.

Assuming you want to use the full term of the visa, it's really hard to get a job before being on the ground in Canada. Even here, it's no walk in the park. Realistically, you'd need to budget about 3 months for finding work in your field once you're here. Places are not going to hire you before you have the visa in your hand, in 99.9% of cases.

So, basically, you have two options in terms of visas:

A Working Holiday visa (24 months) - get the visa, try to find work before you come over, but more than likely, you'll arrive with no jobs lined up and you'll temp or do seasonal/retail work for a few months until you find a position.

Young Professionals visa (24 months) - get a confirmed job while still in Ireland, apply for this visa. Like I said, it's extremely hard to gain employment while not in Canada, and even harder without a visa, so only a handful of these visas were issued last year (like, less than 100, I think).

A decent job website is www.indeed.ca - it searches the other jobs websites.

pharmaton

Faith wrote: »

So, basically, you have two options in terms of visas:

A Working Holiday visa (24 months) - get the visa, try to find work before you come over, but more than likely, you'll arrive with no jobs lined up and you'll temp or do seasonal/retail work for a few months until you find a position.

Young Professionals visa (24 months) - get a confirmed job while still in Ireland, apply for this visa. Like I said, it's extremely hard to gain employment while not in Canada, and even harder without a visa, so only a handful of these visas were issued last year (like, less than 100, I think).

A decent job website is www.indeed.ca - it searches the other jobs websites.

apologies for high-jacking the thread but I'm interested to know more. I'm considering looking for work but from what I can gather both these visa are only applicable if you are between 18 and 35, which sort of leaves me wondering if there is another way for me to gain access to seek employment there. (I'm 39, I have an adult daughter but I expect I will be a solo expedition, for now at least)

Faith

You can apply as a Federal Skilled Worker if you're over 35. I'm not too familiar with the process because it's changing at the moment and it's all up in the air. You can possibly try to get sponsored under the Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA, formerly LMO) but I don't know for sure if that (and possibly FSW also) has been rolled into the Express Entry group.

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/express/express-entry.asp

JellyBeans92

Faith wrote: »

Are you talking about only going over for a summer? Canada does not offer short J1-type visas like the USA does. You can get a 2 year visa, no longer and no shorter. It would be a total waste, in my opinion, to only use a few months of a 24 month visa.

Assuming you want to use the full term of the visa, it's really hard to get a job before being on the ground in Canada. Even here, it's no walk in the park. Realistically, you'd need to budget about 3 months for finding work in your field once you're here. Places are not going to hire you before you have the visa in your hand, in 99.9% of cases.

So, basically, you have two options in terms of visas:

A Working Holiday visa (24 months) - get the visa, try to find work before you come over, but more than likely, you'll arrive with no jobs lined up and you'll temp or do seasonal/retail work for a few months until you find a position.

Young Professionals visa (24 months) - get a confirmed job while still in Ireland, apply for this visa. Like I said, it's extremely hard to gain employment while not in Canada, and even harder without a visa, so only a handful of these visas were issued last year (like, less than 100, I think).

A decent job website is www.indeed.ca - it searches the other jobs websites.

Well we'd like to go over for about 3 months to get a feel for it, I'd be ok with doing an internship, or seasonal work. The problem with going to the US on the J-1 is that I'm eligible, but the other person I'd be going with wouldn't be.. Also, we'd like to go to Canada..

Does anyone know if you could, for example, apply for the 24 month visa, use 3 months of it this summer and then in theory go back again to try and find work after within the 24 months or how does that side of things work?
:pac:

jaymcg91

JellyBeans92 wrote: »

Well we'd like to go over for about 3 months to get a feel for it, I'd be ok with doing an internship, or seasonal work. The problem with going to the US on the J-1 is that I'm eligible, but the other person I'd be going with wouldn't be.. Also, we'd like to go to Canada..

Does anyone know if you could, for example, apply for the 24 month visa, use 3 months of it this summer and then in theory go back again to try and find work after within the 24 months or how does that side of things work?
:pac:

Once the visa is activated you can come and go within the 24 months.

So you could go for 3 months, come back for 3 months, and you'd still be able to go back for the next 18 months (just as an example), which is a total of 24 months.

JellyBeans92

jaymcg91 wrote: »

Once the visa is activated you can come and go within the 24 months.

So you could go for 3 months, come back for 3 months, and you'd still be able to go back for the next 18 months (just as an example), which is a total of 24 months.

Ok, so basically you can fly over for a few months, and come and go "as you please" within the 2 years.. if I'm understanding correctly?

Also, would anyone have any suggestions on where would be a good shout for us to look for seasonal work, I have decent French but she doesn't so I'd imagine that'd be Quebec fairly out of the question?

jaymcg91

JellyBeans92 wrote: »

Ok, so basically you can fly over for a few months, and come and go "as you please" within the 2 years.. if I'm understanding correctly?

Also, would anyone have any suggestions on where would be a good shout for us to look for seasonal work, I have decent French but she doesn't so I'd imagine that'd be Quebec fairly out of the question?

Yes. I know a girl who did this (she had an internship to finish before she could go), and she was able to do it just fine. Just remember to get 2 year insurance because they can ask for it at Canadian immigration.

Faith

Yeah, you can come and go as you please, if that's how you want to do it. But just be aware, you can only ever get one IEC visa, so if you decide at the end of the current one that you'd like to give Canada a proper go, you'll be in a much more difficult position visa-wise. Also, as said, you'll need 2 years of insurance (costs circa €350 - €450) and a minimum of $2500 in each of your (you and your friend's) bank accounts when you arrive in Canada.

What do you mean by 'seasonal' work? Like retail, or something that actually depends on seasons? I imagine there's lots of fruit picking opportunities in the Okanagan, BC, for instance.

JellyBeans92

Faith wrote: »

Yeah, you can come and go as you please, if that's how you want to do it. But just be aware, you can only ever get one IEC visa, so if you decide at the end of the current one that you'd like to give Canada a proper go, you'll be in a much more difficult position visa-wise. Also, as said, you'll need 2 years of insurance (costs circa €350 - €450) and a minimum of $2500 in each of your (you and your friend's) bank accounts when you arrive in Canada.

What do you mean by 'seasonal' work? Like retail, or something that actually depends on seasons? I imagine there's lots of fruit picking opportunities in the Okanagan, BC, for instance.

Ah ok, I thought you could get more than one, as in the Working Holiday, then a Young Professionals one after at some point if need be?

I just used the term seasonal because it seems to be the one used on most the forums for summer/temporary work. Basically we'd both be looking to just go and work for a few months at any kind of a job that pays rent etc. if we couldn't find something in our respective fields (IT and horses), though we both have experience in customer service type roles..

Faith

No, you can only partake once, so you can either get a working holiday or a young professionals visa.

You'll be able to pick up low paid jobs easily enough in most cities in Canada. However, it is a very expensive country so you won't have a particularly comfortable existence. A lot of your money will go on rent, and you'll probably be living in a shoebox.

I don't mean to put you off, but Canada as a whole has a much higher cost of living than most of the USA. That being said, it's a great country with lots of great things to do. If you're prepared to make some sacrifices, I'm sure you will have a great time.

circular flexing

Faith wrote: »

You can apply as a Federal Skilled Worker if you're over 35. I'm not too familiar with the process because it's changing at the moment and it's all up in the air. You can possibly try to get sponsored under the Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA, formerly LMO) but I don't know for sure if that (and possibly FSW also) has been rolled into the Express Entry group.

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/express/express-entry.asp

All economic PR streams are going to Express Entry (FSW, CEC, PNP etc..). You can still get a temporary work permit if you get a positive LMIA, but they have become a lot more strict about giving them out and they are more expensive for companies to obtain (since LMO became LMIA applications have dropped 75%).

The reality is that you will probably need a job offer before heading over as without a job offer you probably won't have enough points to quality under EE and an LMIA needs a job offer. There is a jobs bank with EE, so you can submit your application and maybe an employer will contact you with an offer.

Btw if your daughter is 19 or older, she cannot gain status through you, she will need to obtain her own status.

zweton

question is, why would an employer offer a job to someone here when they have the pick of the bunch in canada already! trades guys needed out in the middle of nowhere i understand but the average joe looking to go to van or toronto its going to be quite hard to secure a job from here, there is so much competition there already.

Mr. McGreg

Does anyone know when the visas become available?

jaymcg91

No it hasn't been made public. It'd be on the IEC 2015 thread if it had.

pooljinx

zweton wrote: »

question is, why would an employer offer a job to someone here when they have the pick of the bunch in canada already! trades guys needed out in the middle of nowhere i understand but the average joe looking to go to van or toronto its going to be quite hard to secure a job from here, there is so much competition there already.

Sorry but that's totally wrong about 8 of us came over for the summer and worked in seasonal work for the summer jobs such as landscaping the money is good and none of us took more than 3 or 4 days to find a job, the job market in Vancouver is excellent really, the high amount of competition is a myth really.