"What is the best way for me to come and move to Canada?"

There are different ways to come and move to Canada as a permanent resident, and few of them are as follows:

1. Apply for permanent residency through Express Entry. This is the most common and fastest way to immigrate to Canada if you’re a skilled worker with foreign work experience. 
2. Become a permanent resident through the Student Pathway. Study in Canada as an international student, work for at least one year, and once eligible, apply for permanent residency.
3. Come to Canada as a temporary foreign worker. Once you’re eligible, apply for permanent residency.
4. Apply for nomination to any of Canada’s provinces and territories offering a Provincial Nomination Program. Once you get nominated, apply for permanent residency.

In my free-to-download guidebook, “So You Want to Come to Canada… Now What?“, I briefly discussed each of these pathways. 

There are also two other ways which I did not cover in my guidebook, and these ways are through the following:

1. Atlantic Immigration Pilot – a pathway to permanent residency for skilled workers who want to live and work in Canada’s four Atlantic provinces: Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and New Brunswick. 
2. Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot – a pathway to permanent residency for skilled workers who want to live and work in Canada’s small communities participating in the program. 

However, in this blog, I’ll focus more on the Express Entry pathway, more specifically the Federal Skilled Worker Program. It’s because this is the same path my husband and I took, so we are more familiar with it.

Here’s the story of our Express Entry PR application if you’re interested to know more. 

Express Entry is Canada’s online system used to manage the permanent residency applications of skilled workers with foreign work experience. This is also the most common and fastest way to becoming a permanent resident for those who are eligible. 

This is how it works according to IRCC (Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada).

You’ll find a better explanation of this in our Express Entry’s journey in the article.

The first step to applying through Express Entry is finding out if you’re eligible to any of its three immigration programs.

To find out if you’re eligible, you can do any of these:

1. Answer IRCC’s online questionnaire
2. Read the detailed requirements for each of the program (here’s for the Federal Skilled Worker Program)
3. Get a pre-assessment from a licensed immigration consultant (some offer this for free)

Yes, you can definitely do a DIY (do-it-yourself) application for Express Entry. 

Read here about Jo Anne’s successful Express Entry DIY application journey. 

Take note, however, that it might not be for everyone. 

I’ll be sharing soon a list of pros and cons in this blog, but you can also check out our Facebook group where Jo Anne wrote about this topic. 

Making sure that the agency you’re planning to hire is legally authorized to represent you is crucial in your application. If you happen to hire an unauthorized immigration consultant, your application might get delayed or worst, rejected. (Read this news about applicants who got rejected due to hiring an unauthorized immigration consulting firm).

In other common scenarios, these unauthorized consultants may simply scam you, stealing your money even before you start your application. 

In our future posts, we’ll give you tips and advice to avoid becoming a victim of immigration fraud. 

Compared to Express Entry (which is a fast route to becoming a permanent resident), the Student Pathway has two stop-overs. 

First stop-over: You need to study first for let’s say 12 months. 

Second stop-over: After you graduate, you get a post-graduate work permit (PGWP). Work in Canada for at least one year (within the jobs required by your target Express Entry program). Once you’re eligible, then you can for permanent residency through Express Entry.

I’ve discussed more on this in the guidebook, “So You Want to Come to Canada… Now What?”. But I’ll soon be sharing more on this blog. 

If you’re not eligible to take the Express Entry route, or you think you can’t afford to take the Student Pathway route, then this might work for you.

Just like the Student Pathway, this is also not a direct route to becoming a PR in Canada. It has one stop-over – which is to work in Canada as a foreign worker for at least a year (under the jobs qualified in any of Express Entry’s programs).

The Provincial Nominee Program is another option for you to become a permanent resident of Canada even without going through Express Entry, the student pathway, or the work-in-Canada route.

You just need to directly apply for a nomination to the province/territory you are interested in, and once you are nominated, you then submit an application for permanent residency to IRCC.

There’s an option for you to go through the paper-based process and send your application for PR by mail, but this might take longer than if you do it online and go through Express Entry instead.

On another hand, you may still need to go through Express Entry if you were nominated under the Express Entry stream.

In whichever case, getting a nomination makes you 99% sure of getting a PR visa. (With 1% depending on whether you can submit your documents completely, correctly, and on time).

I talked more about this briefly in the guidebook, “So You Want to Come to Canada… Now What?”