Dear Reader:
This book is written for the people who intend to immigrate to Canada through independent (skill worker) immigration category. Generally, if you have a university degree, minimum one year professional work experience (even gained in your own country), and certain communication ability in either English or French, you may meet Canadian independent immigration criteria. The book helps you find out whether you qualify, where to start, how to correctly define your projected occupation in Canada, and file high quality immigration application, how to prepare and answer immigration interview questions, and the experience of those who made successful applications.
You will find answers of the following FAQ questions (and much more):
1) What are the general requirements, education/skill criteria, application fee, and overall financial requests?
2) Where and how to apply from the country an applicant is residing?
3) How long an application process takes in Canadian Consulate located at different countries? Can you and how to chose a
Canadian Consulate that processes faster?
4) Can you file high quality application by yourself ? If necessary, what exactly you need to pay for quality consulting or lawyer
services at reasonable cost ?
5) Why and how to conduct Canadian professional association immigration assessment? What are the major reasons of unsuccessful
assessment, and how to avoid them.
6) What is General Occupational List (GOL) used in independent immigration? What is Canadian National Occupational Classification
(NOC) system? What are the Canadian professional NOC job code, job title, job duties, job descriptions, and related job titles of
applicant's occupation? How to use the NOC information to correctly define your occupation which is acceptable to Canadian immigration
selection system.
7) How to write a professional resume to effectively transfer education, work experience gained even in applicant's own country
to satisfy immigration officers? How to translate academic transcripts (if original one not in English/French) and write course
descriptions to comply with Canadian university standard?
8) How to write a immigration reference letter? What is the basic layout of such a letter?
9) What kinds of letter immigration officers will mail to you and how they looks (samples)?
10) How to prepare immigration interview? What update documents you should prepare for? How the immigration visa officer evaluate your
motivation, readiness during the interview? What are the frequently asked interview questions and how to answer them satisfactorily?
The examples of handling difficult situations, recently recalled interview description, questions and answers from applicants who passed
interview in different countries.
11) What are the general job market in Canada? Where and how to find a job in Canada? Do you have to adjust your occupation? How to
make the adjustment if you failed to find a job in your occupational area ?
12) How long do you have to live in Canada in order to become a Canadian citizen? Can you study and work outside of Canada without
losing your permanent resident status? How easy for a Canadian citizen to work in USA?
This book is not only a practical "road map" of independent immigration application. It also contains valuable information such as useful tips, successful experiences, interview questions from those who have gone through the whole immigration process. You will not be able to find the complete valuable information from any official documents or other publications that only provide general information and procedures. In addition, the book adopts a "white box" approach to reveal all the steps and their details in the independent immigration. We give readers the choices of whether or which level of immigration consulting service are necessary in their individual cases. We do not take "black box" or "gray box" approaches which usually lead to unnecessary high cost to the applicants. If you believe that your future is important, you are the person who knows yourself the best, and your time is valuable, then you need this book to guide your application on the right track and to save your valuable time and money. You need to focus your energy on more important aspects of preparation that visa officers expect from you, rather than spending a lot of time on searching or guessing the information that we have compiled altogether in this book.
With this book, first you can make a quick assessment of your qualification by inputting the information about your age, education, work experience etc.. Second, the book reveals all the necessary steps to complete the whole immigration process. Then it teaches you, in detail, how to complete each step.
This book will help many readers complete application independently. Even if some readers may still need assistance, with the knowledge and information disclosed here, these readers can clearly examine what are the cost-effective services, and what exactly they pay for. You can stay on top of the immigration procedure and clearly examine the quality vs. the cost of existing immigration consulting services.
As a practical "road map", the book provides you with all the mailing addresses, phone numbers and web sites for you to obtain application forms, prepare your application documents, file application, expect medical examine and prepare interview.
You will learn important tips about application preparation. For example, you will learn how to prepare your resume according to Canadian National Occupational List standard (how to get this list and what are the sample resumes). You can find typical excellent resumes for mechanical engineer, test engineer, electrical engineer, electronic engineer, construction engineer, computer programmer, system/program analyst, and research analyst, etc.. In the meantime you will learn what skills are in greatest shortage in Canada, and how you can prepare yourself to get appropriate training to sooner enter Canadian job market. The knowledge you learn here will help you answer the most important question that could be asked in the interview: Given your education and experience, how can you get a job in your occupation and contribute to Canadian economy and society ?
The first author, Y.O' Neil, is a Canadian citizen with nearly ten years professional experience in Canadian federal government, university, financial institution, and hi-tech industry. As a senior immigration consultant he helped many people settled in Canada through independent immigration application. The other author, Larry L.Wong became permanent resident of Canada after personally experienced the whole independent immigration process. For instance, one interview question he was asked is "Could you describe the most important project in your job?". Besides the author's experience, the book was written also based on extensive consultations, inquiries, and discussions with many successful applicants, Canadian immigration lawyers (attorney at law), formal Canadian immigration visa officers, current officers/staffs in Canadian Immigration Centers in several regions of the world, and experts of a number of immigration consulting firms.
The authors also constantly collect information and make inquiries on general policies from Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Human Resource Development Canada, Industry Canada, Statistics Canada, Canadian professional associations (i.e. CCPE, CCTT and CAOT), provincial governments in Ontairo, Quebec etc.. Many such general policies could affect immigration applicants and/or new immigrants.
The authors also run their own company, Global Canadian Immigration Service(GCIS), which is specializing in independent (skilled worker) immigration to Canada. GCIS has clients and business associations in Canada, Japan, Hong Kong, England, South East Asia, China and USA. The policy of GCIS, as reflected in this book, is to serve people with honesty, efficiency, and high quality at competitive rate. All our client's immigration cases are carefully reviewed by an experienced Canadian immigration lawyer who belongs to AIL association, the most reputable attorney at law association in Canada/USA..
All the information provided in this book is believed to be accurate by the time of the publication. However, all the policies, phone numbers, web sites, and mailing addresses etc. are subject to change without notice. The book is not a publication representing the official policy of Canadian government or other official authorities. The opinions in the book only reflect the experience and policy interpretation from the authors. The book also should not be treated as legal advises. We suggest the readers verify and confirm all the information using the addresses provided in this book. The authors will periodically update the information in the future versions.
Good luck in your future endeavors.
Authors
Acknowledgment:
Thanks go to the following parties:
Rai & Associates for Canadian labor market information. Many applicants for providing first-hand information about
concerns and experience of interviews. WK international in Hong Kong, BCL service in London, Information center of Canadian Consulate in
Hong Kong for clarifying and discussing the most recent policies and information, a number of lawyers (attorneys at law for the
support). Last but not least, the author appreciate Ms. Sharon S. Lee for
the editing and typing work.
Published by
Global Canadian Immigration Service (GCIS)
P.O.Box 4932
Wheaton (Chicago) IL
USA 60189
Important Remark
To help you quickly understand whether you can qualify immigration
or
not (therefore decide whether it is worth to order the booklet),
we
provide you with brief information after the order information.
Please
check the information before you proceed. Of course, the brief
information cannot cover all the professional majors.
If you are interested in applying for immigration via GCIS, please
send a brief information about
you health, age (whether between 21-44), degree(detailed major),
brief
work experience (how many years). Please include your e-mail
address
in the mail. Due to large amount of the inquiries from all over
the
world, we cannot answer all the inquires via e-mail or phone. As a
matter of fact, many of these questions are clearly answered in
our
booklet. However, we will give our e-mail, phone and fax number to
serious people who have sent us their resumes or reviewed the
booklet
and need further individual consultations. GCIS's correspondence
information is also printed on the back cover of the booklet or in
Chapter 7.
The price of the booklet is $23.US dollars. Add $3.00US dollar for postage if you are in USA/Canada/Mexico, and $5.00US dollars if you order from elsewhere in the world. We will ship the booklet via air mail within 48 hours once your order is received. If you need courier services, add the correct the amount. Otherwise, your order will be shipped via regular air mail. For many applicants, the booklet can keep you on the right track of independent immigration and save you several thousand US dollars immigration lawyer fee.
To order booklet, make the money order in US dollar or check (only acceptable in USA) payable to Global Canadian Immigration Service.
Refund Policy: If you do not satisfy with the contents or consider that the booklet not informative, send back the booklet in seven days after you receive it. We will refund your purchase price.
"The purpose of this assessment is to evaluate the likelihood of acceptance into the examination program by a provincial or territorial engineering association.
A positive outcome is valuable advice to visa officers. They take it into account when they assess your application for permanent residence in Canada. It does not guarantee they will approve your application, but it will be a factor in your favor.
A negative outcome is valuable advice to you. It tells you that applying to immigrate to Canada with the intention of working there as an engineer is unrealistic.
The assessment result is used for occupational designation for immigration purposes only. You are not granted a license to perform some professional engineering job just because you obtain a positive assessment result.
We suggest that you first obtain a form from CCPE office. Then fill out the form and prepare all of the required documents, mail them to CCPE office. You should receive CCPE assessment result from CCPE office after the assessment is completed.
The total assessment time is 4-6 weeks. The result of this informal review leads only to occupational designation for immigration purposes and will not have any bearing on the final decision of the licensing authority in Canada.
It is important that you at least have a bachelor degree in engineering in order to obtain a positive assessment from CCPE. CCPE evaluates your degree, transcripts and work experience to reach a conclusion. Before submission of CCPE assessment request, you may review appropriate engineering degree programs offered by Canadian universities. For example, you can look up the course or thesis/project request to compare with the education programs you completed.
If your degree is science rather than engineering, we suggest you contact CCPE office first before submitting the CCPE assessment application. A negative CCPE assessment result is worse than not having the CCPE assessment result at all.
CCPE also has its own criteria to evaluate the institution(s) you attended. If you doubt whether the institution(s) can meet the CCPE requirement, please check with the following criteria, and provide your supporting material together with your first application. Upon supply the supporting material listed below, you can speed up the CCPE assessment and get a positive assessment result soon.
Criteria for CCPE Recognized Institutions
There are nine criteria. Criteria 1 and 2 are about the
country
and must both be satisfied. The institution must meet at least
four of
the remaining criteria 3 through 9.
1. In countries where more than one designation is used for
engineering degrees, only those designations which are considered
to
be professional level qualifications within that country shall be
included. The next criterion(criteria 2) must also be satisfied.
2. The educational system must include at least 16 years of
schooling
of which minimum years are at university level. Both criteria 1
and 2
shall be satisfied.
3. Minumum of two different engineering program are offered.
4. The institution has been providing degree programs at the
university level for twenty years.
5. Average or overall institution teaching staff student ratio is
not
smaller than 1:30. In other words, the student teaching staff
ratio is
not more than 30:1.
6. The are at least 100,000 volumes in the institution library.
7. The institution is a member of the Association of Commonwealth
Universities or the International Association of Universities.
8. There are higher engineering degree programs in the
institution.
9. There is evidence of scholarly engineering research for the
institution.
Again, check appendix 2 to start CCPE assessment.
2.3 Other assessments
_."
5.6 Examples of recalled interview descriptions_
(note: Even if few editorial changes were made in one of the
interview cases given below, we delete the true names and some
figures
to protect the privacy of the parties.)
"I arrived in Beijing 2 days before the interview date, and
entered
the Canadian Embassy to make sure the interview was scheduled
according to the Interview Notice Letter and to get familiar with
the
environment( with a file number an applicant is allowed to enter
the
Canadian Embassy to inquire the status, immigration interview is
arranged on the 3rdfloor, North Gate ). There were six applicants
waiting for interview in the afternoon (a day in fall 1998). When
submitting the required original documents, I learned from an old
Chinese lady complained that all documents should have been
presented
in order and in ONE time, or it would make a mess since there were
six
immigration visa officers. This lady is responsible for collecting
required documents and conducting preliminary assessment of the
applicant's English language proficiency. One middle-aged
petroleum
engineer from XXXX could not understand the word "specify" in the
sentence "please specify your work place?", then disappointment
showed
on her face. But the middle-aged man was still allowed to proceed.
After about 15 minutes, my ticket number showed up on the display
screen. By the way, my interview was scheduled the first at the
day.
My interviewer was a dignified, friendly lady, around XX years
old,
whose first name was XXXX. She picked up my application form,
starting
with "how do spell your name?", then she checked the form item by
item, asked questions while writing down my answers.
About my education background: She picked out my original
certificates
of degree & graduation, qualification and transcripts to compare
with
the corresponding notarized ones, wanted me to describe what the
course "digital image processing" was about. About my work
history:
Since I applied as an XXXX engineer with positive result from
CCPE, no
special questions about computer skills were asked, I suppose she
is
not familiar with computer engineering because she wrote down on
paper
instead of keying in. Here are her questions and my answers:.
"what
are major duties of your current job?", " how much time do you
spend
on xxx and xxx respectively?" Answer: lecturing, research
/engineering
projects, detailed course description, time arrangement,
engineering
projects were emphasized. "what did you do in your past job
positions." Answer: job title, job responsibilities, relevant
engineering projects, no details. She picked out the letters of
reference from employers and asked for more details about the
duties.
"why did you quit the part-time job?" Answer: to focus on my
research
project, and presented the materials about that project which won
awards.." What project are you working on recently? "Answer: the
abstract of a paper published, more technical terms; stress the
importance of the project to the economy and the advanced
technology
employed. * she did not interrupt me during my introduction (at
least
8 minutes )."How do you assess your English language skill, which
is
the best and which is the most difficult for you among speaking,
writing, reading. Answer: " I am fluent in reading, writing and
speaking. Sure, reading is the easiest, and speaking the most
difficult for me". then I was given about 2 minutes to finish
reading
half page of a booklet and paraphrased in my own wording, it was
about
XXXXXX, a globe embraced by a maple leaf." How will you find a job
in
Canada?", "do you know any other job hunting tools besides
Internet?"
Answer: via Internet, emails from Canadian recruiting agency;
HRDC"
How will you prepare for the initial settlement if you pass the
interview?" Answer: letter from my friend stating his willingness
to
help. Deposit amounted to RMB XXX _Finally, she said " I am happy
to
say you have passed the interview, formal notice in writing will
be
sent to you", and she gave me the medical forms for my family..."