5 Mistakes I Made On My Path To Become A Permanent Resident In Canada & What You Should Know
These are the things I wish someone told me!
As a former international student and current worker in Canada, I was determined to eventually make my way as a permanent resident and secure some stability to live and work in the country.
I knew that getting a permanent resident card was not an easy feat, but I was willing to put in the work to make it happen. I researched the process extensively, reading up on everything from PR processing times to about Express Entry in Canada.
Regardless of which stream you choose to apply under, the process is more or less the same.
Here's how it works: you create an online profile and get ranked using the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) score. They consider things like your age, language skills, education, hours of work experience accumulated, and more to calculate your score.
Despite my efforts, I've made some mistakes on my ongoing journey to Canada's permanent resident status. Luckily, I had the help to be able to catch them in time.
Here's what I wish I knew as a budding applicant:
How to calculate my work hours
One of the key requirements for becoming a permanent resident is to have worked full-time in Canada for at least one year. However, it was only after I reached two years of full-time work is when I received an invitation to apply (ITA) to submit all my documents to the IRCC, as my CRS score was now higher.
During my first two years of employment in Toronto, I did several internships and apprenticeships with companies. While I was hired in a part-time capacity, I often took extra shifts and ended up working several weeks of full-time hours.
I learned the hard way that you have to keep track of hours worked every week for each job and find sufficient proof of each to make sure I can prove I wasn't just a part-time worker.
My failure to do that led to me miscalculating my hours several times, and I eventually needed to hire an immigration lawyer to for a second pair of eyes. Thankfully, we were able to sort it out.
What counts as full-time work
This was another rookie mistake on my part. I assumed that any job that had me working 40 hours a week would count as full-time work.
But as it turns out, the IRCC has specific guidelines for what qualifies as full-time work and only calculates work of up to 30 hours per week.
This is why I was only able to count a portion of my hours toward the requirement, which put me behind schedule.
Reference letters need a specific format
To prove my work and hours, I needed reference letters from my employers. I didn't know that the letters had to meet a specific criterion.
I thought a simple letter stating my start dates, salary, full-time status, and brief job duties would be enough. However, I learned that the letters needed specific details and examples of my responsibilities to determine if I was skilled or unskilled labour.
I had to eventually ask my employers to provide more specific information about my job duties and responsibilities to meet the IRCC requirements.
Documents should be collected ASAP
I made the mistake of waiting for an ITA before collecting all my required documents. I should've started collecting my documents as soon as I applied for PR and entered the pool.
As a result, I ended up scrambling to gather all my paperwork at the last minute, causing unnecessary stress and delays.
Freelance gigs are not a good idea
I took on several freelance contract gigs during my tenure as a budding journalist. I didn't realize at the time that freelance often means self-employed to the IRCC and doesn't count as official employment.
Thankfully, through declaration letters and notes from my employer, I was able to prove that I had an employer-employee relationship and wasn't working for myself. And since I submitted T4 tax forms, that worked to my advantage too.
But, the amount of stress and confusion it caused to be able to prove that I was actually a worker didn't feel like it was worth it in the end. If I had known this beforehand, I would've geared my time and attention toward different kinds of jobs.