Moving to Canada

Moving to Canada et obtain a permanent status: your Canadian dream starts here.

The basics

Leaving for Canada will mean for most people, settling long term, with no working restrictions.

The permanent residency status allows for settlement in any province in Canada, to live, study or work there freely. This is a prerequisite for Canadian citizenship.

There are two paths to permanent residency: either following the obtaining of an initial temporary status in Canada (work or study permit), or, in a primary step from the foreign citizen’s country of origin.

Different paths, according to your chosen province

In Canada, with the exception of the province of Quebec, the main selection system for immigrants is Express entry.

Express entry operates on the basis of a points system allocated to eligible candidates who have enrolled in a pool according to objective criteria, such as: age, knowledge of English and French, academic achievements and professional experience.

Each month, the authorities invite candidates with the highest number of points to apply for Permanent Residency, which takes about 6 months to process. It should be noted that French speakers are allocated extra points under this program and therefore have an advantage.

In Quebec, future immigrants are selected via the ARRIMA system. Certain French speakers, already settled in Quebec, can also be selected via the PEQ system – Quebec Experience Programme. Once the provincial selection stage is done, the permanent residency application must be made to the federal authorities. Currently, it takes at least 3 years to complete these two stages.

Move to Canada: where to start?

Before starting the process for permanent residency, it is recommended to check your eligibility. As it is easy to enrol in the selection pool on the Express entry portal or to complete an expression of interest form on ARRIMA, many candidates for immigration find themselves with no real chance of an invitation.

Effectively, it is essential to ascertain the selection criteria for the different programmes, the frequency of the draws and the number of immigrants selected.

When applying for permanent residency for a long-term expatriation, you are encouraged to make inquiries in the different provinces.

Our services

Our role, as attorneys and Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultants, involves defining the best permanent immigration strategy with our clients; that is, to recommend the best-adapted programme for their projects and their profiles.

For this task, we take the following criteria in particular into consideration:

- Knowledge of French

- Knowledge of English

- Current and past work experience

- Completed qualifications

- Age

- Province of settlement

- Family situation

During the analysis process, we work where needed to recommend various strategies to improve the number of points, and therefore, the profile of our clients, for the permanent residency selection programmes.

Once the strategy has been defined, we provide a turnkey service: tasking ourselves with all the immigration forms, the preparation of required documents, as well as communications with the authorities. All information is collected in a secure manner.

In particular, we offer the future immigrant and his/her family a personalized portal onto which they can upload all the required documents. Nothing is done via email thus guaranteeing optimal data protection.

Once the application has been submitted, we keep our clients regularly informed and explain each stage of the process.

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