As of 11 December 2011 Live-in Caregivers will get open work permits immediately upon filing completed applications for permanent residence. This is very good news because previously it took about 18 months to obtain an open work permit.

The Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP) allows Canadian families to hire workers from abroad to provide care to a child, an elderly person or an adult with disabilities. After working two years or 3,900 hours they are eligible to file an application for permanent residence and an application for an open work permit. As of December 11, 2011, all live-in caregivers who made an application for permanent residence and filed an application for an open work permit with no missing information are being issued open work permits. This underscores the need to file complete and accurate applications in order to benefit from this program.

- Dennis McCrea

We are very pleased to welcome Chi-Young Lee (“Chi”) to our team at McCrea & Associates. Chi has recently been called to the Bar of B.C., and has travelled and worked around the world. We are very excited to have her join our team! You can view Chi’s Profile here.

Canada and Mexico have recently established a student work abroad – working holiday program. Mexican students who would like to spend up to a year in Canada working are eligible to apply for a visitor visa and a one-year work permit.

Having the opportunity to visit and work in Canada provides a wonderful chance to see the country and gain some valuable Canadian work experience at the same time. It may also lead to opportunities for strategies to obtain permanent residence in Canada subject to obtaining an appropriate job offer and federal or provincial approvals for a further work permit.

It is critical to get good information and assistance with respect to any work permit for permanent resident application. Contact McCrea & Associates with respect to any Canadian immigration or citizenship related matter and we would be happy to discuss options.

For more info, visit the Canadian Embassy in Mexico website.
Eligibility Criteria
This category is designed for Mexican citizens, who are registered students at a post-secondary education institution in Mexico, who intend to travel in Canada and who wish to obtain temporary paid employment in order to supplement their financial resources (maximum 12 months).
To be eligible for the Working Holiday category you must:
1. Be 18-29 years old inclusive at the time your application is received. Your application must be stamped as received by The Embassy of Canada in Mexico City on or after your 18th birthday, and before your 30th birthday;
2. Be a Mexican citizen holding a Mexican passport that remains valid throughout the period of stay in Canada. This means that at the time of application your passport should be valid for approximately another 26 months to account for the application processing time of 8 weeks, the one year validity of the Letter of Introduction, and the normal stay of 12 months. When the work permit is issued upon arrival in Canada, it will not be longer than the validity of the passport.
3. Have, prior to departure, a round trip ticket or sufficient financial resources to purchase such a ticket;
4. Have proof of the financial resources necessary (CAD $2,500) to provide for your needs at the beginning of your authorized period of stay;
5. Not be accompanied by dependant(s) under your IEC application;
6. Purchase, prior to entering Canada, insurance for medical and health care, including hospitalization and repatriation, for the entire authorized period of stay;
7. Be registered at a post-secondary education institution in Mexico;
8. Pay the Program Participation Fee in Mexican pesos; and
9. Not have participated in the Canada-Mexico Youth Mobility Arrangement in the last 3 years.

The simplified entry process for information technology (IT) specialists is a special work permit category that allows certain types of IT workers to apply for Canadian work permits without the need to obtain a Labour Market Opinion from Service Canada. The category was created as a pilot project in 1997, and came to an end in most of Canada on 1 October 2010.

However, by special agreement with the government of British Columbia, the category has been temporarily extended in BC.  If you are an employer in the IT sector in BC and are seeking to hire foreign IT specialists in the following fields, or if you are a foreign national seeking work in the IT sector in BC, you may still be able to do so without a Labour Market Opinion.  The category covers the following occupations:

1. Senior Animation Effects Editor

2. Embedded Systems Software Designer

3. MIS Software Designer

4. Multimedia Software Developer

5. Software Developer—Services

6. Software Products Developer

7. Telecommunications Software Designer

Contact us for advice on how the simplified process applies to your situation.

We are very pleased to welcome Deanna Okun-Nachoff to McCrea & Associates.  Deanna is an experienced and highly-respected immigration lawyer, having been the Executive Director and Supervising Lawyer at the West Coast Domestic Workers’ Association from 2003 to 2010.  We are very excited to have her join our team, and she is looking forward to assisting our clients with a full range of immigration and citizenship issues.  You can view her profile at http://www.mccrealaw.ca/about/our-lawyers/deanna-l-okun-nachoff/