MercTech -> RE: Canada Has Immigration Laws Too (9/27/2017 9:48:45 PM)
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Canadian immigration is oddly interesting. It takes 30-90 days to process an initial work visa good for one year. If you want to work longer in Canada and want to renew before the year is up, it takes 6-9 months, depending on work load. It is a totally different office in a completely different province that processes renewals than initial applications. If you leave the country, such as flying home to the U.S. for a holiday, between the expiration of your initial Visa and granting an extension; you will not be allowed back into Canada and your Visa renewal application will be terminated. If you are working on a Visa in Ontario; you start paying into Ontario Health the first day of work. To draw benefits, as a resident alien, you have to have paid in for at least six months and have Permanent Resident status. It can take up to three years to get permanent resident status. Most Canadians don't realize how difficult it is to get health care in Canada if you are working on a Visa. Now large cities located at border crossings supposedly have a lot of private practice clinics. But, if you are working away from a city; you are mostly just out of luck. You can always run up an extremely high bill patronizing a hospital emergency room as that might be your only option while there. Oh ,Yes, if employing a Yank you are required to carry insurance on them while they work in Canada. But, unless there is a private practice clinic where they are working; no health care other then emergency care is available. Such are the vagaries of working in Canada on a Visa. Better than before NAFTA as back then, if you wanted to send a tech to Canada you had to do an expensive search to prove there was no one in Canada who had the skills to do the job that wasn't working. Heaven forbid you wanted to fly someone in to teach a class on a new machine your company was selling. That wasn't allowed at all back in the 90s. So, instead of flying in one instructor for a two day class; thirty Canadian techs had to be cycled through three classes in Florida. Crazy expensive. Don't get me wrong. I loved the time I spent working in Canada. But Canadian Government has their own brand of bureaucratic insanity and it is a different flavor from the insanity infecting U.S. government.
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