First of all, I hope you took a look at the official government of Canada website page that will take you through determining under what programs you might be eligible to immigrate to Canada.
Now I’m going to tell you about some of my friends who have immigrated here, and the paths that they took.
Two friends have become citizens via the “Nanny” program (NOTE: This program has been discontinued - thanks, Viola Yee ). One was from Austria, the other was from the Philippines. In both cases, they arrived to live with families in need of child care. Basically, they were domestic servants who felt that they had few rights because losing their position meant being sent home. They both lived with the families they worked for, which meant that their personal lives often bled into their work lives. I think they had to stay as nannies for at least two years before they were eligible to apply for landed immigrant status.
Michael came in as a nurse, a profession that was in high demand at the time. It may still be. Again, he had to satisfy the terms of his employment and keep his job for a few years and then was able to apply for landed immigrant status (but because his employer was a large health organization, a non-profit, he enjoyed far more protections than my friends who came over as nannies and he lived in his own place and didn’t have to please his employer once he was finished a shift).
Another friend arrived as a doctor from South Africa. As part of the conditions of immigrating, she had to agree to work for a period of time in a remote community in need of a doctor. She liked it enough that she stayed there and continues to practice there a decade after she is free to move around. She has become a Canadian citizen.
John was the manager of an IT call centre in the UK on a two week holiday in Thailand. He met a Canadian guy and fell into the kind of love you sometimes encounter at an all inclusive beach resort somewhere sunny and beautiful. A lot of Skyping and six weeks passed and John was engaged to his boyfriend. He applied to come to Canada under the spousal immigration policies. This meant that his husband had to support him for the first few years, as John was not eligible to work during that period (and I think there may have been severe restrictions on him leaving the country to visit his family or even go across the border to the US for a day of shopping). John did volunteer (almost full-time) during that period, so that when he was finally able to work he had fulsome Canadian work experience references and was actually hired on by one of the non-profits he volunteered with.
Miyuki came to Canada for a summer while in university. Her English instructor in Japan had set her and a friend up working as tree planters. She thought it would be something like looking after a city park in Kyoto or Tokyo. They were picked up at the airport in an ancient van that collected a group of “interesting” people as they headed into the interior mountains of British Columbia. The friend lasted a week and then headed back to Japan. Miyuki fell in love with the camp cook and stayed the full year her student/work visa permitted. At the end of that year, he headed back to Japan with her and they married a year later. Three years later, they moved back to Canada, where they had another marriage ceremony. Again, she had to wait a couple of years before she could work. She spent it learning English, to the point where she could beat her uni-lingual English friends at Scrabble. She’s enjoyed a lucrative career as a translator, initially in the oil and lumber industry, now in the medical industry.
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