mlleamanda
New Member
I'm an American citizen who's been with an employer for a year in a small town near Montreal, Quebec, Canada (on a temporary "post graduate work visa" valid for one year after my graduation from a university here in Canada) and my employer wants to keep me as a permanent employee. To do that, I need to obtain a temporary work visa for Canada (my current post-grad work visa is non-renewable) and thus a HRDSC confirmation.
I've already gotten the process rolling: Human Resources of my company and our company's (American) parent company HR department have been "working on it" over the past two weeks but because they haven't given me an answer yet how it's going to go I'm getting nervous. The major problem I can see is that my company hired me right off the bat without having advertised the job elsewhere (they wanted my skills as an American, who knew the company already, and who has specialized English writing skills from university experience - so they didn't even bother looking for a Canadian). On the other hand, they have tried to hire others with half-decent English skills in similar positions and they can't even find anyone for that so they can prove that they can't find Canadians with good English and the same background as I.
Unfortunately I don't think I qualify for a NAFTA exemption because I am working as a communications specialist for the marketing department of my company and I didn't see any exemptions that were even close to my job in the NAFTA listing.
Has anyone been through this process? How hard and lengthy was it? I just want to know my odds of this working out, because if not I have to think about selling my car/apartment/looking for a new job in the states here pretty soon.
I've already gotten the process rolling: Human Resources of my company and our company's (American) parent company HR department have been "working on it" over the past two weeks but because they haven't given me an answer yet how it's going to go I'm getting nervous. The major problem I can see is that my company hired me right off the bat without having advertised the job elsewhere (they wanted my skills as an American, who knew the company already, and who has specialized English writing skills from university experience - so they didn't even bother looking for a Canadian). On the other hand, they have tried to hire others with half-decent English skills in similar positions and they can't even find anyone for that so they can prove that they can't find Canadians with good English and the same background as I.
Unfortunately I don't think I qualify for a NAFTA exemption because I am working as a communications specialist for the marketing department of my company and I didn't see any exemptions that were even close to my job in the NAFTA listing.
Has anyone been through this process? How hard and lengthy was it? I just want to know my odds of this working out, because if not I have to think about selling my car/apartment/looking for a new job in the states here pretty soon.