The Step by Step Process to Apply to Canada
We have applied for the Canadian PR and awaiting the good news. The process may take some time but it’s well certain that anyone can do by themselves if they put in their 100% to it. We have saved nearly about $4,000 by doing by ourselves. The main intention of this is to guide the applicants to apply for Canada PR by themselves and to give an overall idea about the step by step process.
Finding the Eligibility (Free)
The first step is to find out whether you are eligible to apply, which all depends on the CRS score that you achieve. CRS stands for the Comprehensive Ranking System, which is a tool used by the Canadian Immigration to assess the skilled immigrants based on their skills, education, language and work experience. These factors are measured to give you a score, that is then used to access your eligibility.
Link to calculate CRS score
As of the present trend, an applicant should get at least 450 points to apply and to have a chance to get selected from the pool. Pool ??, What is the pool?. When a person applies for Permanent Residence in Canada under the Skilled Worker Migration program, every two weeks there is a draw held by the Immigration where they select 3,600 applicants from the pool. As of now, the applications have increased heavily which has led to an increase in the CRS cut off score.
Therefore, the applicant should be well aware of what he’s getting into and have a good understanding before applying and spending money in vainly, as being eligible for the program by getting the necessary CRS score is critical.
Educational Credential Assessment (ECA) (CAD 227)
If you’re 100% sure about the score and ability to get selected from the next draw, you’re all set and its good to go. The next step is to get your educational certificates evaluated by World Education Services which is also known as WES. This is an organization that will evaluate any educational qualification to check their Canadian Equivalence
The first step would be creating an account and sending the certificates and transcripts to be evaluated from WES. A point to note is that you cannot directly send the certificates and the transcripts yourself, instead, you should ask the university to send these to WES. This is to maintain the authenticity of the documents.
This process would take nearly 2 months since it takes quite a lot of time for WES to process these. After they evaluate, they would be sending a mail mentioning the Canadian equivalency of the evaluated results.
WES provides a tool for us to see what our qualification is equivalent to in Canada.
You can use this tool to get an idea of whether your qualification meets the expected standards. Please note this tool is just a guide provided by WES.
There are other institutions that provide the same service as WES.
- Comparative Education Service: University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies
- International Credential Assessment Service of Canada
- International Qualifications Assessment Service
- International Credential Evaluation Service
The processing time and the fees for these will vary, and some institutes will evaluate certain degrees different from the others. But we chose WES, as we found it to be the fasted and the most convincement as per the research carried out.
IELTS (Roughly CAD 180)
The next step for the applicant is getting ready for IELTS. The scores that you get would directly impact your CRS scores. A reduction in 0.5 in IELTS might end up your dream to apply to Canada. So, getting through this with maximum marks would indeed be a game-changer for you. The applicants can get ready for this process while your Educational Credential Assessment (ECA) is in progress.
My advice for the people willing to face IELTS is just practice. Do as much as you can because practise makes you perfect. To be honest, me and my spouse started practising only one week prior to the exam. We only went through the following links and did not attend any classes. But we did a lot of papers from ieltsonlinetests.com, that helped us a lot to get through IELTS. Frankly, my spouse and I got 8.5 and 7 overall scores which helped us a lot to increase the CRS score.
E2 Learning had a lot of tips for writing which helped to get the structure for writing. The key to increase marks for writing is by having a proper structure for the essay and letter.
Using these links and practising on it will definitely make you an expert in IELTS because it has a pattern that we should get used to. Once you grasp this pattern, IELTS would be a piece of cake.
Try to target to get a minimum IELTS score of
Listening — 8, Writing — 7, speaking — 7 and reading -7.
This score will secure you an average CRS score, but the higher you score in IELTS, the better your chances of getting selected from the pool.
After both WES and IELTS are completed, you have done almost 30% of the work.
Creating a GC Key (Free)
After both the WES evaluation and IELTS are completed, create a GC Key which makes a profile for the applicant, with all the details including the IELTS Reference Numbers and WES Reference numbers. This is somewhat similar to the CRS calculator but more information to be added. This is a profile that expresses your interest to enter Canada. Make sure to add correct information because this would be based to create the final application for the Permanent Residence. After creating the GC Key it would also show your CRS score and it would automatically enrol you to the pool.
https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/application/account.html
The good thing is after this stage your part is done and if you’re lucky you would be picked from the very next draw if you score higher than the cut off mark. These days having a score above 465 will definitely make you eligible and would be picked from the latest draw. So keep your fingers crossed and hope for the best.
After been selected from the pool (CAD 1040)
After been selected from the draw, you have to fill another application which has more details and it would be the final application to be filled. You must fill out this application, collect all the necessary documents and submit the application within 60 days(as of August 2019). This will be the proper application for the Canada PR where you have to give correct information on various matters such as your personal details, education, work and history. After it is completed, a document checklist would be generated for the applicant in the GC Key. The document checklist would vary from applicant to applicant according to the details been filed in the application. Some of the mandatory documents to be submitted are the Police Clearance Report, Medical Report, Education, Bank Statements, etc.
After submitting, you have done all from your end and the waiting starts. The process would take roughly about 6 months and may vary depending on the complexity of the application.
So, what do you think? Is the process too hard?
Nope from my point of view, this could be done by yourselves. This will save you a lot of money which would be spent on consultants. The https://www.canada.ca/en/services/immigration-citizenship.html site is so informative and can find any information you need. And what Canada wants is for you to be honest and give your 100%, while been ethical in providing the most accurate information.
All the very best!!!! Hope this was useful
The following link gives reasons for an application to be rejected. Go through it thoroughly before applying.
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