I am a relative newcomer to the Canadian job-hunting process and the immigration process as a whole, so I would greatly appreciate anyone's advice/experience.
Long story short, I am an American citizen who is married to a dual Canadian-American citizen and I am planning on moving to Toronto in August because my wife recently got a job up there (we are currently living in the United States, where I have always lived). My wife is sponsoring me on my PR application which will go in hopefully in the next 2-3 weeks (waiting for my criminal background check so that I can submit everything together).
In any event, my question relates to the order of things with respect to obtaining a job in Canada. From my initial reading of CIC materials and several discussion topics on this site, I was under the impression that a person first needs to get an offer of employment (together with an LMO if the position is not exempt from requiring an LMO because of NAFTA, etc.) before they can get a work permit. Nevertheless, a lot of job applications that I've seen (particularly with government employers) specifically ask if the applicant has been deemed to be eligible to work in Canada or they ask if you have an SIN number. From what I understand, those are things that people receive after they arrive (i.e. you can get a visitor record which apparently says that you are authorized to work in Canada?). If that is indeed the case, is it really possible to apply for jobs prior to arriving? I very well could have misunderstood the process--if so please correct me--but I just want to know whether I should even be applying for jobs before I arrive or if I need to arrive and get a trv visitor visa at the border and then apply for an SIN and then apply for a job. I am basically just trying to see if being proactive and trying to apply for jobs before I arrive is a waste of time.
Thanks in advance for any help that anyone can provide--I really appreciate it!
PS--I don't know if it makes any difference but I am trying to focus my job hunt on NAFTA "professional" category jobs that would be exempted from the LMO process.
Long story short, I am an American citizen who is married to a dual Canadian-American citizen and I am planning on moving to Toronto in August because my wife recently got a job up there (we are currently living in the United States, where I have always lived). My wife is sponsoring me on my PR application which will go in hopefully in the next 2-3 weeks (waiting for my criminal background check so that I can submit everything together).
In any event, my question relates to the order of things with respect to obtaining a job in Canada. From my initial reading of CIC materials and several discussion topics on this site, I was under the impression that a person first needs to get an offer of employment (together with an LMO if the position is not exempt from requiring an LMO because of NAFTA, etc.) before they can get a work permit. Nevertheless, a lot of job applications that I've seen (particularly with government employers) specifically ask if the applicant has been deemed to be eligible to work in Canada or they ask if you have an SIN number. From what I understand, those are things that people receive after they arrive (i.e. you can get a visitor record which apparently says that you are authorized to work in Canada?). If that is indeed the case, is it really possible to apply for jobs prior to arriving? I very well could have misunderstood the process--if so please correct me--but I just want to know whether I should even be applying for jobs before I arrive or if I need to arrive and get a trv visitor visa at the border and then apply for an SIN and then apply for a job. I am basically just trying to see if being proactive and trying to apply for jobs before I arrive is a waste of time.
Thanks in advance for any help that anyone can provide--I really appreciate it!
PS--I don't know if it makes any difference but I am trying to focus my job hunt on NAFTA "professional" category jobs that would be exempted from the LMO process.
