PLEASE HELP: IEC Working Holiday from within Canada!!

[samanta60]

Hello everyone,

I have two basic question about applying for Working Holiday Work Permit from within Canada.
I have been working in Canada since 2015 and am on temporary work permit till this December. I am considering applying to Express Entry in few weeks.

I received an invitation to apply for Working Holiday Work permit last week . Here are my questions:

1) I know once the POE letter (letter of Introduction) for Working Holiday is issued, one has 12 months to enter Canada and activate it. My question is whether this is still the case if the person is already living in Canada?
In December my current work permit will expire and I would like to switch to visitor status and look for a job and activate my IEC permit once I find a job (max in 12 months after IEC letter issued). Is this possible while staying in Canada?

2) If after applying for IEC work permit I receive invitation to apply for Express Entry, can I withdraw my IEC application and get refunded? If so, would that count as a participation in IEC (I am allowed to participate only once in my life time)? Then can I re-apply to IEC in future, just in case?

3) On working holiday work permit, can I get Alberta health insurance (I currently have this provincial health insurance since 1.5 years) or I have to pay to purchase health insurance? If I have to buy one, in what range are the prices (we are a couple and a child!)?

I would greatly appreciate your help and advise.
Bests,
Samanta

 

[Bs65]

Hello everyone,

I have two basic question about applying for Working Holiday Work Permit from within Canada.
I have been working in Canada since 2015 and am on temporary work permit till this December. I am considering applying to Express Entry in few weeks.

I received an invitation to apply for Working Holiday Work permit last week . Here are my questions:

1) I know once the POE letter (letter of Introduction) for Working Holiday is issued, one has 12 months to enter Canada and activate it. My question is whether this is still the case if the person is already living in Canada?
In December my current work permit will expire and I would like to switch to visitor status and look for a job and activate my IEC permit once I find a job (max in 12 months after IEC letter issued). Is this possible while staying in Canada?

2) If after applying for IEC work permit I receive invitation to apply for Express Entry, can I withdraw my IEC application and get refunded? If so, would that count as a participation in IEC (I am allowed to participate only once in my life time)? Then can I re-apply to IEC in future, just in case?

3) On working holiday work permit, can I get Alberta health insurance (I currently have this provincial health insurance since 1.5 years) or I have to pay to purchase health insurance? If I have to buy one, in what range are the prices (we are a couple and a child!)?

I would greatly appreciate your help and advise.
Bests,
Samanta

Others can comment but here is my view

1)No issue with a POE being issued whilst in Canada but you would need to do a flagpole trip to the nearest Canada/US land border to activate the IEC permit.

Close to when your current work permit expires you apply to extend your stay as a visitor http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/visit/extend-stay.asp Cannot say categorically whether would be approved with an open IEC waiting in the wings but do not see any reason why not as no different to leaving the country and coming back in as a visitor except with this process you do not need to leave. As with visitor status you would need to apply with some good reasons for applying and obviously job hunting not a reason to admit to.

2)Answer is no. Once the POE is issued that counts as a participation whether you use it or not and there are no refunds once POE is issued.

3)Cannot answer the Alberta healthcare question but one of the unfortunate things with activating IEC you need to show health insurance for the duration of the IEC permit being issued else you get a truncated period for the IEC permit that cannot be extended later.

An IEC permit does not cater for accompanying dependants so my assumption and others will correct me that any insurance requirements when activating would apply to the IEC holder only, any dependant would be entering with visitor status so any insurance requirement would be a personal but an advised choice.

As said others will need to clarify Alberta health cover.

 

[ozlis]

Hello everyone,

I have two basic question about applying for Working Holiday Work Permit from within Canada.
I have been working in Canada since 2015 and am on temporary work permit till this December. I am considering applying to Express Entry in few weeks.

I received an invitation to apply for Working Holiday Work permit last week . Here are my questions:

1) I know once the POE letter (letter of Introduction) for Working Holiday is issued, one has 12 months to enter Canada and activate it. My question is whether this is still the case if the person is already living in Canada?
In December my current work permit will expire and I would like to switch to visitor status and look for a job and activate my IEC permit once I find a job (max in 12 months after IEC letter issued). Is this possible while staying in Canada?

2) If after applying for IEC work permit I receive invitation to apply for Express Entry, can I withdraw my IEC application and get refunded? If so, would that count as a participation in IEC (I am allowed to participate only once in my life time)? Then can I re-apply to IEC in future, just in case?

3) On working holiday work permit, can I get Alberta health insurance (I currently have this provincial health insurance since 1.5 years) or I have to pay to purchase health insurance? If I have to buy one, in what range are the prices (we are a couple and a child!)?

I would greatly appreciate your help and advise.
Bests,
Samanta

1) Yes you get one year regardless of if you are in or out of the country. I would say that unless you have a permit in your hands, employers will still not consider you to be eligible to work (I work in recruitment and honestly until you could produce a permit, there would be no job offer). It will make your job search that little more complicated in an already tight market. You will also have a pretty hard time convincing the team that you are not going to work on your visitor status when your sole purpose it to job search. Again - why complicate it?

2) You can withdraw but you won't be refunded. Its about $150 or so, if you can't afford to essentially lose that money, you likely can't really afford to immigrate either. I would consider it money well spent to have a backup option. As Bs65 said, it is a participation, you will not get another opportunity.

3) You can get Alberta health however it is not sufficient to be issued a permit if they check it at the border. Your insurance for the purpose of IEC must cover the full two years and must cover repatriation. That said, its rare that they check, some border officers have been more lenient in the past etc but do you really want to be that one guy who they follow the book for? If you are already in the country your insurance options are a little limited - a google search will give you prices etc.