http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/media/releases/2011/2011-06-24a.asp
CIC just announced the new rules for next year. Essentially it’s the same deal with the capping – and the same 29 NOCs. This year they halved the cap – so there will be 500 for each noc, with a total of 10,000 – considered for processing.
I guess this will give them more resource with which to tackle their 300,000+ backlog from before June 2010.
Wayne.
get2canada 
Hello Wayne,
This is by far one of the best website I have found while surfing the net for immigration to Canada. Thank you for this website which is so informative. we are planning to apply for immigration this year. My husband being the principal applicant will be taking the IELTS exam next saturday. Post getting his results we will apply. However there are a few doubts in my mind. Seek clarification from you.
1) He is self employed. Owns a restaurant. But we want to apply under Federal skilled labour NOC 0631 (Restaurant & Food Services Manager). Firstly, is it possible to do this? He performs all the duties (infact more than that) mentioned in the roles and responsibilities of this NOC.
2) Secondly, If he can, then what are the documents he needs to submit. Being his own restaurant he cannot possibly submit appointment letter and salary slips etc. Please advice on this.
3) Where do we get to know at which point of the year that has gone by, was the CAP of this particular NOC reached? Or was it reached at all or not? And all such information regarding CAP of this NOC, for last year. This year of course they haven’t yet filled in the sheet that’s available on the CIC website. We want to know how much time we have in our hands because takes a lot of time gathering all the documents and then waiting for the IELTS results etc.
Thanking you in advance. Awaiting your response eagerly.
Regards
Julie
Hi Julie,
1) Yes as a self-employed person he can certainly do this however it is VERY important that he provides evidence of his duties by way of customer references. Since a self-employed person cannot get employer references, CIC rely on customer references to prove that he performed the duties mentioned. If possible a handful of references scattered through the period for which he is claiming, listing the work done and the duties performed.
2) As I said above 🙂 But any legal documents showing the length of time the company has been register / in business in addition to the customer references which proved he provided those services/duties to the customers
3) The cap last year was 1000 per NOC, and for this current year (1st July 2011 to 30th June 2012) the cap is 500 per NOC. You can track the current state of affairs here:
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/skilled/complete-applications.asp
This has only just been updated by CIC and I suspect there are quite a large number of applications still awaiting completeness check. But last year 0631 took quite a while to fill up, so I think you have enough time 🙂
Best of luck with yoru application.
Wayne.
Thank you so much for all the information. I have seen that you have got your VIsa. I wish you all the best for your journey ahead. And of course hoping you would keep updating the blog with “moving to Canada”….”living in Canada”…..”cost of living”….”best locations to live” etc etc. It will be really helpful, espicially coming from a person like you who does it so sincerely. Thank you once again 🙂
Hello Wayne,
Back again with another query 🙂
You have mentioned ” CIC rely on customer references to prove that he performed the duties mentioned. If possible a handful of references scattered through the period for which he is claiming, listing the work done and the duties performed.”
1) But since he runs a restaurant, his customers are walk in customers. They just land up, have their meals, pay the bill and leave. So what kind of references can he get?
2) The customer will not be aware of his duties to be able to give him a reference of his duties.
3) His restaurant is registered (under the govt business rules) and he also has been paying his taxes (Income Tax, Sales Tax, Govt taxes). It is an established restaurant. But getting references from customers on his duties and responsiblities, I wonder how to go about that?
Thanks in advance for your help.
Julie
Hi Julie,
I know for self-employed people they usually ask for customer references, since self-employed people tend not to have bosses to be able to write them a reference.
In the case of a restaurant owner, where as you say the customers walk in/walk out, the situation is going to be different.
If it were me I’d get together as much as I could with regards invoices and proving how long he’d been the proprietor of the restaurant. Would it be possible to get some references from his employees who’d be aware of his duties? This at least would support his duty claims.
Otherwise I’d be just Googling around to see what other restaurant owners have done about references when they’ve applied.
Best of luck.
Wayne.
Dear Wayne ,
i am submit my application under NOC -8222 SUPERVISOR oil gas drilling , i am choose london -visa office , i am indian , work in qatar
my appliction rich to cic intake on date 18/07/2011 , after many new rules comes
, if my appliction accpted or rjected how to know what is status ,
pls give reply ,
Please have some patience – your application has only been with CIO a few days.
If you check here you can see the total applications received by CIO so far since the caps reset on 1st July 2011:
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/skilled/complete-applications.asp
As you can see, your NOC has only had 3 applications considered for processing so far, out of 500, so you should easily make it within the cap.
Please refer to my “Process” page linked at the top to see when you might expect your draft to be cashed and to get your eligibility review email.
Wayne.
Thanks much Wayne.
Employees reference is not a problem. If that should do.
I will also try a google a bit to get more info. Keeping my fingers crossed. Thanks again 🙂
Definitely try to find out what other 0631 applicants have done. Please remember I am just an applicant, not a consultant or expert, so do some research yourself as well rather than just acting on my advice 🙂
Self-employed applications are tricky at the best of times. If you do end up sending employee references then be sure to include a good explanation as to why customer references were not able to be obtained.
Best of luck.
Wayne.
Hello Wayne,
I’m sure you must be busy with relocating and stuff. Still bothering you with my query. Sorry….and thank you (for being there).
Whats your opinion on consultants? I was thinking of appointing Y Axis. Are they good? Or any suggestions on which consultant to go with?
Second query. Do I have to present work experience in a similar way as my husband’s? Like with complete details of roles and responsibilities etc.?
Third Query : My husband has experience as a cook (for about 2 years within the past 10 years) before he opened his own restaurant. And his exp as cook falls within the last 10 years. So in your opinion, do you think it will be a better idea to apply as a cook, since that will not be self employement and hence a safer bet? We are so confused.
Awaiting advice,
Thank you
Jule
Hi Julie,
Allow me to respond to your queries one by one:
1) I have a very low opinion of consultants personally. They charge a vast sum of money and add very little value. If you have an intermediary then your application will be slower since all correspondence first goes through them. If they are good, the delays will be small. If they are a poor, the delays could be long.
But secondly I have come across consultants who simply do not have a clue and are highly incompetent. I have heard of some who have even made mistakes causing applications to fail. That’s not a fair observation for all consultants of course, I am sure there are a few good ones out there – but they are hard to find and they will still be expensive.
If you have a straight-forward case (no criminal history or anything like that) then I would strongly advise to do it all yourselves. There is nothing you cannot find out from surfing immigration forums and by studying the CIC website.
We did it all ourselves, never paid a penny to a consultant and now have our visas. A consultant for Category 1 will probably cost you at least £2000 (for Category 2 they charge a lot more, probably £6000 to £7000, since they have to find you a job).
2) Yes exactly the same, copy of contract plus work reference letter and if possible a business card of the person giving the reference. If a business card cannot be obtained then ensure you have their full contact details so they can be contacted if needed by CIC. We both got references from our current employer, and from our 1 previous employer before that.
3) If he can get the references together I would do both, since on Schedule 3 you can choose the order in which you want them to assess your experience. If you are not eligible with one lot of experience, they will move onto the next. So basically may be easiest to chose the cook’s experience, and then the restaurant manager’s experience afterwards – and get employee references etc for restaurant manager’s experience, explaining why customer references are not feasible to get.
By asking to be considered under both NOCs, you are giving yourselves twice the chance of being accepted.
Best of luck,
Wayne.
Thank you so much Wayne. You are truly a kind person. Shall get in touch with you incase I am stuck again. Regards
Dear Wayne,
I have read in many places that we need to submit “orginal” transcripts sealed by the university. Others say we have need to submit “photocopies” in sealed envelopes from the universities. Some say “notorised photocopies”!! Which is true? Orginal or photocopies or notorised photocopies?
Also you said I need to submit my work experience also in the same way that my husband has to submit….meaning with all details of roles and responsibilites etc. But unfortunately I do not have any such documents. I only have appointment letters, promotion/yearly increment letters, relieving letters from each organisation that I have quit. Now it is not possible to get another letter with roles and responsiblities. Since I do not get any points for my work exprience, is it alright if I don’t submit so much details about my work exprience?
Please advice.
Thanks
Julie
Hi Julie.
University transcripts must be the originals sent in a sealed envelope with the university’s stamp on the envelope. Most universities will just send this for a small fee. I have heard cases of notarized copies being accepted, but honestly I would not risk it since you are just giving them a reason to fail you if they feeling particularly harsh that day.
As for work experience – remind me, are you the principal applicant, or your husband?
If you are the principal applicant:
1) You must have work references with full duties for the 1 year’s NOC experience (else they will fail you straight away)
2) You must have work references with full duties for any work experience points you are claiming (else they will not credit you with those points)
3) If you have those, don’t worry too much about other work references – just include a cover letter explaining why you are unable to obtain the references
If your husband is the principal applicant:
– Just get as much info as you can for your current employer and previous employer, and include a covering letter explaining why you are unable to get any other bits and pieces. I don’t think they’re that bothered about spouse’s work references, I guess they just ask for them to ensure the spouse is economically viable if accompanying the applicant.
But where you can get them, the references should be in the same format as your husband’s. Best to get as close as you can.
Hope this helps,
Wayne.
Dear Mr. Wayne,
I appreciate the great work you are doing and congratulations on acquiring your visa. your web site is immensely helpful. I would be grateful if you could clarify my doubts.
I am a physiotherapist residing in London and all my family are in India. I am planning to apply for the FSW cat1. Is it possible to apply when I, the main applicant, and my spouse, the dependant, live in two different places ? In other words, is it mandatory that the main applicant and dependant live under the same roof. Secondly, which CHC to choose London or New Delhi? London, I hear, is slower than Newdelhi.
Many thanks in advance.
Kind regards,
Satish.
Hi Satish,
To the best of my knowledge there is no requirement for the principal applicant to be living in the same place as the spouse – you will both have separate addresses and information you will need to fill in the various forms.
The only thing I see happening is that the visa office may want to see additional proof of your marriage with photos etc when it reaches the visa office stage, since they might want to be convinced that you are not actually separated from your spouse since you are currently living in different countries.
Regarding which CHC to choose, you may need to double check the latest guidelines, but I believe you can choose any visa office which serves either your current country of residence, or your country of origin. So as long as this hasn’t changed you are free to choose London or New Delhi, and New Delhi certainly seems a faster visa office based on June2010-July2011 applicants. We haven’t really had any of the “new batch” post-July-2011 from CIO yet.
But then again, with regards communicating with the visa office, and eventually delivering and collecting passports, London may be easier. You may also wish to look into the complexities of mailing passports when it comes to getting the visas issued. I think that it’s not possible to mail an Indian passport outside of the country, so it may be that you or your family have to mail passport copies to India/London depending on which visa office you chose, and then get the actual visa issued at the local visa office.
Best of luck with your application,
Wayne.
Many thanks Wayne that was lightening quick! and the information that you have provided has been useful. I have my marriage certificate and by the way my wife and my child are living with my parents which is common in India. Now I am clear with my first query and I am sorry but I cant make my mind between the two CHCs. The reason being the difficulties that may arise at the later stages. For instance, Can my medical be done in London while hers in India? I assume it presents a difficulty either way(London or New Delhi) when sending passport to the CHC. Thank you so much for your time.
Warm regards,
Satish.
Hi,
Firstly the medicals are no problem at all. Anyone on your application can take their medical at ANY authorised DMP in the world, so could can take your medicals in the UK and your wife and family can take theirs in India.
So the only issue I think would be passports across countries, and I think this will present difficulties whichever way round you do it.
Let me also explain that New Delhi does passport requests a different way to most other visa offices. Most visa offices, including London, will wait until after your medical results are in and security checks have been completed, then requests passports for stamping of visa. If you can use the in-person service on hand deliver your passports on a Thursday afternoon between 2pm and 3pm to CHC London, can you collect the passport with visa in 2 weeks later at the same time, Thursday 2pm to 3pm.
However, New Delhi is different. They request passports at the same time they ask for medicals to be completed, and it can easily take 3 months from that point to have the passports returned with visa in. This means you can potentially be without your passports for over 3 months.
Also you may wish to consider the convenience of having London as your visa office, baring in mind all postal correspondence will go to your address as principal applicant, unless you elected a representative. (including medical requests etc). If you have London as your visa office all written correspondence will be delivered to you reliably within a day or two. If you have New Delhi as your visa office then post will be delayed by days, or even weeks, between the two countries, and that’s hoping it doesn’t go missing!
If it were me I would chose London, even though it is going to potentially slightly slower.
Regarding the Indian passports for your family if you chose London, I think what usually happens is when passport requests are issued, they send copies of the passports to London and some other documents, and then when London are ready to have the visas issued they liaise with New Delhi visa office and a Stage 2 passport request would be to deliver the actual passports to New Delhi for stamping, since then the passports are not being mailed or couriered outside of the country.
Or an alternative would be for your wife and family to have just over 2 week holiday in London after you get passport requests – they fly over, you hand all the passports into CHC London and then collect all the passports 2 weeks later using the in-person service. Of course, it depends if you can afford the costs of the extra flights.
It’s your decision, their are pros and cons either way, but if I were the principal applicant I’d want the visa office as close to me as possible for convenience.
Wayne.
Dear Wayne,
Trust all is well with you and you are fast progressing towards your dream life in Canada.
You know, thanks to you I am convinced now that we should apply on our own without an agent. It is indeed simple if one has time to go through the entire CIC website and someone like you to fall back on whenever it gets tricky. So here I am with yet another query.
I have got everything together. My husband’s restaurant registration certificate, trade licence, food licence, our transcripts everything. But only stuck again with the reference letter.
1) Will it be advisable to give references for the duties he performs, from:
a) His tax consultant who has been helping him with filing his taxes for the business since day one
b) His landlord on whose premises his restaurant is located
c) His creative agency who does the branding and designs the menu etc
All of the above people are also his regular customers.
2) If you think these references would be good enough to prove his duty claims, would it be possible for you to kindly share with me a sample of reference letter? How it is to be written?
3) If you think these references will not be good enough, then I shall grill my brains further and come up with other options. He owns this restaurant so it’s evident that he HAS TO perform these duties of a Manager and even more infact (some of the chef’s duties and accountant’s duties as well). Otherwise how will he run his restaurant? But then proving in terms of letters and references is getting to be such a hassle.
Awaiting your response eagerly.
Thanks once again….for being there!
Julie
Hi Julie,
In my opinion you are wise not to employ an agent unless your case gets very complicated, because they are very costly and often make more mistakes than the applicants!
Concerning the format of the reference, it just has to include all the required information (date started, date finished if relevant, number of hours per week worked, salary and the duties performed). In your husband’s case it may be that the components of the references needs to come from more than 1 person.
It is very important that the reference does not spell out word for word the duties mentioned in the NOC.
If it were me I would get references from all 3 you have mentioned, and also at least one from an employee who works with him on a daily basis.
Remember anyone giving a reference number must either supply a business card or full contact information (email, telephone, address etc) since CIC may want to contact them during the background document check phase at the visa office (in reality they only check up on a small percentage of applicants – maybe 5% to 10%).
Regarding self-employment, honestly the best advice would come from those who have also applied under this NOC (he can’t be the only restaurant owner to have applied!).
Trying making a post on canadavisa.com I am sure some successful 0631 applicants can help tell you what they did. When it comes to Canada PR applications I am of the opinion that too much information/detail is better than not enough, hence why I would get multiple references if possible.
Please let me know if I can be of any further help.
Wayne.
Hi Julie,
I found a thread on canadavisa.com for 0631 NOC, so I have made a post on there asking for the experience of other people from this NOC who have applied as self-employed restaurant owners, to see what they did regarding getting references.
I will let you know as soon as I hear anything.
Wayne.
Dear Wayne,
Thanks a million. You are a star. I have a got the clear picture now. Once again, thank you very much. I dream that one day you and I are going to be fellow country men. Good Luck!
Thank you millions Wayne. I will wait for your response.
Hello Wayne,
We have started to fill our application forms. Need clarification on a few things. Would be grateful if you would kindly clarify.
1) While filling the “background declaration” – IMM 5669, I came across this sentence “Provide the details of your personal history since the age of 18, or for the past 10 years, whichever comes first”. Does this mean we need to provide details of only past 10 years or since 18 years of age?
Then again somewhere my husband read (he doesnt remember where) that we have to furnish details of our personal history since 18 years of age. Don’t want to make a mistake here and upset the Visa Officer with too much or too little information. So pls advice.
2) Our native language is not listed in the drop down list of the generic application form. What do we do?
3) My daughter does not carry a surname / familyname. She just has a given name, even in her passport. We have travelled out of our country on vacations with the same passport. So in this case is it necessary to add a family name to her name? Do we have to apply for a change in her name in her passport? We tried filling the form without the family name but it wouldn’t allow us to save. And if we do not fill it electronically we cannot validate hence cannot generate a barcode. What do we do?
Trust you have been able to wind up things to fly to our dream country 🙂
Await your response.
Julie
Hi Julie
1) This reads to me as since aged 18, unless you have more than 10 years, in which case just provide 10 years. However it does seem ambigious. I know when we did ours we provided from aged 18, but then again the forms have changed signficantly in July 2011.
To be honest I would play is safe here and just provide everything since aged 18. They cannot fail your application for providing too much history, they can certainly fail it for not providing enough.
2) Will it allow you to type it in manually? If not, you have no choice IMO but to leave it blank and hand-write it in after you have printed it.
3) Hmm tricky one! Here once again this is a situation we did not have to face when we filled our forms in, since there was no barcode system there. Although not having a surname in the application may create more problems than it solves. But then again you don’t want to put a different name to that which is specified in the passports.
At the end of the day you have to get a barcode, so I would put a surname to match yours then include a covering letter stating that you had to supply a surname in order to generate the barcode, but that your daughter, as specific in her passport, does not have a surname and only has a given name.
What does it say on your daughter’s birth certificate? If your daughter has a surname on the birth certificate I think it would be wise to try to arrange the passport to match, although it may delay your application it may save a lot of hassle in the long run. The Canadians are not going to want a new immigrant who does not have a surname with which they can be identified.
I think whatever you decide just write a covering very clearly explaining the situation.
Also regarding your husband’s self-employment – the few users who have replied to me on the forum seem to indicate to just include as much information as possible.
So if I were you I would include references from the 3 people you mentioned, and also I would get a reference from your husband’s most senior employee testifying to your husband’s duties. Make sure all referees have included contact details and are willing to be contacted by CIC if needed.
This may seem to be a pain, but nowhere near as much as your application failing later on in the process!
Best of luck,
Wayne.
Thank you Wayne.
Her birth certificate also has only her given name. Getting it changed in the BC and the passport might prove to be quite a hassle. Wondering what to do! The road blocks seem to be never ending. What would you have done?
About the ref letters, we have spoken to the respective people and they are willing to provide the same, and willing to recieve enquiries from CIC. Employees, we have identified 2 senior members. Thanks Wayne for all your support. You are such a blessing!
Regards
Julie
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hi can u pls tell us before june 2010 skilled workers files still waiting september 2012 ,now how much more time time we will wait for our files ,pls reply me soon
hi
i have applied my case pre 2010 and now it was in under process from 28 may 2012. i want to know now how much time i will wait for medical.now much more time we will wait for our MR
thanks
I need help with this too! Thanks. BTW, if anyone needs to fill out a 2011 form IMM, I found a blank form here.