How To Address A Us Letter From Canada

hi, this is michael niren, immigration lawyerand founder of visaplace.com. we were asked this common question, "do i need a job offerin order to get a work permit?" now, i've had discussions about this before online andi am going to try my best to clarify and outline the circumstances that are applicable in thiscase, because in some cases you don't actually need a job offer to get a work permit. butlet me just outline the situations, the most

How To Address A Us Letter From Canada, common situation where you in fact do needa job offer. in most cases if you're applying for a workvisa to canada or to united states, you need a job offer first. you need a company whois willing to commit to you, to sponsor you and offer you a job. and that's the firststep. then after that if the company is willing,

their forms have to be filled out and an applicationhas to be submitted to the government to get you a work permit and usually it's a two stepprocess where the company first has to get approved for the job offer to the foreignnational and then step two is that the applicant (the foreigner) has to then apply for thework permit. now, there're some exceptions to that, for example under nafta where youcould apply at the port of entry without necessarily going through that two step process. but,in both cases a job offer is the first thing. however, having said that, there are certaincircumstances where a job offer, at least a formal job offer, is not necessarily required.for example, if you're a businessperson and you wish to start your own business you couldpotentially apply for a work visa on that

basis. in the united states we call that ane-2 visa, in canada it's a different type of visa. but essentially there are circumstanceswhere if you're interested in investing in your own business and starting a new businessyou can actually get a work visa without having a job offer from a separate company. in addition,if you are a spouse of a work permit holder you could potentially apply for what we callan open work permit, which means that you don't need a job offer from a company. youcould as a spouse get a work visa because your spouse has a former work visa. we callit an open work visa. now, there are restrictions to that, not all visas are allowed for that.for example currently the h1b visa you can't really get as a spouse a work visa althoughthere's talk to change that and i hope that

comes through, but there're other circumstanceswhere you can. thirdly, let's say you wish to expand yourbusiness from your home country into united states or canada, we call that an inter-companytransfer. that's a circumstance where you could not necessarily get a formal job offer,or you don't need a formal job offer from a company, but rather you are expanding andgrowing your business into canada and the united states and on that basis apply fora visa. so there are circumstances where you don't need a job offer in order to get a workpermit. but every case is different and in most cases you're going to have to reallyexplore what your options are and do your homework and preferably consult with an immigrationprofessional before you make such an application.

so this hopefully has cleared up some misconceptionsthat people have that, "oh, if i don't have a job offer i can't get a work permit." yes,in many cases that is true, but not in all cases. so hopefully this has given you some insightand if you liked the video i'd appreciate if you can click like and feel free to visitour website at www.visaplace.com.