Plan A - Student Visa + Work Permit - Sheridan College/Mississauga

As my husband and I are both bilingual (French and English - besides Portuguese, of course) we could have gone to anywhere in Canada. However, we chose Ontario for several reasons. First of all, it's where the most part of jobs are. Secondly, the weather here is a little bit 'better' than in Montreal, for example. And finally, it was a shorter trip from Brazil - and this item took Vancouver off the list. 

If we stayed in Brazil while waiting to be called to immigrate we would likely never be able to come. Remember the points you need to have for that? We still haven't reached them, basically because of our age. The older you get, the less points you have. Also, we didn't have the Canadian Experience. 

So, the best plan was to come to Canada on a study visa + temporary work permit. In this kind of visa, one spouse studies full time and can work part time while the other spouse is allowed to work full time. Also, the children can go public schools. Moreover, the whole family is eligible get the OHIP, which is the free health system, once the spouse completes 3 months working full time. Another advantage is that you can get an extended working visa of until 3 years after you graduate from your course. This way, we could have the points for the Canadian Experience and enough time to acquire the points to be invited to apply. Another way to increase our points is by scoring the English proficiency tests.  As an English Teacher, I believed that it wasn't going to be difficult. However, I've taken the tests 4 times and still didn't get the grades I need. It's a matter of time, though. I will talk about these tests on a separate post as well. 

The idea of studying again was attractive because it's a fresh start.

In order to apply for a college or post-graduation course, the institutions usually ask for proficiency tests. You can take either IELTS ACADEMIC or TOEFL. If you can't reach the minimum points they demand on these tests, they usually offer a 3-month course named "Pathway", that prepares students with the English they need for the course they want to take. 

We hired the services from the exchange program agency Hi Bonjour, who gave us some options of education. As I already have a degree, I could have chosen a post-graduation program, but these are usually only a year length and very expensive if you aren't a permanent resident, while the colleges ones are two years long.  The one-year courses wouldn't give me the visa extension after graduating either. From the options we had in Ontario, Sheridan College was among the highest raked institutions for Human Resources Management. Also, the city of Mississauga on the top 10 best places to live in Canada. It was a match.

It's important to say that the fees for each term of a 2-year program costs about CAD 7000. They call it a  2 year program but each term is 3 months, so, I started in January 2017 and I'll finish in April 2018.

Now we have one year to fight for our Invitation to Apply. And we WILL get that!

Wish us good luck!

My first day at Sheridan!

I love my college!

The Beginning

Finding a good psychologist was by far the most important decision I have done in the beginning of this process. She guided me through the steps I should take and helped me get stronger and confident to face the challenges I would have ahead.  Immigrating is like jumping off an airplane, not knowing if your parachute will work.  Needless to say, the harmony among the whole family must be the rule. 

There are several ways you can migrate to Canada. It can be through the most used one, the federal Express Entry Pool or by Provincial Nominee Programs. Every province has different criteria to invite potential immigrants. All of them rely on an amount of points each candidate can reach. These points are collected according to your nationality, age, education, work experience, Canadian Experience, income, and the most important: your English or/and French level.

The reason why we hired a specialist to help us was because we wanted to explore every possible way and have a least 3 different approaches to get our Permanent Residency. So, in order to start the process and see if you are eligible to migrate to Canada, you should first check the criteria on the CIC site. There you will find step by step the stages you must follow in order to apply to any of the processes. Some Provinces offer easier processes than others, especially the less populated ones. Make sure to perform a long and extensive research about every province and decide which one suits you better in terms of adaptability and workability. A good plan is essential. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. 

CANADA WANTS YOU!

Yes, Canada wants YOU. But this YOU must be absolutely fluent in English or French, have at least a post-graduation diploma, Masters and PHDs, be young and have looooots of money. If you don't have this, then you are not wanted. Simple like that. 

Of course the thousands of immigration advertisements on social media seduced us. They make you believe Canada really needs "Brazilians", or whatever nation you are from. The reality is that yes, if people don't immigrate to Canada, it simply doesn't grow, because birth rates here are very low. But you must be the creme de la creme. 

If you want to take your chances on coming here, the first step is to read every single line at the CIC website and see if you are eligible. Also, make sure to understand how can you work here in your profession. Some people believe that by simply sending their diplomas to the WES and having their diplomas recognized in Canada means that they could arrive here and start working. However, no matter what your profession is, you MUST have the designated certifications from Canada. You can even hire an immigration specialist (there are thousands, always look for the best one, with referrals, or you will lose money), but knowing where you're stepping is essential. This is the only way you will succeed in this process. Reading blogs and watching videos are great too, but they only tell individual stories, and you may have a totally different one. So, my advice is: read the CIC website. A great blog that helped me a lot was this Partiu Canada. Info is in Portuguese, but very helpful. 

As we had three children and great jobs in Brazil, we couldn't fail. So we hired a consultant for 5000 CAD, but didn't read the CIC site. The consequence: we lost money. The consultant did nothing but fill our application for the Express Entry with wrong information, which could have caused us a big problem in the future. So even if you pay for somebody do it for you, make sure you know what's going on. We ended up hiring another company and this time we were much happier, as they are very professionals, although expensive.

One thing that really helped us was a What'sApp group made of 20 families that were on the same project. We've met at Instagram, some of them were friends before. It was very important because we exchanged info on a daily basis. You could also engage on Facebook groups. If you are Brazilian, there are famous ones like SOS Vistos e Imigracao para o Canada and E-Visa Immigration Services .  

On the next post I'll talk about OUR process.

http://k-paro.deviantart.com/art/Canada-wants-YOU-158543372

It's about courage.

It takes a huge amount of courage to decide to leave your comfort zone. Although the violence was threating us big time, we have to admit we had a comfortable and stable life in Brazil. We had our own house close to the beach, car, jobs, credit records, and one of the biggest issues of the 3rd world countries: a "housekeeper".  Once I read that in the countries where you have to clean your own toilet, you can walk freely in the streets. It wasn't out case, right?

Also, another great disadvantage of leaving your country: your family and friends are left behind. Did I want my kids to be apart from their grandparents? Did I want them to be far from their friends and culture? No. But we had no choice. It was either staying in Rio and becoming the next victim, or leaving it and being free.

You need to have a lot of courage to live in Rio de Janeiro. And even more to leave it.

Anywhere we go, we'll bring the lovely memories from Brazil

Too bad we can't have it anymore :(

Our piece of Paradise in Rio de Janeiro - Recreio Beach

Who we are and our reason to choose Canada.

First of all, I'll talk a little about our history. My husband and I are from Rio de Janeiro. I am graduated in Letters (Portuguese, French and English) and have a post-grad diploma in Linguistics. I have spent the last 18 years teaching English as Second Language basically, but besides that I have experience with events planning and selling exchange programs as well. My husband is a Naval Engineer and has worked his whole life at Petrobras, the biggest Brazilian oil company. We have three children: Jose Renato (7yo, born in France), Gustavo (5yo) and Manuela (3yo), both born in Rio too. We used to have an 11 yo Bulldog named Kenzo, which passed away on his way to Canada, and I'll talk about it later.

We have lived in different countries throughout our lives due to our jobs (USA, France, Holland, Italy), and although we love Brazil, the violence was so scary that we couldn't stop thinking about moving to a safer place. In our case,  among the options we had, Canada was the perfect place to raise our children due to accesible immigration programs, equity standards, great education, proximity to Brazil, low violence records and great quality of life.

Moving to Canada was a metter of survival, for our kids' future and for our own sanity. We've committed ourselves to make it work. It's been a great journey and we're still in the beginning, but if one thing is sure is that we'll succeed.

 Paris sera toujours Paris 

The 6 Rios - Welcome to my blog!

Hi, my name is Patricia Rios. I'm a Brazilian married mother of 3 young kids. We just moved to the Great Toronto Area of Mississauga, and as Toronto is popularly known as "The 6" City, I chose this name to be the title of our saga on immigrating to Canada.

I decided to write about it because when we were planning to exit Brazil we couldn't find much info about families with 3 children that had already done this, so I hope I can help families like us.

Little by little I will tell you everything about our planning, decision and life experince in this process of Immigrating to Canada. Feel free to ask me any questions at anytime.

Welcome on board!