I’m Wesley, Brazilian and currently living in Ireland. I moved to this country last year because of a job opportunity in June, in the middle of the pandemic. When everything was going badly for the world, I was able to achieve one of my main objectives in life. This only happens because I make a series of decisions in life that ultimately result in that.
But that was not a good time for immigrating, I know. I could not turn down a good job opportunity. The whole process was more painful and more expensive than it should be.
That’s the reason that I’m sharing my experience with this subject. If I know what I know right now, I could do that the year before and potentially avoid bad-timing.
In this post, I’ll talk about the single and most important aspect of whole immigration and, what gives you the power to decide the most performative path.
Types of visa
Once you have decided where you want to live, you need to understand how. Every country has different laws and policies regarding permission to work and lives in a country.
For example, In Canada, there exists a Visitor Visa, Study Permit, Family Sponsorship, Self-employee and other types of visas where each one gives you work and living permissions. In Ireland, there is a concept of “stamps”, numbered from 0 to 6. Each stamp gives you work and living permission as well.
Every visa has a due time, after that some can be upgraded, renew or expire. For example, in Ireland, two years after you acquire the working visa (stamp 1) can change to a permanent resident visa (Stamp 4). After five years in the country, you can apply for citizenship. Note that a permanent resident visa doesn’t require to be employed to be valid.
In summary, you have to take into consideration:
- What will the visa allow you to do?
- How much time is it going to be valid?
- What are the conditions to remain valid?
- What is the possibility of an upgrade?
- Can I extend to a family member?
After understanding all that, you can evaluate what those conditions match your lifestyle, family, money and time available.
How does the process work?
Like the type of visas, each country has its immigration processes. Generally, there are two types of immigration processes: point-based and direct application.
Point-Based Systems
Those systems take into consideration several attributes about yourself and give points to them. The country considers language skills, education level, working experience, age, family structure, job opportunity, etc.
Your profile will summarise those points and put in a pool of candidates.
From time to time, it will run calculations and determine what minimum necessary points to receive an invite, called make a “draw”. Whoever has enough points will receive the invite to move to the next step, whoever has not, will remain in the pool. The only chance to get an invite is to increase your points by adding education, working experience or receive a job opportunity or pray to the next draw has a lower cut-line.
Although that process seems more complicated and hard to achieve than find a job opportunity, those usually give you a permanent resident visa.
One example of a country that does that is Canada with the so-called express entry. More information here: https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/immigrate-canada/express-entry.html
Direct Application
The other type of immigration process is directly applying to a working visa in the country, which is the most common type because you will need to comply with the requirement.
To know more about this type of visa, it’s necessary to search through the country immigration website. There you will find the specifics but generally speaking, almost all of them require a job opportunity, and proof of high education degree, language skills and working experience.
With a job opportunity, this process can be easy to go through, but you will receive a working visa instead of a permanent resident.
Skilled Workers
Every country looks at its economy and determinate: what are the type of professionals that they need, what are in shortage, what is necessary for the future. With that, they create a list of “critical skills” or “skilled workers”.
One thing is clear: regarding the immigration process or country that you chose they prioritize skilled workers, with a good education level and a decent amount of experience on that list.
To summarise, the fastest way to immigrate is to be a skilled worker with a job opportunity.
What Is Suitable For You?
You should get information about the options to choose the best way for you and then prioritize accordingly.
One of my main regrets after immigrating was not having done it before. That happened because of the way that I started to understand the express entry from Canada. I decided that I didn’t want to go with a student or working visa. I wanted to go as a resident, set the goals, and try as hard as I could to reach that. With time, I realized that I could have taken a shorter path, but I hadn’t. And I lost 1 or 2 years because of that.
That’s why I wanted to write about this. To highlight the importance of know all the possibilities and being able to change the plan when you start.
The main pillars of the process are somewhat similar. So, as long as you are moving forward with saving money, learning the language, getting more educated, and skilful, you are in the right direction. There are several paths to get there, choose carefully and be prepared to change when necessary. The important thing is: you get there!