While I’ve been reading about the immigration process, I’ve come to understand that Express Entry is not a single process, but actually the first post of the system. Express Entry might essentially qualify you for getting into the country, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you can get in. For that, there’s a separate process.
From what I can see, what I would qualify for would be the Federal Skilled Worker Program, or FSW(P). Express Entry tends to get abbreviated to EE. All this to get the desired PR, or Permanent Residency. As you can tell, the forums on emigrating to Canada love abbreviations. What I’ve found is that Express Entry seems to be more a broad grouping of several programs, with Express Entry itself being a first checkpoint. Once you get through that, you’ll want to file for the FSWP or a PNP—Provincial Nomination Program. EE just lets you know whether you can even get in those.
That did get bring us some bad news, however: we’ll need around 10,000EUR settlement funds. We’d not seen that before in the other requirements, and figured that since they’re mostly based around job offers, settlement funds wouldn’t be needed. After all, you’d be in Canada with a job, hence a salary, so that’d be taken care for, right? Apparently not. So, sadly, that moves our potential timeline for getting over there quite bit. Maybe.
Because another option that we will now explore are the ways to get to Canada for a shorter period. We’d first get there on a temporary visa for work, which is, apparently, still that first hurdle that we’d need to pass, but potentially that does not require settlement money. So far, I’ve been reading that people of my educational background have a really good chance of getting permanent residency very soon after landing. One Redditor called it “surpringly easy”, receiving it only five months after landing in Canada (they actually recommended just filing for PR via EE right away, given how easily they got it).
It’s still a lot of uncertainty, but the more we read, the more we understand of the whole process. Two of my current colleagues apparently moved to Canada for a year in the past (and wanted to file for permanent residency, but didn’t get a reply until they’d already moved back to the Netherlands), so I’ve contacted them to see if they have any insights for me. Let’s hope they’ll help us get another piece of that puzzle.