I think the best way to do things out here is first come over for a visit, just have a look around, if you have a family, do it together. Do not mention to airport immigration that you’re looking to come here for work as they can ■■■■ you off and send you home.
Once you’ve had a little jolly up out here then you can start to concentrate on the companies offering work in a province you liked. Then assuming you get the magic job offer and LMIA, come over alone and get all the tests done and get out on the road.
Stay in the truck as much as possible, ideally working your nuts off and get nominated for PR by the company or province (depending on how it’s done in the province you are in) and then think about renting somewhere and bringing the family over.
Remember that all this can take up to two years and it could be a further two years before you get residency. You may not be at a very good company (highly likely) and you can moan all you want about that, but because options are so limited at the moment and the system has been abused so much in the past, you have no choice but to ■■■■ it up buttercup. No matter how bad it gets, you’re pretty much stuck where you are and there’s nothing you can do about it, except pack it all up and go back to Britain. It’s not good, but it is how it is.
I’m not over dramatising it, there really are some terrible jobs over here and the worst of the worst are the companies that have to recruit from overseas, as even the Canadian drivers, who take far more crap than Brits, will not work for these firms.
They aren’t all bad, but most of them are, which is why 99% of Brits that came here no longer work for the company they came here to work for. Do not be under any illusions that it will be different for you, many people have made that mistake and a lot of them are now back in Britain with a very bad taste in their mouths.
I have been speaking to a recent arrival in the past few weeks and even I was shocked by the exploitation he and his family are enduring. His pay is almost half of what the Canadian drivers earn for doing the same job, he rented a house off the owner of the company and the rent keeps going up, he pays from his wages, so has no choice but to pay, he looked for another place to live and the boss found out and threatened to throw his family out on the street while he was out on the road unless he stayed in the company house. If he attempts to refuse an unreasonable request he is told to get his family out of the house and go to the airport and back to Britain.
The poor bloke is at the end of his rope, so I advised him to adopt a different approach, one that is a bit more British in its approach. There’s a lot of illegal stuff going on, the wages, the house rental etc etc, so pointing out that the authorities would shut the firm down (more than half the workforce is on an LMIA and if they get pulled, it will be a big problem) and that an extreme level of violence will be dished out the next time threats are made to his family.
Not a good situation at all and one of the most extreme cases I’ve heard of, but it’s happening for this poor bloke and his family, so even though such a bad deal is unlikely to happen to anybody else, it does show how bad it could be out here if you make the wrong choice I’m who you take that LMIA from…