Hi Madhava, congratulations.!! Please share your post landing experience. Also, interested more in your job search. Please update.
Sha Sha & Everybody
Good to hear from your experiences.
Landing, Customs clearance, and Baggage claims and exit were very smooth at Toronto Pearson Airport.
Customs are extremely friendly, and courteous people. All they ask is "the amount of money that we carry," after that we are directed to Immigration. No harm in carrying Indian grocery items, Spices, and also over the counter medicines. I will share this in my next post.
There are around 5 to 8 exit counters at Immigration, we will be asked to move to a separate hall where newly landed immigrants are registered. Here the officer will ask us to submit the passport and the landing papers. Be sure to have a local canadian address ready to have your PR Card sent to the same address. The officer will specifically ask a new entrant for a local address. A PR card takes a month or two to reach us. A copy of the landing paper will be handed over to us, which has to used as our ID, till we get our PR card. So please ensure that you carefully preserve this copy. Collectively it will not take more than 30 mins to get past Customs and Immigration (again it depends on a number of factors such as the number of flights landing at the time you land, number of family members whose details have to be updated in their systems, and having your documentation in order).
Once you are done with Customs and Immigration. A person will greet the newly landed migrants with all necessary brochures about Canada (Insurance, SIN Registration, Job Market, etc) and then we will have to proceed towards the baggage claim area.
Kindly note: Before disembarking from the flight: An inflight announcement will be made indicating "the exact Conveyor belt number where our baggage's can be claimed"
Please be sure to carry small denominations of Canadian currency (2 Dollar coins), to fetch a Strolley. Each of which costs 2 dollars, you will have to insert the coin after which, the lever will be released automatically. Carry sufficient number of 2 Dollar coins depending upon the number of family members/baggages. People with infants, children, or Families with many baggages, and who are not in a position to manage shifting luggages can avail special luggage services from porters (do not worry they are well behaved than our Indian counterparts), who will load them into their strolleys and drop us at the exit. The porter services provider charge a flat rate of 20 Dollars, and you may tip the porter of 5 dollars (they might not ask, but its your call). Receipt is given for 20 dollars. Once you are at the exit, you can see Cab services, Buses, and also People waiting to receive you.
My initial findings about the Job scenario.
Good number of jobs across fields are available. I have been doing on my own research by going through local newspapers, websites, meeting people, and the results are quite satisfactory.
Trust me, breaking into the Canadian job market is not that easy simply because the views of the Corporates and the Immigration Ministry are miles apart. Corporates think many times before hiring a landed immigrant for want of Canadian experience, whereas Immigration thinks that they need to bring in people to address the shortage in terms of numbers. Unless Canadian Corporates and Immigration Ministry find a common ground to fix this gap, we landed immigrants will have to fend for ourselves and will continue to find it extremely challenging to find a job matching our skills set.
One of the solutions as I see: Meeting people through various discussion forums, job search workshops, settlement services agencies funded by the government will definitely help us when it comes to job search.
Hope I did not bore you guys with my stuff.
My next posting is about Indian Groceries, Masala, and Spices ... l o l
God bless us all
Thanks
Madhava
Immigration Forum
