So, as someone who thinks about going to live outside my country (Brazil) I wish to know what are the best ways to enter the country. I plan to do it here in four or five years. The thing is, this country is becoming more violent by year. I live in the 8th most violent city in the World. Some brazilians who live in Canada says it's a wonderful place to live, so is it really that peaceful and calm? I really don't care about parties or something like that. I just want peace and good quality of life. Oh and how are immigrants treated? Thanks.

Here in the US, there's probably a reason we think of Canada as the "quiet neighbor up north."

Can't say for certain how immagrants are treated, but it's relatively peaceful, and by most accounts an overall swell place to live. Granted, most of that is by current residents, so take it with a grain of salt. The two most populous provinces (Ontario and Qubec) have something like 80 violent crimes per 100,000 people. Big issue is that they have a points system, and let only 125,000 immagrants per year to stay.

Generally speaking, things to improve your chances are:

- Speaking English, French, or both fluently.

- Having a college/university level education

- Have trade skills that Canada lacks

- If you've had prior school or work experience in Canada

- Having relatives living in Canada

- Money to invest in Canada and/or start your own business.

Things that can count against you are:

- Prior Criminal History

- Preexisting health issues that might strain their free healthcare system

In Toronto there are a lot of people from Brazil as well as Portugal. Well Toronto is relatively safe compared to most large cities in North America.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Canada

http://www.torontopolice.on.ca/statistics/ytd_stats.php

Canada is Multi Cultural country and most people do live in cities. Canada is built by immigrants and for the most part it treats immigrants quite well.

The best way to get into Canada is by looking at either the Canadian Consulate or Embassy in Brazil and see what the process is for immigrating.

Here is link from the government of Canada on the process to immigrate to Canada.

http://www.cic.gc.ca/englisH/immigrate/index.asp

Canada is a great place to live,

is there a specific Job Field you would like to get into? if so, maybe we can suggest the best province for that Particular Field..



Now, just so you are aware, Canada's crime level has slowly been rising in recent years as well..

had a Friend and Co-worker who had immigrated here from Columbia.. sadly, just under a year ago (and shortly after he got his Canadian Citizenship), he was murdered..
we had a Soldier (in the Reserves) who was killed in Ottawa (Canada's Capital) a few months back in a Terrorist attack while Guarding our Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and the shooter then marched right into the front doors of the Parliament Building
and many other major Incidents of Murder, Drug Busts, Quebec Mafia, etc. have been top news in the past few years..


So, don't think while moving to Canada that its "crime-free" and everyone is always friendly (as a lot of American Media portrays us as a such).. while I am sure our Crime is not nearly as bad as yours (or most Nations to be honest)), it is slowly on the rise.. still though, in General it is a pretty safe country as long as you don't Slip on the ice when the snow plow is going by ..

Canada definitely isn't free of crime, but as long as you stay out of trouble you'll be fine. Immigrants are treated the same as everybody, given how almost everybody in this country is an immigrant.

Quebec, from what I've been told by my Canadian friends on another forum, is a province that...doesn't like foreigners who don't speak French. They value the French culture highly, so if you want to be embraced in Quebec, embrace the French culture, language included.

That's what I've been told at least.

That said, you might come to like Canada, so go up there and check it out!

I don't want to Venture to far into Politics, but Quebec has a long History of sorta seeing themselves "Above" the rest of the Country as far as Society goes (they have tried to Secede several times saying "we wanna be our Own Country! but, still use Canada's Currency, have access to its Natural Resources, still be given money by the feds, and still have a say in the rest of Canada")

yeah, generally Canadians are very accepting of others Cultures.. not to say we don't have Bigots (because ohh we do), but alot of Canadians (or at least, the guys I hang around) would just go "ohh, your from ? cool, I've never been there.. did you sorta feel a culture Shock when you moved here?"

Hey what's the moose on moose crime rate up there? I can't seem to find those numbers anywhere.

I was born here, raised here, and I say come on up!! I love that this country was built by and made up of people from all around the world.

As mentioned by others, we are by no means crime free, but compared to the violence I see in Brazil on the news, it's night and day.

I just hope you like the cold. Varying degrees depending where you decide to go. West coast is the wet coast. The snow normally stays up in the mountains. Rain down here at sea level. With the odd exception. (Blizzard of 2006 for example.) It shut the whole city down as we do not have many snow plows, nor people with snow tires.

But... there are way better places out there than Canada.

So I'm on phone, so, no multiquotes. Hope you guys read it.

Marss.

Well I am healthy as hell so I won't be Problem to the Healthcare system
I speak english and spanish fluently and been taking classes of French. Since it's a Latin language having no problem with it. I am doing English in the University. Sadly no parents there. And I hope to bring 20.000 dollars with me.(how much it will be in Canada's currency)

FunnyBunny

In the moment I am not sure what to do. Here in Brazil I will start to teach English next year. So... A teacher maybe? I know Canada isn't free crime. But compared to Brazil it is. Crime rates are not the only reasons I wanna go to other country. There is cultural issues (forget the Brazilian culture from.the 50s and before. Now everything is six driven and no one really cares for children dancing a music that describes a sixual relation explicitly) and our politics. I can't dwell within it due to Forum's rules. But search for it and watch Tropa de Elite 2. So I just wanna live peacefully, be able to raise a family, have a car and be able to buy my nerd stuff.
I really defined Canada to live when I started seeing Izzy Nobre's videos. He is from the same city I am from, Fortaleza and he lives in Calgary. Really loved what I saw. Specially a trip he did into the woods that had a lake and 4G internet signal. Thing is, I would love to help Canada any way I could. So... That's it. Oh and there is the Snow. But now I'm scared of flip in the Ice

It really depends on where in Canada you plan on living. I can only speak for Southern Ontario and Montreal.

Toronto itself can go from upscale to ghetto at the turn of a corner, but for the most part it's okay. I try to spend as little time in Toronto as possible. I like the peace and quiet of the suburbs.

Just be prepared for what lies in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WULsZJxPfws.

I know how it is. Every city in Brazil is like that.

If I were to ever live in Canada, I don't think I'd want to live in the French parts. I've had lots of Canadians tell me a lot of the French Canadians can be a bit smug about their French culture and look down on people who don't speak French.

If you have the time and money you could start in Texas or something and make your way through the US and then through Canada. It seems like you haven't based the Canada decision on much, so it might not be wise to jump right into something like that.

I know a Brazilian from Kentucky (of all places) who seems to like it more here than he did in Brazil. Don't talk to him much so I don't specifically know why.

That's actually not true. Our crime rate has been falling for decades now, especially when it comes to violent crime. We're at the lowest levels for homicides now since the 1960's:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-s-crime-rate-continued-downward-trend-in-2013-1.2715356

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/07/23/canadas_crime_rate_falls_as_homicides_hit_lowest_level_since_1960s.html


Not exactly the best choice. Teaching is considered a very good to job to have here, so a lot of people try to get into that field. Some of them end up with nothing more than part time supply teaching jobs for years until they finally are able to get a full-time position. Some of them just give up and go into something else. You'd also have to go through some education here, the credentials for being a teacher are very specific.

I see. Well I speak fluently Portuguese (duh ) Spanish and English. French will probably become fluent as well. I'm doing English so I can study other things. The.thing is, I still have to decide what.

@Andros

Canada is just like every other modern country. It has good, bad, and everything in between.

But in general, it is a peaceful place and we have free health care.
Speaking directly to your question, Canadians are generally very open to immigrants. And there are many programs to make your arrival easier.

If you are serious about moving anywhere, talk to your local immigration. They should have all the details for you.

Vancouver is probably the most beautiful city, but it's more expensive.

A lot of people here seem to be saying that French Canada is a bad place to live if you speak english.

That is not true.
As an English speaking Canadian who once lived in Quebec and still spends time in Quebec, I can say that French Canada is exactly like every other part of Canada. Friendly, tolerant and lots of fun.

Montreal is actually one of the most culturally diverse and progressive cities in the country.

(speaking from experience, no political nonsense intended....)

The misunderstanding of the Franco-Canadians is mostly caused by uninformed people who have never even been to Quebec, but they heard about the politics or the "French-snobs" once.. But virtually no French people under the age of 40 even cares about "the old school politics" anymore.

So, just like any place, there's preconceived notions that usually have no merit.

For comparison, I was tentative going to New York city my first time, because I heard about the "American snobs and American elitism"..... But no, I didn't witness anything like that. Everyone was very friendly and cool. I felt at home the whole time.

There is no "French culture" anywhere in Canada that they force upon English people... except maybe being sent to the dépanneurs for a bottle of wine at 2am during a blizzard. (and kissing on the cheek, but the girls are pretty so I can't complain)

Thanks everyone so far. Yeah Pluto, I'm serious about leaving Brazil. I don't hate it. I love it. is just that I am a human being and I want what is good for me and sadly here the bad things are much more dominant due to politics. It's violent, corrupted to the core, becoming cultureless. So like I said, I watched videos from several Brazilians in Canada and I became... fascinated with the country. I don't wish to be a parasite. If I manage to move to Canada after these five to seven years preparing I will do my best for the country and it's people. I really love humanity (not like Illusive Man ) and I always try to benefit the community I'm on. Sounded like a "write a letter saying why so you want to live in Canada" but ok. And about the French Canada... even here the Portuguese managed to give us a bad impression about anything related to France.

I'm from Calgary and we have lots of immigrants that are here for work, only problem is housing is a little bad and going to be not good for a few years yet due to a flood last year that wiped out half a town south of calgary, so it's somewhat expensive to find a decent place to live at the moment.

Other than that, work is abundant and every employer is looking for someone so general wages are pretty high (very few jobs pay minimum wage, and if they do it's probably because untaxed tips are involved). People are accepting of immigrants, especially the ones that come and work hard.

Another thing that separates Calgary from most other prairie cities in Canada is that it's one of the only places in the world that gets chinooks, which is basically warm wind that comes west from BC. So there are days in the middle of winter we go from -20 degrees celsius to +10 in a day due to a chinook which lasts for a few days while 3 hours north to Edmonton it's still -25 all those days.

So we do get crappy winters, especially compared to brazil, but the chinooks are the saving grace of calgary, and one of the main reasons why i am still able to work and make money in an outdoor job during the winter and not wanna shoot myself in the face at work.

I know of a few immigrants who were coming here and working for landscaping companies using that temporary foreign workers program and they were loving it, but that thing is controversial right now because people are complaining about it so I don't know how well that program is running at the moment. Otherwise I don't really know how you go about moving here and all those hoops you're gonna have to jump through since ive been born here and havent had that problem. Hopefully it's not too hard for you.

Is not that I want to live just In Calgary. But if I could would be good. I live in the Northeast of Brazil. 34+ degrees at summer :tongue; this Brazilians I spoke of, they went to work as anyone else and they said that once inside and with a job things starts to get easier. The only I kinda fear is the winter. But I'll get used to it. And that's a good thing about the working hard stuff cause the last.thing I am is lazy.

I say go for it and I hope it works out for you.

Any reason why you couldn't move to a safer place closer to Brazil like Argentina or Chile?

Yeah. Argentina is in a bad economical state from what we see in the news. About Chile, well, Canada is a fully developed country. Quality of life and stuff. Can't say for sure what is it but if I'm going to live outside Brazil. Will be there if I manage to. If not, patience and rethink plans.

The Victoria area is pretty nice as well, and not as congested. Not a lot cheaper though.


As I mentioned in another thread, that could change with the drop in oil prices. It's not really a good time right now to advocate to people that they should come out to Alberta to look for work. The province is so heavily reliant on that one resource that things may change for the worse for some time to come yet.


Then you might want to consider the West Coast. Here in Victoria, on Vancouver Island, we rarely see snow. The average winter temperature is about 8C. Not quite as warm as Brazil, but certainly better than Calgary, where it's not all that unusual for it to get to -40C. Though the average is about -10C. The chinooks certainly help, but it can still be bitter there in the winter at times. Southern Ontario and Quebec is somewhere in between those two extremes with an average winter temperature of about -2. Toronto itself is a bit warmer because it's right next to a large lake, plus all the buildings in the city help to create a micro-climate there.