Misbelieves, Mistakes and Misses in the Working Holiday Canada process
Every season in the IEC Program (which includes the Working Holiday) there are hundreds of work permit refusals due to preventable mistakes in the application process. This info blog post will show you the misbelieves, most common mistakes, and most common refusal reasons. With this information you can be sure you will do better than all other work and travellers who received a refusal.
Common Working Holiday Canada misbelieves corrected
The IEC pool is not "first come first served".
Because invitations go out only a few weeks after the pool opening, it doesn’t matter if you apply into the pool 1 minute after opening or 1 week after opening. The chances for the first invitation round are exactly the same for all applicants in the pool. Invitations are sent out weekly during the entire IEC season, that lasts until about October.
No one is given preference in the pool. The chances of an invitation are the same for all profiles in the pool.
- It doesn’t matter, if you apply on your own, or pay a ton of money to an agency.
- Did you just finish high school? It doesn’t matter what education you have.
- Likewise, it doesn’t matter if you have many years of work experience or whether you even have a PhD.
- It doesn’t matter for the Working Holiday if you already have a job lined up in Canada. A job is not a requirement for the Working Holiday and therefore will not give you any preference.
- A job is only important for the Young Professional category and the Co-Op Internship of the IEC program.
No agency or immigration lawyer can speed up the process, or guarantee an invitation or a work permit.
No matter how much money you pay and what promises they make, no one has impact on the chances in the IEC pool. Everything is random. Stay away from that kind of agencies or lawyers.
The IEC work permit (including the Working Holiday) is not extendable
A common misbelief even with the immigration lawyers is, that an IEC work permit is extendable and they (illegally) advise applicants to apply for an extension to gain maintained status.
An IEC work permit cannot be extended beyond the maximum allowed time in the agreement of a country.
> In this info blog post < you can read more on why an IEC is not extendable.
There is no maintained status between two IEC participations.
If you are in Canada under an IEC work permit like the Working Holiday, and you apply for another Working Holiday because your country allows this, then you will not have maintained status while you wait for the processing of the new IEC.
You must apply for visitor record if your current work permit expires soon. While the visitor record application is being processed, you are in maintained visitor status and can stay in the country legally as a visitor until a decision is made or until you activate a new work permit, whichever comes first.
You have to stop working on the day your work permit expires and can start working again when the new work permit is activated.
Common mistakes during the Working Holiday application
1. Typos when creating the profile into the pool
Do not rush! Take your time and answer the questions correctly and check for typos before submitting the profile.
Important data like name, birth date, birth country and passport number will be greyed out in the profile and cannot be changed later in the application. According to the official info from IRCC, you have to delete that profile and create a new profile with the correct information.
2. Missing the deadlines
After you received the invitation, you have 10 days to accept the invitation by clicking the “Start Application” link. From then on you have additional 20 days to upload all required documents and submit the application.
The IRCC system is very faulty. Do not wait until the last day to accept the invitation or submit the application.
Also, the system time is in coordinated universal time (UTC). This is different than your local time.
For example, you accept your invitation at 11:25 a.m. UTC, you must submit your application before 11:25 a.m. UTC 20 days later.
To be on the safe side, accept your invitation latest on day 8 of 10 and submit the application latest on day 18 of 20.
If you receive a refusal because you missed one of the deadlines, it is not the end of the world. You can create a new profile and enter the pool again as long as the pool is still open.
3. Not reading the letters that are received in the GCKey account
It starts with the invitation letter. The ‘invitation to apply’ letter contains a lot of links that are important for the Working Holiday application. By ignoring those links, many applicants miss important instructions and receive a refusal of the work permit. Below you can see an example of the Invitation Letter.
The next letter that is not read after receiving it: The very important POE (approval letter). In the last 10 years we have been asked countless times “Do I need an eTA for travel to Canada?”
If applicants had read the letter, they would have found the information and a valid eTA number on page 1 of the POE. Yes, you need an eTA to travel to Canada, but the eTA is included in the POE.
4. Not going back to the 18th birthday with the work history and resume
Sadly, this is a system problem because the application questions ask for “the past 10 years”. IRCC doesn’t realize, that applicants are older and the past 10 years don’t go far enough. But IRCC expects you to list the work history back to your 18th birthday.
5. Leaving gaps in the work history and resume
It is very, very important to fill out the work history without any gaps.
If you went to school or studied at a college/university, travelled or were unemployed, list everything and month by month. The selection in the application will then be “Student” and “Unemployed“. There will be no “Travelling” as a choice in the drop-down list.
If there are gaps in the work history or in the CV/résumé, the processing agent will request a more extensive travel history form (IMM 5257 Schedule 1) to be filled out. This is a very annoying form that will delay the application. You definitely want to avoid that.
6. Not ‘submitting’ requested documents after upload
Until the biometrics step the application process is purely automated. Only after you gave biometrics, a human processing officer will look at your application and if something is missing, they will request additional documents like a police certificate.
The mistake when an additional document is requested: Applicants upload the document and then wait ages until they receive a refusal because the deadline for the document submission passed. The document never reached the processing officer because it was not submitted.
In this case, this step was missed: After upload, you must click ‘next’ and all the steps to the end until the document is on ‘replacement provided’.
7. Not reading the program requirement for certain countries
Residency requirements
**NEW for Italy**: If you’re an Italian citizen, you’ll also need to provide a residence certificate (certificato di residenza) to prove you live in Italy. The certificate must be translated into English or French by a certified translator (it cannot be translated by you). You must then merge the original + translation into one file and upload this file into the “Optional documents” spot at the bottom of the Document Checklist page in your GCKey account.
Discontinuance requirements
Many Work and Travellers fall in love with Canada or want to immigrate, so they want to stay longer in Canada and make use of the additional options under the IEC program. After all, the IEC program is the easiest, cheapest and fastest way to work in Canada. For example another Working Holiday. Or another category in the IEC program like the Young Professional.
The following countries have a discontinuance requirement, which means there must be a break between the expiry date of the first IEC work permit and the submission date of the second IEC work permit application. You can only apply for a second participation after a certain time since the old work permit has expired. Here are the breaks:
- Croatia: 3 months
- Latvia: 1 year
- Lithuania: 3 months
- Poland: 6 months
- Slovakia: 3 months
- Spain: 3 months
Common mistakes at activation of the work permit
Number 1 mistake: Not buying enough health insurance
This is the most common mistake that also hurts the most. Hundreds of work and travellers regret this choice when they arrive at the Canadian airport immigration or land border to activate the work permit. They believed they could buy an IEC health insurance for just a few months, and then intended to extend the health insurance to extend the work permit.
For example Australia allows a 2-year work permit. In the experience reports, travellers intended to stay only one ski season and return next year so they only bought 5 months of IEC health insurance. At the border the work permit was issued only for 5 months. The regret: The shortened work permit is not extendable, so the one ski season was the only one those travellers could work in.
It is the official IEC requirement from the Canadian government:
For the International Experience Canada (which includes the Working Holiday) you must have health insurance for the entire duration of your stay in Canada. So if your country allows a 2-year work permit, you must have a 2-year health insurance policy at the time you activate the work permit at the border.
> Check health insurance options here <
If your insurance policy is valid for less, you will get a work permit that expires at the same time as your health insurance. Then you will not be able to extend your work permit later.
The best IEC health insurance for European and UK citizens
recommended by other IEC participants who used them
Another common example and reported a lot of times (and maybe you feel exactly the same way): work and travellers have never been far away from their home country for so long, and fear they don’t like Canada, or become home sick, so they first want to “try it out a few months” before they commit for longer.
For this reason, many only bought IEC health insurance for a few months, then decide later if they want to stay. When those work and travellers arrived at the border with a short health insurance (for example 3 months), the IEC rules made the decision for them: They received the work permit for 3 months, so they could only stay and work for 3 months.
Number 2 mistake: Not having the proper health insurance
Many Working Holiday participants who are already working in Canada on another work permit and have provincial health insurance believe, this provincial health insurance is sufficient to activate a Working Holiday. It is not. IRCC strictly mentions here:
“Having a valid provincial health card is not enough. Repatriation is not covered by provincial health insurance.“
In addition, if you are not in your home country anymore, you need an ‘already travelling’ policy for example the popular > True Traveller for UK and European citizens <
By the way, it is another big misconception that everything is covered by provincial health care. That is not the case.
Not even an ambulance is included free of charge. I had to pay $385 for it out of pocket in Alberta because it is not covered by Alberta Health.
In the event of an accident or medical emergency, you can take advantage of the private IEC health insurance that you have with the Working Holiday and that covers this. “Dental” is also another major thing not covered at all in any provincial healthcare plan, while private IEC health insurance covers procedures up to a certain amount (depending on the insurance policy conditions).
Mistake number 3: Not checking the work permit for mistakes
No matter how quickly you want to leave that stressful immigration office, it is very important that you check all the details on the work permit before you leave the immigration desk! Have it corrected immediately by the border agent if something is wrong. Getting it corrected after you left is a major pain and must be done via paper application with long processing times.
Check the information on the Working Holiday work permit:
- expiry date
- passport number
- If you did a medical exam, you should not have medical restrictions on your work permit.
- “open” employer
- “open” location