When a Canadian company has a qualifying connection to a foreign company, very often a facilitated work permit option is available. This is called an intra-company transfer and it is a type of work permit for which only certain positions and certain types of companies are eligible.

General information about this exceptional work permit can be found here.

This type of work permit is particularly advantageous and is often employed in this domain due to the nature of the IT field, where it is very commonplace for IT companies to have branches or divisions in many different parts of the world.

The language of technology is universal so cultural differences are rarely problematic in terms of cohesion and coordination among workers with different backgrounds. As a result of this, variations in ideas, customs and social behavior are not impediments to establishing satellite locations around the world, regardless of the company’s country of origin.

Foreign IT workers can take advantage of this fact if the company for which they work has a branch, division, subsidiary, or parent company located in Canada. If this is the case and if they are eligible in other respects, they can apply for an intra-company transfer work permit, which is exempt from the requirement to apply for a Labour Market Impact Assessment. This increases the likelihood of the foreign worker obtaining Canadian work authorization as it relieves the Canadian employer from having to prove that they were not able to find a Canadian for the job that will be performed by the foreign worker.