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I am a British citizen living inside the UK. I wish to immigrate to Canada and become a Canadian citizen. I am in a long distance relationship with my partner who I have visited before and wish to stay with in Canada, and we plan to eventually apply for civil partnership or common law partnership (I am unsure as to the differences between these two partnerships, if any).

I am over the age of 18 and have a Level 6 qualification (BSc Software Engineering), and I currently work as a software developer with some work experience under my belt. I have no debts to pay other than my student loans. I don't drive as of yet however I plan to begin lessons very soon.

I have looked online for steps that I would need to take to become a Canadian citizen, but nothing is in one place and conflicting information can be confusing. I would greatly appreciate some help on the matter, and can give additional information on my current situation on request.

EDIT:

Thanks for the information. I've looked up my immigration options, and according to my choices (on the Government of Canada site - http://www.cic.gc.ca/ctc-vac/getting-started.asp) I'd be able to sign up for Express Entry, but I'd only be able to do so if I have had two years of continuous employment in my current position (Skill level A, Software development). I did some more digging around regarding this, and found this article:

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/helpcentre/answer.asp?qnum=664&top=29

Which states:

“Full-time” means at least 30 hours of paid work in one week. One year of full-time work is at least 1560 hours.

Now, where I work, I put in 40+ hours a week. Does this mean that I will be able to accrue enough hours to equal the equivalent of 2 years of full-time work in just 1.5 years? Also, does it factor in paid holidays?

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    Do you have a reason to think you are already Canadian (e.g. you were born there, or a parent has the citizenship)? If not I suspect what you really asking about is how to go about moving to Canada as a foreign citizen, which is all you could do if you aren't Canadian already. It is hard to tell from your question, though.
    – Dennis
    Jan 2 '17 at 21:18
  • If you want to apply on your own, you could try Express Entry or possibly Working Holiday. Your partner may be able to sponsor you as a conjugal partner (haven't been able to live together). Here's the page.
    – mkennedy
    Jan 2 '17 at 22:01
  • @Dennis I was born and raised in Britain as a British citizen.
    – driima
    Jan 3 '17 at 0:55
  • What @Dennis is getting at is that immigrating to Canada is the first step in becoming a Canadian citizen, so you should probably focus on that. Once you've become a permanent resident ("landed immigrant" in Canadian terminology), you have to live there for a certain period before you can apply for naturalization.
    – phoog
    Jan 3 '17 at 2:43
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    But I suspect that working 30 hours a week does not reduce the period of full time employment required. If they did, they'd say "One year of full-time work is 1560 hours." instead of "One year of full-time work is at least 1560 hours."
    – phoog
    Jan 10 '17 at 23:29
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Some options are:

  1. Marry your partner to immigrate to Canada.

  2. Live with your partner for at least one year in the UK or a third country, then apply for permanent residence.

  3. Live with your partner in Canada for at least one year by getting a work or study visa for Canada, or even just a visitor visa. Then apply for permanent residence. Young people from the UK are often eligible for special work visas (International Experience Program).

  4. Immigrate independently to Canada.

For options 2 and 3, you'll have to combine your lives to a certain extent (having a joint bank account, a joint lease, etc.) to prove that you're living maritally though not married.

Option 4 is likely to take an inordinately long time.

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  • I've done more researching beforehand and had a lot of advice from others. We've agreed to do your option 3. Wish us luck! :D
    – driima
    Feb 5 '17 at 19:19

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