It's not as easy as you might expect, through normal channels. There's a points system to gain access and a whole lot of hoops to jump through if you aren't able to pay for the economic class.
Now, if you were to walk across the border at certain locations and claim refugee status you could probably remain so long as your application is being processed; regardless of the merits of your claim, that process time has become _rather long_.
It's suprisingly hard to move there if you're from the USA. I looked into moving there after I got out of the military, and had no chance because I don't have a degree. The fact that I have over a decade of work experience in cybersecurity and have been through intense courses acredited at the graduate level doesn't factor in. Their immigration process reminds me of the shitty HR at big corporations that aren't willing to budge from their checklist of "requirements".
I don't have a degree; they won't take me. I have looked into it many times, but the difficulty of moving to another country (at least to ones which I find it easier to be proud of living in) is very high, especially compared to that of moving to another employer.
Compared to most other western countries, sure, Canada is on the easier side.
However, even with that in mind, it is still a very difficult and complicated process, with tons of hard limitations that can put a complete stop to the whole thing due to something trivial, like not having a degree. And even with that barrier of hard requirements cleared, it is still a pretty draconian experience.
Having gone through a similar thing myself (not with Canada, but I ended up coincidentally reading a lot about Canadian immigration laws), I can assure you, it is way more difficult than getting any job, even if you are a successful Google engineer, and by a far margin.
I am pretty sure that any person who went through an immigration process to another country can attest to that. And I am talking purely about the legal-paper-stuff aspect of immigration to another country, not things like getting adapted to your new country or anything like that.
> Compared to most other western countries, sure, Canada is on the easier side.
Our process isn't that easy; we have an immigration system that the GOP would _like to have_.
There are points awarded based on your education and training, variated against the demand for those skills in Canada. If you are being imported by an employer they must go to considerable lengths to prove that they attempted to find an existing Canadian to fill that role. And so on.
And it can be all avoided by paying approximately $800,000 to what is effectively an escrow: you get it back after a few years, less inflation.
That was the whole point of my comment. Out of all western countries, Canada is definitely one of the easiest. But even with that in mind, it is still extremely difficult.
