Moving within a company that genuinely exists

You must already have been employed by the related foreign company, continuously and full-time, in a capacity matching the category you are transferring under, for a qualifying period that ended recently. This exists to make the route what it says it is: a transfer of an existing employee, not a hiring channel.

In practice that means the employment has to be evidenced the way real employment is evidenced — payroll records, tax filings, social security or provident fund records, bank credits of salary, appointment and promotion letters, and an organisational chart that places you where you say you sat. A letter from a director asserting your role, unsupported by anything else, carries very little weight.

IRCC sets the current length of the qualifying period and the window it must fall within, and revises them from time to time. We do not print those figures here; read them at the source on the day you need them.

A Canadian company created to enable the transfer. The most frequent one, and the least survivable. An entity incorporated shortly before the application, with no premises, no financing, no customers and no plan beyond the applicant’s arrival, reads exactly as what it is. Officers examine incorporation dates, leases, funding and staffing precisely because this pattern is well known to them.

A relationship that is commercial, not corporate. Long-standing partners, agents, distributors and franchisees are not parents, subsidiaries, branches or affiliates. Where the ownership documents do not show control, no amount of history between the businesses substitutes for it.

A title that outruns the duties. Retitling someone as “Director” or “Head of” shortly before the transfer draws attention rather than deflecting it. The duties, reporting lines and authority described have to be consistent with payroll, structure and the size of the business.

Employment abroad that cannot be evidenced. Undocumented family-business employment, cash salary, or a period on the books that does not match tax and payroll records. This is a common problem for applicants from Pakistan and it is worth resolving honestly before filing rather than being asked about it afterwards.

Specialised knowledge asserted rather than shown. Covered above, and worth repeating: in our experience this is the category where files are most exposed, because it is the one where an assertion is easiest to make and hardest to evidence.

Assuming the permit is portable or leads somewhere. The permit is tied to the named employer and position, and it confers no permanent status. If your objective is settlement, that is a separate conversation about routes to permanent residence.

Application fees, the length of the qualifying employment period, initial permit lengths and maximum total durations all change, and they differ between the categories. We deliberately do not publish those figures here, because a number that is right today is a liability on a page you might read next year.

IRCC publishes the current requirements — including which exemption code applies to which kind of transfer, and how officers are told to assess specialised knowledge — under the International Mobility Program on canada.ca. Note that IRCC has reorganised the intra-company transfer instructions and the exemption codes attached to them more than once, so guidance written even a year or two ago may cite codes that no longer exist. The underlying authority sits in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations. Read the figures at the source, on the day you need them.