It depends on your personal situation and there is great degree of arbitrariness. Canadians can enter the country for 6 months without a visa. This makes it is

It depends on your personal situation and there is great degree of arbitrariness. Canadians can enter the country for 6 months without a visa. This makes it is easy to work illegally for people who are willing to take that risk. There is the TN visa, which is easy to obtain. But it's only for 8 specific professions. I for one worked as a Computer Systems Analyst. A job title I never heard before that. Once you have this visa it's bound to your employment, when you loose your job, you have to leave the country in 10 days. This is a temporary visa and you can not apply for a green card. Then there is H1B. This visa allows you to apply for a green card, but you can only apply for it on one specific date per year, if you can get it depends on a lottery (!), which decides if you can work 6 month later. Also it requires a mountain of paperwork, which however the companies lawyer will normally take care of. From there it takes 2-3 year to get a green card.