Canada ETA requirements

If you wish to travel to Canada any time soon, either for business or tourism purposes, you may need to get a visa or an ETA, depending on your country of origin. What you should know is that according to Canada’s visa policy, 58 nationalities are exempt from getting a visa. However, if you are visa exempt, it means that you need to apply for a Canada ETA unless you are a US citizen, in which case you do not need one. Lastly, an ETA is necessary only if you travel by air.

Before you apply for your Canada ETA, you need to make sure that you meet all the requirements. Lucky for you, the list is not very long, and chances are that you already have everything you need. Below, we will show you what requirements you need to meet and what you need to obtain a Canada ETA.

The first requirement is eligibility. You cannot apply for a Canada ETA if you do not qualify for it. To find that out, you can use iVisa’s Visa Checker. The tool can be located in the top right corner of this page. Access the feature and follow the steps. In the drag-down menu on the left, you need to select your country of origin. In the one on the right, you need to choose Canada. The result will tell you if you are eligible for an ETA or not, and if you are, you will be redirected to the online application page.

The second requirement you need to meet is the passport. All applicants must hold a valid passport that remains valid for at least another 6 months from the date of arrival in Canada. Speaking of passport, you should know that a Canada ETA is valid for 5 years since issue. However, if your passport expires before the ETA does, the ETA becomes invalid before its actual expiry date. At the same time, if you have a new passport issued, you need to apply for a new Canada ETA as well.

The two requirements above are among the most important, but iVisa makes some requests as well. One of them is that you provide them with a valid e-mail address. The Canada ETA is electronically linked to your passport, but you will receive a copy of the document via e-mail in PDF format. That is why you need to have an e-mail address to which you have access.

iVisa also asks that you provide a valid means of online payment. Since the application process is entirely online, you need to make the payment while you complete the process. iVisa accepts multiple means of payment. You can use a credit or a debit card, but we accept PayPal, WeChat, and Alipay as well.

The requirements above are pretty much everything you need to meet in case you plan to apply for a Canada ETA. However, if you happen to be a Brazilian citizen, there is one more condition you need to keep in mind. According to Canada’s visa policy, Brazilian citizens are eligible for a Canada ETA only if they have held a Canadian visa in the last 10 years, or if they currently have a valid US non-immigrant visa.

The bottom line is that the Canada ETA requirements are easy to meet. In our opinion, there is nothing difficult to achieve on the list above, and you should get everything you need in a short while. That is if you do not already have everything. If you have any other questions about the Canada ETA requirements, do not hesitate to contact us. We are at your disposal 24/7.

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Yixi (Sophia) Li is the co-author of this article. She is a licensed immigration consultant (RCIC) who has been working with an immigration law firm since 2016. She is also a licensed paralegal in Ontario and a notary public. She has a Masters of Law. In 2018, she founded Mainstay Immigration Law Firm and Yixi Li Legal Firm.

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