Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork done between April 2015 and August 2016 in Halifax, Canada, with nurses employed on temporary work permits in the healthcare sector in the province of Nova Scotia, Canada, this research contributes to contemporary literature on certain forms of migration temporality and emotionality. I employ policy analysis of credential recognition procedures for nurses and ethnographic research methods to demonstrate how a complex array of intersecting and sometimes contradictory policy contexts in labour, migration and healthcare regulate the movement and work of foreign nurses, including their transition into permanent Canadian residents, and ultimately, citizens, and the lived experienced of this regulation as it extends through time and space.