Ontario is going to amend the Ontario Immigration Act
On April 15, 2021, the government of Ontario announced the proposed amendments to the Ontario Immigration Act. The province plans to improve the program integrity and efficiency of the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program (OINP). Among the other proposal, Ontario wants to give the OINP director more power to compel information from employers/applicants directly as well as indirectly from their representatives, to conduct inspections of applicant employers, businesses established or purchased by foreign nationals in order to improve the program's ability to protect against incidences of misrepresentation. OINP will also align the Act with the Federal legislation, increasing the maximum duration of a ban for violators of the Act or its regulations from two years to five years. The public is encouraged to submit feedback on the proposed amendments by May 25, 2021.
#Ontario, #OINP, #PNP, #immigration_policy
IRCC will grant PR to over 90,000 temporary residents in six new programs
On April 14, 2021, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), launched six new temporary immigration programs targeting essential workers and international graduates residing in Canada. The government allocated 20,000 spots for health care workers (40 different NOCs), 30,000 spots for all other essential workers (95 NOCs), and 40,000 spots for international graduates. The eligibility requirement in all those streams resembles the main criteria of the Canadian Experience Class. Healthcare and essential occupations applicants must possess one year of Canadian work experience and meet the language requirements, while international students must have graduated from the college or university within the last 4 years, but no earlier than January 2017. IRCC will accept applications via the new online portal until November 5, 2021, or until it reaches the cap of 90,000 applications under these 3 streams. Candidates will be able to apply beginning May 6, 2021. In addition, IRCC launched 3 additional streams with unlimited caps for French-speaking international graduates and Francophone essential workers. This policy will definitely allow Canada to meet the immigration target of admitting 401,000 new permanent residents in 2021.
#IRCC, #Canadian_experience, #PR, #healthcare, #essential_occupations, #French, #Francophones, #international_students, #international-graduates, #immigration_levels, #immigration_policy
IRCC issued an update on automatic application extensions
On April 12, 2021, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), published an update regarding automatic 90-day extensions for applications with missing documents. From now on, IRCC will grant only extra 30 days to submit the required documents. The new instructions are applied to applications for temporary residence, permanent residence and citizenship applications. At the same time, candidates with reasonable COVID-19-related grounds will still be facilitated as per officer discretion.
#IRCC, #immigration_policy, #COVID_19
Canada invited 938 International Experience Canada candidates
Over the last week, Canada conducted new invitation rounds in the pools of the International Experience Canada (IEC) program. From April 4 to April 8, Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) issued 938 Invitations to Apply (ITA) for an IEC open work permit. As of April 8, there are 14,886 candidates registered in the pool, waiting for the invitation. In this round, there were 15 ITAs for Australia, 5 ITAs for Belgium, 134 ITAs for Chile, 5 ITAs for Costa Rica, 4 ITAs for Croatia, 57 ITAs for the Czech Republic, 1 ITA for Denmark, 239 ITAs for France, 15 ITAs for Greece, 3 ITAs for Hong Kong, 243 ITAs for Ireland, 6 ITAs for Italy, 10 ITAs for Japan, 36 ITAs for South Korea, 11 ITAs for the Netherlands, 11 ITAs for Portugal, 13 ITAs for Slovakia, 19 ITAs for Spain, 2 ITAs for Sweden, 6 ITAs for Switzerland, 19 ITAs for Taiwan, and 84 ITAs for the United Kingdom. In total, Canada issued 4,253 ITAs under the IEC in 2021.
#IRCC, #IEC, #ITA, #Working_Holiday, #Young_Professionals, #International_CoOp, #work_permits, #work_in_Canada
