Provincial Nomination Programs

PNPs are offered by all provinces and territories in Canada. These are a great tool for the said provinces to manage job market shortages within the provinces and is also a great tool for a lot of foreign nationals who can almost guarantee their move to Canada if a PNP is offered to them. As the name suggests these programs are Nomination Programs and not Immigration Programs which means that the province can only nominate an individual to come & settle down in the province but the ultimate file processing and approval of Permanent Residence Status of an individual is still managed at the Federal Level. For Example: The Province of Manitoba nominates Mr. John Doe, an IT Professional, to settle down in Manitoba because the province foresees facing a shortage of IT professionals in the years to come. Mr. John Doe’s application still gets rejected at the Federal Level because of missing documents.

Foreign/Canadian Education Credentials, Past Work Experience & Language (English/French) Skills are amongst some of the key requirements for all PNPs but in addition to these the applicant must also have a genuine intent of settling down in the province that nominated him/her.

PNP Aligned with Express Entry: In addition to the 3 primary Express Entry programs, Candidates in the Federal CRS Pool are often issued Provincial/Territorial Interest Letters inviting them to apply to the province. Upon receiving such an Interest letter the applicant submits an application for a Provincial Nomination and once he/she is able to satisfy the province that he/she meets the requirements of the program, the province issues a Nomination to the applicant. This Nomination is not a guarantee of Permanent Residence but it gives an additional 600 points to the applicant on the existing CRS profile and a 600 point boost is generally more than enough for the applicant to receive an invite through one of the upcoming draws.

It must be noted here that these PNPs are aligned with Express Entry and are different from the provincial programs where the applicant applies with the province directly and upon receiving a nomination, submits a Permanent Residence application through the Permanent Residence Portal and not through the Express Entry route.

It is a highly effective tool that is used by provinces to meet their Job market needs and it helps in geographically distributing new immigrants to areas that need an inflow of population.

PNP Not Aligned with Express Entry: This type of PNP works independent of The Express Entry Program. This is a very useful program for individuals who may not meet one or more of the minimum requirements under Express Entry but might still have a ray of hope to immigrate to Canada because of the 60+ streams of PNP run by almost all the provinces and territories of Canada. The processing times under such programs could be relatively higher than The Express Entry Aligned PNP cases and it could sometimes take years for such cases to get processed.