The Governments of Alberta and British Columbia have announced that have placed a temporary pause on receiving any applications through their Provincial Nomination Programmes until 2016.
The Alberta Immigrant Nominee Program (AINP) will not accept any new applications under any AINP Streams or Categories until 27th January 2016. Meanwhile, the British Columbia Provincial Nominee Programme (BCPNP) will also stop accepting most applications through this scheme until January 2016 at the earliest, although it will continue to accept applications under the Health Care Professional (Skilled Worker and Express Entry BC) and Northeast Pilot Project categories
“We are pausing application intake for AINP because it is oversubscribed, with approximately 10,000 applications awaiting assessment and hundreds more being submitted each month,” said AINP Managing Director, Brad Trefan. “It is clear the demand for AINP far exceeds the 5,500 nomination certificates allotted by the federal government in 2015.”
Likewise, in BC the BCPNP has received more applications for Skills Immigration and Express Entry BC than it has nominations for 2015 (5,550).
For Alberta, complete applications postmarked on or before 27th August 2015, will be accepted for processing, while AINP staff will continue to assess applications already in the queue. However, applications postmarked after 27th August 2015, will be returned.
For BC, the cut-off date for new applications was 1st September.
Both provinces are continuing to lobby the federal government to increase the number of immigrants it will be able to nominate through their respective programmes in 2016.