Ontario’s Immigrant Nominee Program re-opens for this year

So what exactly is the latest on the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program? Well, for starters it just reopened today – February 20th 2017, and has begun the acceptance of applications for 3 of its popular program streams under– the International PhD Graduate Stream, the Ontario Express Entry Human Capital Priorities Stream and the International Masters Graduate Stream.

So what this means is, that applications would be only accepted online and the government shall monitor the capacity of applications and place them on pause periodically and have the streams reopened all round the year for the sake of maintaining processing efficiency.

Time frame of implementation: Feb 20th.

Permits & Visas Affected:

Permanent residency, under the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program.

Who all would be affected?

Eligible applicants under the 3 streams of the program.

Processing Impact:

This year, the program is transitioning into a ‘paperless’ system that would ease the application process and improve processing timelines.

Business Impact:

More than 3,500 job vacancies have been filled by employers through the OINP, between the years 2007 & 2015, with around one-quarter nominees of 2016 working in tech jobs.

Background:

OINP’s three streams had been paused since last May after it had peaked its yearly quota of 5,500. The federal government has since increased the province’s quota of 2017, by 500 making it a total of 6,000.

The re-starting of this program is good news for eligible applicants. Candidates are urged to apply as early as possible, since the annual quotas are usually filled up pretty fast.