As of August 27, 2015, the Alberta Immigrant Nominee Program (AINP) has stopped accepting new applications under any AINP streams or categories. New applications will not be accepted until January 27, 2016.
The AINP is an economic immigration program for permanent residence that is a joint effort between the Government of Alberta and Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC). The AINP supports Alberta's economic development by drawing and retaining valued, work-ready immigrants to the province. Individual applicants who are nominated by the Government of Alberta can apply for permanent residence through CIC as a Provincial Nominee along with their spouses or common law partners and dependent children.
Due to the high volume of applications and resulting backlog, a pause has been placed on AINP applications to help the AINP assess existing applications in the queue and prevent it from growing. As of August 24, 2015, the AINP already had 9,000 applications in queue despite having only 5,500 nomination certificates available for the 2015 calendar year. There are currently over 2,900 applications in the AINP queue for each of the International Graduate and Skilled Worker categories, and the AINP is still processing applications in those categories from as far back as November 2013.
Completed AINP applications that were postmarked on or prior to August 27, 2015, will be accepted for processing. Applications postmarked after August 27, 2015, will be returned. Applications already in the queue will continue to be assessed.
The author wishes to thank Ruoxi Wang, articling student, for her help in preparing this legal update.
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