Andrew Miller

As I mentioned in another thread Buffalo started sending AOR letters for cases received on/after February 27, 2008. I'm posting the entire text of such letter for everyone interested to see - pay attention to highlighted in red parts:

This is to advise you that your application for permanent residence has been received at the Regional Program Centre (RPC) and that a provisional file has been created for you. Your file number appears above. Please quote this number in all correspondence with our office.

It is expected that Canada's Minister of Citizenship and Immigration will, within the next several months, be providing instructions to Visa Offices as to which applications are to be accepted for processing and which are to be returned unprocessed. It is expected that these instructions will apply to certain Skilled Worker applications (including yours) officially received on or after 27 February 2008.

If and as soon as we receive these instructions, we will apply them to our inventory of applications, starting first wit those received on 27 February 2008 and proceeding in chronological order. We will mail you a letter within 60 days of publication of the Minister's instructions, either to notify you:

a) that your application meets the criteria set forth in the Minister's instructions - and that, accordindly, we can proceed with its processing,

b) that your application does not meet the criteria set forth in the Minister's instructions. The application will be returned to you unprocessed, and you will in due course receive a full refund of all processing fees that you have submitted.

For more information on the Minister's instructions, please consult the following website: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/departm...olicy/irpa.asp.

We will not undertake any processing of your application until we receive the Minister's instructions. Please do not make any enquiries or submit any further documentation (except to notify us if you change your mailing address) until we communicate with you. Enquires will not be answered and any documents received will be discarded.

timu12

thank you!

Diabolo

Glad that I am already in Canada
Even tough my profession is in demand, I wouldn't like a minister to take that decision.

tinytears

Andrew thank you for posting this. Can I ask, I have an short application awaiting AOR but I'm also coming up to the final stages of negotiations with a new job - I may have to pop over to Canada soon though. My worry is that if my skills aren't on the shortlist, my application will be returned. Do you know yet how this affects applications with AE? I am worried that the offer won't come through in time as we are still negotiating final points.

Andrew Miller

Cases with PNP and arranged employment won't be affected.

tinytears

You are an angel thank you, I had a very sleepless night over that! I need to stop fretting so much I think.

Many thanks again.

timu12

PNP rocks.....1. no quota on each given year. 2. receive the highest priority in any visa posts.3.

Andrew Miller

Sorry timu12, but you are wrong again...

Each PNP has a very limited annual quota ranging from couple hundreds to less than couple thousands per year.

timu12

Andrew, i thought CIC does not set quota anymore. I must have read it somewhere else but cant remember. You are the expert so sorry i was wrong again.

Andrew Miller

Of course CIC has quotas that are presented in immigration plan to the Parliament each year.

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resourc...n1.asp#table_1

Provinces that offer PNP programs have individual agreements with federal government setting annual quotas for their PNP certificates. In this year immigration plan CIC allocated 20,000 visas to PNP's, twice as many as in previous years - but in order to have their individual quotas increased Provinces must re-negotiate their agreements with feds and it takes time.

Want2Move

Quebec alone gets 25,000 and all of the other PNPs combined get total 20,000 PR visas? It does not seem fair, but there might be a reason for that.

Andrew Miller

Fair or not - the reality is that federal SW class only gets this year 67,000 visas, more than 30% less than in previous years and only about half of all visas in economic classes. And competition for those visas is fierce - from the backlog of over 900,000 applications (with statistical 2.2 people per application it is about 2 million people) and from new applications still being submitted in huge numbers. Backlog alone (2 million people) will now need about 15 years of visa quotas and only if at least 50% from the backlog get refused and assuming that quotas won't go down in future.

PNP applicants all need guaranteed employment (except miniscule number in community supported streams) - thus what is here unfair? They got arranged employment anyway.

Quebec also has very tight rules for skilled workers in respect to education, experience, occupation and employability, not mentioning proficiency in French.

The conclusion? Without arranged employment or skills in occupation in high demand (list doesn't exist yet) you may forget about moving to Canada before retirement age, if at all.

timu12

wait forever plus 1 day without AE, guys.

timu12

The reality sounds very discouraging, Andrew.

Andrew Miller

Yes, and this is why the current government came up with amendments to the law. Number of visa quotas for cases without arranged employment will be smaller and smaller every year, CIC will only accept number of applications they want to process and only with skills Canada needs and by doing so backlog will not grow. At least it is the idea.

The existing backlog? CIC will likely cherry pick applicants with skills Canada needs and give them push forward, while those with no skills needed will be left to dry. Many of them will of course finally realize that they need arranged employment if they want to move to Canada and hopefully substantial number of motivated applicants will find it. There will be some not knowing what is happening and some who will hope that maybe next year their skills will make the list.

Unfortunately there is no solution that could accommodate all in the backlog, not even any substantial portion of it, and at the same time bring skilled workers Canada needs urgently. Any hopes for increase of annual visa quotas that could make a dent in the backlog are just dreams.

Thank Liberals (the "pro immigration" party) for the mess.