Alberta Provincial Nomination

The Alberta Provincial Nomination Program is a Canadian immigration service, which allows people to migrate to Canada based upon an offer of employment from a company in the Province of Alberta. Many Provinces have such Provincial Nomination Programs in place, each with their own qualification requirements and processes.
As a specialist Canadian Immigration consultant, Global Visas can help you to navigate the range of Canadian visas and Canadian work permits to determine which of the available Canadian immigration services is right for your migration to Canada. Canada visa applications can be dealt with at every stage of the process, and our immigration consultants can offer a comprehensive Canadian visa service, whichever route you choose, including Canada immigration lawyer expertise and everything you will require for your relocation to Alberta.

Benefits

Canadian Provincial Nominee Programs offer a route to settled status in Canada and enable successful applicants to live and work in Canada with permanent resident status. In many cases, applying for a province-specific route, rather than a Federal skilled worker visa approach, can result in applications for immigration to Canada being processed more quickly. After satisfactory completion of the residency requirement for Canadian citizenship of three years, a candidate with permanent residence may apply to become a Canadian citizen.

Provincial Nominee programmes do not involve the same level of skills based assessment required for other types of Canadian visa applications. Much like the Highly Skilled Migrant Program or HSMP in the UK, applying for the Federal skilled worker visa is based almost entirely upon a points based assessment of an applicant's skills, experience and qualifications. In addition, the Canadian business visas, which make up the Canadian business immigration program, namely the Immigrant Investor Program (IIP), Entrepreneur visa and the Self Employed Person visa have much lower thresholds, a minimum pass mark is still in place.

Applying for the Alberta Provincial Nominee Program does take an applicant's skills and experience into account, along with their ability to adapt to life in the province, however, no points based skills assessment is required.

Understanding the system

The principle behind the Alberta Provincial Nomination programme is that the province may choose a limited number of candidates to immigrate to Alberta in order to meet identified skills shortages where roles cannot be filled from the domestic market. Approved employers may recruit the skilled individuals they require and submit them to the program for approval. If they are approved then candidates may apply to Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) for a Canadian permanent resident's visa.

In Canada, visa applications for Alberta immigration will progress through the following four stages.

Stage 1

An employer completes an Employer Application Form to demonstrate the need to recruit from outside the domestic workforce. This is submitted to Alberta Employment, Immigration & Industry to be assessed.

Stage 2

Alberta Employment, Immigration & Industry reviews the employer application and recommends it to the Nominee Program.

Stage 3

If the employer application receives approval, employees wishing to migrate to Alberta can be recruited. A job offer is made at this stage of the process.

Stage 4

If the potential employee is approved, they may apply for permanent residency in Canada.

Much like a Canadian Work Permit, the program is an employer led initiative and applicants cannot apply themselves. An applicant wishing to immigrate to Canada through this route must have a guaranteed job offer from an approved employer in Alberta in order to be eligible. Once a submission has been made by an employer, a candidate will be assessed upon their related work experience, the extent to which their qualifications meet the requirements of the employer and industry standards and their ability to settle into Alberta.

Dependents

Migration to Canada through the Alberta nomination scheme permits spouse immigration, fiance immigration and dependent immigration and successful applicants may bring their spouse, common-law partner or conjugal partner and any dependent children with them.