Alberta Resumes Draw

Finally, some good news coming out of Alberta for their Alberta Immigrant Nominee Program.

Alberta Express Entry has been a favorite program for most Canadian Immigration aspirants who have been disheartened by rising CRS scores, since AINP issues invitations for CRS scores as low as 300.

Under this program, Alberta would pick profiles from the Express Entry pool of eligible candidates who had their primary work experience in an occupation that was seen as a priority and was expected to support the province’s economic and diversification policies.

Invited candidates can then continue their nomination application on the newly launched portal and successful applicants would be nominated by the province and would be awarded valuable 600 points to their Express Entry CRS score. These candidates would then receive federal invitations and could proceed with their application for permanent residency.

So, it was quite disappointing to note that Alberta did not conduct any draws at all since June 17, 2020. They had also announced that they will not be processing any nomination applications from candidates who currently do not live and work in Alberta.

Out of their 2020 allocation of 6250 nominations, Alberta issued only 4000 nominations, further exhibiting their resolve of tightening the immigration program and thereby providing some relief to the local job market. This way they wanted to ensure that there was less pressure on the local job market, which has already been reeling under heavy job losses and the current unemployment in Alberta hovering in the 7-9% mark.

Alberta had also listed several more occupations in the ineligible for LMIA list, in order to support the availability of local employment opportunities.

Now coming to the good news – Alberta has resumed its draws for their AINP – Express Entry stream and issued 50 invitations to eligible candidates from the Express Entry pool. The lowest CRS score of the candidates who were invited for this draw is 406.

As of now, there is no change in their requirement of eligible candidates to be living and working in Alberta, and therefore we can assume that these 50 invitations have gone out to candidates who are currently residing in Alberta.

The allocation for the year 2021 has not been announced and we can expect that this quota is similar to the number allotted for the year 2020, which was 6250.

Now it is to be seen if they will actually go ahead and use their entire allotment or pull back on their nomination program as they did in 2020.

Regardless of what they do later in the year, in the short term, it is a relief for a lot of candidates who live in Alberta and were eagerly waiting for them to start the process again.

#foreverhopeful