Canadian Immigration: 668 candidates invited in the Ontario Tech Draw.

The month of December is proving to be lucky for many Immigrants, all the hard work and dedicated months of maintaining patience is finally beginning to reap its rewards before the years end.

On December 15th, 668 Express Entry Candidates were invited for Provincial Nomination, in Ontario’s latest Tech Draw.

For those of you who are not aware or would like to be caught up to speed, the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program (OINP), a program designed to scout out skilled and qualified applicants from the Express Entry Pool. The most popular and successful stream of the OINP is the; Human Capital Priorities Stream (HCP). The HCP stream works in tandem with Express Entry, where eligible candidates are issued a Notification of Interest (NOI).

Now that you’re all caught up let’s dive into the details of this draw. I will try my best to simplify and provide the immigration trends that have previously taken place as well.

The Job Profile & NOC Codes of applicants that were invited were:

1. NOC 0213: Computer and information systems managers
2. NOC 2147: Computer engineers
3. NOC 2172: Database analysts and data administrators
4. NOC 2173: Software engineers and designers
5. NOC 2174: Computer programmer and interactive media developers
6. NOC 2175: Web designers and developers

Applicants who were invited in this draw were not required to have a job offer, however for them to be eligible they had to have at least 1 year of work experience in the last 5 years in any of the NOC profiles provided above and this must be their primary NOC in their EE profile.

Applicants who have received a NOI from Ontario now have 45 calendar days to submit their application and relevant documents for provincial nomination. If the application is accepted then you are awarded an additional 600 CRS points, and this basically guarantees your Invitation to Apply (ITA) in the next Express Entry draw.

The process of submitting your documents post receiving the NOI, and being awarded 600 additional CRS points is applicable to all Provincial Nominee Programs in Canada. This 600 addittional CRS points is the cherry on top and why so many applicants apply through provincial nomination despite Express Entry being the fastest and most popular path to Canada.

Provincial Nomination is not the same as applying for Canadian Immigration. You will have to be an eligible applicant, get invited and then apply for provincial nomination. After successfully receiving the nomination, which can be used to apply for permanent residence through the federal government. The Immigration, Refugees & Citizenship Canada has the sole discretion in deciding whether to give you the permanent residence or not. Once you get an approval from the Canadian Government, as a new permanent resident you can finally begin your new life with a  world of opportunities; Canada.

Immigration Trends

The Ontario Tech draw began in 2019 and invited around 3,400 applicants in the first two draws itself (July & Aug). Coming to 2020, a year where pandemic restrictions had a heavy impact on Canadian Immigration, Ontario has held 5 Tech Draws so far. The biggest Tech Draw of 2020 took place on July 29th, where a total number of 1,288 Express Entry Candidates were invited.

Ontario has invited a total of 9,028 applicants from the OINP program and its relevant streams:

• Human Capital Priorities Stream
• French Speaking Skilled worker
• Skilled Trades

This is proving to be a great month for being #foreverhopeful and I would like to Congratulate all the invited participants, do keep in mind to adhere to the 45 days window and go through the relevant document checklist and their formats before uploading the same in your application.
Good Luck and remember to stay #foreverhopeful.

OINP Application checklist is here