Till now in the year 2022, the province of British Columbia has issued up to 1100 invitations to applicants who applied for a provincial nomination. Of this total, around 140 of these invitations were issued to tech workers alone on 15th February. The invitations were sent to applicants of the Tech stream of the BC PNP. The British Columbia Provincial Nominee Program is a pathway of economic immigration that the government of British Columbia makes use of these streams to attract those immigrants to the province who are skilled and have work experience. The immigrants who choose to live in this province through the PNP choose the oath of Canada PR.
Those who wish to get an invitation through the BC PNP tech stream will have to meet the requirements of the BC Express Entry stream and the skilled immigration categories. These are under the management of the Skills Immigration Registration System. Those applicants who have been sent the invitation had either applied to the skilled worker pathway or the International Graduate stream. The minimum Provincial score needed for these streams to be eligible was 85. Those who have received the invitation will have to submit a complete application for gaining nomination within a month.
About the BC PNP Tech program
The tech stream of the British Columbia Provincial Nominee Program was introduced in 2017 May after a study of the labor market of the province. The study found that access to skilled workers was a major issue faced by the tech sector of British Columbia. After the success of the program, the provincial government decided to make the pathway a permanent stream in their PNP. The program enables employers in the tech sector of British Columbia to employ those immigrants who are talented and qualified to take positions that cannot be locally filled.
The tech stream of the BC PNP is a fast way of immigrating for in-demand workers in the tech sector as well as for international students. You need to be registered in any one of the existing pathways under the British Columbia Provincial Nominee Program, and also have a work offer that is valid for one year in any one of the 29 occupations that are considered eligible under the program to qualify. The jobs that are offered under the tech stream should be for a promise of at least one year, with a time period of 120 days allowed for the processing of the application. The job must be for full-time work and from an employer in the province who is eligible.
Every week invitations through the tech stream of the BC PNP are issued to those candidates who have the top scores and meet the eligibility criteria of the streams. Those who receive the invitation to further apply for a provincial nomination will have to make a submission of the complete application. When that is done, the applications to the tech stream will take around 2-3 months to process.
If the application is approved, the applicant will be sent a certification of nomination that can be then used while applying for the permanent resident status of Canada through Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada. A candidate of any Provincial Nominee Program will gain additional 600 points in the comprehensive ranking system, and hence have higher odds of receiving an invitation to apply for Canada PR under the Express Entry Program.
