On February 16, an announcement was made by Alberta Premier Jason Kenney that the Department of immigration of provinces is going to change their name. Also, two more immigration programs are going to be added. On February 18, he announced the results of the Provincial Nominee Program draw of this month.
400 Express Entry application spots were open for the application of the Alberta Express Entry stream on the very first day of this month. The minimum score for getting the invitation to apply for a Provincial nomination is to attain at least 340 CRS. The applicants who receive the nomination will be rewarded with 600 points that will be added to their CRS score and hence become eligible for the invitation of an Express Entry PNP round.
The Alberta Immigration Nominee Program will now be called The Alberta Advantage Program. The two new streams that are added to the department are
- The Rural Entrepreneur Stream
- The Rural Renewal Stream
A few more names of existing streams are also going to get changed by the Alberta Government. Although the eligibility criteria and the procedure will remain the same as of earlier.
- From now onwards The Foreign Graduate Start-up Visa Stream will be called The Foreign Graduate Entrepreneur Stream.
- The novel name of The International Graduate Entrepreneur Immigration Stream is replaced with The Graduate Entrepreneur Stream.
- The Farm Stream is presented as the new name of The Self-Employed Father Stream.
The Government of Alberta has asked applicants who have presented their application via their online portal, now need to claim an extension for the nomination via their online portal. Whereas applicants who have submitted their applications via paper can claim the extension application request via paper. Irrespective of the mode of submitting the application, the post-decision procedure remains the same. The new names of all the streams and programs will be uploaded to the official website of Alberta in the forthcoming weeks.
Premier is a former minister of the Department of Immigration. He made an announcement regarding the Premier’s Summit on Fairness for new immigrants coming to the province. All the immigration stakeholders of Alberta met to debate on supporting the new immigrants coming into the province to promote the growth of the economy.
A press release from the government stated the reason for adopting new names by mentioning- “to help promote Alberta’s reputation and benefits as an attractive place when choosing where to work ad raise a family”
The Rural Entrepreneur Stream and the new Rural Renewal Stream are the two programs that focus on motivating highly talented skilled professionals and business owners from around the globe to move to Alberta’s communities. The eligible communities need to be outside metropolitan cities like Edmonton and Calgary. The reports of the Census, 2016 stated that there were less than 1,00,000 people in these cities.
Whereas The Rural Renewal Stream is for the employees of the rural Alberta community who are provided with a job offer by an employer of Alberta. Alberta is currently open for acceptance of applications coming from the rural communities to promote more participation in the Rural Renewal Stream. Only a few communities will get this chance of participating in this program as a designated community.
While The Rural Entrepreneur Stream focuses on the business owners who aim to purchase an already running business or to set up a new business in the rural community of Alberta. The eligible business owners are required to submit a token of interest and then they are allowed to move to the rural community of Alberta to run their business.
