British Columbia Provincial Nominee Program (BC PNP) – Statistical Report：Skills Immigration (SI)（2）
Skills Immigration (SI)
The SI stream is made up of five categories:
- Skilled Worker
- Healthcare Professionals (became Health Authority category in March 2022)
- International Graduate (IG)
- International Post-Graduate (IPG)
- Entry-Level and Semi-Skilled (ELSS)
The Skilled Worker category is for experienced workers in a professional, management, technical, trade or other skilled occupation. The Healthcare Professionals category was focused specifically on medical professionals. The International Graduate and Post-Graduate categories is for international students (undergraduate and postgraduate) who have come to study at Canadian institutions and who wish to remain in Canada and start their careers in British Columbia. The Entry-Level and Semi-Skilled category is open to workers in specific occupations in tourism/hospitality, long-haul trucking, food processing, and healthcare.
Except for ELSS, all categories have an Express Entry BC (EEBC) option. The EEBC option requires applicants to meet BC PNP criteria and those of the federal Express Entry programs to benefit from faster processing of their federal permanent residency application.
The Registration Pool and Invitations to Apply (ITAs)
The Province uses an online, points-based expression of interest (EOI) system to manage application intake for the Skilled Worker categories, IG categories and ELSS category. This system helps prioritize candidates who are a strong match with program criteria. It also helps the BC PNP meet its service standards and process 80 per cent of applications within 3 months.
Prospective applicants first complete a no-fee registration that establishes a point score based on six main factors:
- Level of education
- Experience
- Language skills
- Occupation
- Salary being offered to them by a B.C. employer
- Job location
After a registration is received, it is automatically scored and immediately placed in a registration pool.
Registrations may remain active in the pool for up to one year. Registrants may elect to withdraw voluntarily at any time. To proceed on to the application stage, a registrant must receive an invitation to apply (ITA). The BC PNP periodically issues ITAs to the highest scoring active registrations. Some draws are limited to select, high-priority occupations.
Recipients of ITAs have 30 days to apply. The minimum score necessary to receive an invitation fluctuates and is determined by factors that include BC PNP processing capacity and the size and quality of the registration pool.
*The number of 2021 ITAs converted to applications is different from the number of applications received in 2021 in categories that require registration. This difference is caused by the fact that some late 2020 ITAs became applications in early 2021, and some late
2021 ITAs became applications in early 2022. Please also note that not all SI applications require registration, so the number of applications that result from ITAs is always smaller than the number of total applications in any given time period.
In 2021, the BC PNP issued an unusually high number of ITAs to receive approximately the same number of applications as it did in 2020. The main reason for this increase was the availability of time limited options to obtain permanent residency directly from the federal government in the first half of 2021. In general, most applicants to the BC PNP are already living in the province, and those temporary options were mainly focused on that type of applicant.
Application Intake
In 2021, 7,976 candidates responded to invitations to apply through the SI stream. This is a 2.1 per cent decrease from 2020, when the BC PNP received 8,148 SI applications.
The breakdown of applications by category can be found below. The Skilled Worker and EEBC – Skilled Worker categories, combined, accounted for 60 per cent of applications received in 2021. The student categories combined to make up 28 per cent of applications in 2021.
| Total Skills Immigration Applications Received | |||
| Category | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 |
| Skilled Worker | 2,107 | 2,015 | 2,205 |
| Entry Level and Semi-Skilled (ELSS) | 815 | 570 | 827 |
| International Graduate | 474 | 468 | 568 |
| International Post-Graduate | 600 | 606 | 509 |
| Healthcare Professional | 75 | 76 | 70 |
| EEBC – Skilled Worker | 2,679 | 2,713 | 2,269 |
| EEBC – International Graduate | 776 | 1,351 | 1,270 |
| EEBC – International Post-Graduate | 406 | 320 | 280 |
| EEBC – Healthcare Professional | 44 | 29 | 26 |
| SI Total | 7,976 | 8,148 | 8,024 |
Nominations
Each year, IRCC allocates a specific number of nominations to each province. Typically, the BC PNP uses about 99% of this allocation for the SI stream. In 2021, B.C. received an allocation of 6,750. As previously explained, there were temporarily a greater-than-normal number of options for many immigrants to apply for permanent residency in 2021. For that reason, the BC PNP ended the year with the somewhat lower figure of 6,214 SI nominations.
