[/i][/b]a briefing for NOCs where the cap is reached.......
Informations from Marc Laforce website, not sure if it's true or not...
1122 & 3152 Cap is Reached – Now What?
Dallas – December 28, 2010 – Not to sing our own praises but our prediction regarding the cap for registered nurses, as reported in our Blog entry of Oct-28, 2010, turned out to be on the nose. On Christmas Day, Citizenship and Immigration Canada advised that the annual cap for registered nurses under the Federal Skilled Worker (FSW) stream was attained. There are now 1000 complete RN applications received by the Centralized Intake Office (CIO).
Unless an RN applicant has an arranged employment offer from an eligible health facility, registered nurse applicants must wait until July 2011 to submit their FSW application to CIO. In practical terms this means that if your RN Federal Skilled Worker application was not date-stamped by the CIO office by December 25, 2010, the application will be returned.
The following notice will advise clients on what you should do if you're a registered nurse, and what our Firm is doing on behalf of clients whose application was not received before the 12/25 deadline and what we plan to do in terms of filing strategy.
Do Not Discontinue the Federal Skilled Worker Process!
For applicants who are in the middle of filling out questionnaires or gathering supporting documents, or waiting for language test results, we of course understand, and sympathize, how frustrating it is when the government shuts down an immigration stream.
If you happen to be in this situation, our first advice is not to discontinue the FSW process of gathering your documents and updating your forms. We urge all our clients not to lose their nerve (and we speak for ourselves) and to continue on course as if the cap wasn't reached. There are a number of practical and strategic and even political reasons for this timely advice:
1. Hold & File
The 1000-cap is expected to reset on July 1, 2011. As we complete your application, our Firm will personally hand-deliver your package in Sydney, Canada; before the FedEx and UPS trucks arrive at the CIO office on July 1, 2011.
While cap attainment is considered bad news, Citizenship and Immigration Canada also announced on Christmas day that effective 12/23, your language results will be valid for an additional year from the test date, for a total of two years (from just one). So hold on to your language results!
2. Stakeholder Negotiations with CIC
While our Firm cannot speak or comment on the lobbying efforts from an association or Law Society, including our own (Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants), there is considerable behind-the-scene discussion with Citizenship and Immigration Canada on what to do next. A number of last-minute developments, and CIC concessions, may play out favourably to RN applicants that are ready to file at any time.
For instance, it is widely expected that the overall FSW cap of 20,000 complete applications will not be attained. In fact, with just over 5000 applications received to date and six more months to go, the global cap has little chance of filling up. There's thus discussion to allow overflow of one category until the overall cap is reached. Another possible development is that CIC may abruptly announce a “file and hold” policy whereby CIO will accept RN applications before July 2011 but officially process them as of July 2011. If this occurs, there's a high chance that CIC will implement a first-come-first-serve policy.
The popular saying that “luck happens to those best prepared” might ring true for those who haven't given up on their RN application and are in position to file at any time.
3. Re-Route Strategy
All clients affected by the cap will be re-assessed by your practitioner to check if another immigration program or another occupation under the Federal Skilled Worker – Category 1 stream is available. The most obvious example that comes to mind, other than arranged employment via a company sponsor, are those applicants who have experience as an LVN/LPN or even as a CNA in some cases. To date, a mere 29 complete LVN/LPN applications were received. That means there's 971 to go!
While a re-route may be deemed expedient, it is generally not if the LVN/LPN or, in some cases, the CNA experience was duly noted in your Schedule 3 form. CIC will automatically review all your experience for FSW eligibility from the last 10 years from the date your application was received by CIO. In fact, as a precautionary measure, our Firm was requesting CIC for LVN/LPN consideration over RN, if indeed applicable in the Client's work history; even if the former occurred eight years ago.
Only in rare instances will our Firm completely reroute an application to another eligible permanent resident stream, such as the Quebec Skilled Worker class. With only five months to go before the cap is reset, we simply don't deem it necessary to pursue a reroute outside the FSW category. A possible exception to this rule is if the client's status in his country of residency is about to expire and the applicant is absolutely adamant to returning in his country of nationality for an interview. (As a side note, if an applicant moves to another country and advises CIC prior to receiving an invitation letter for the interview, the visa office will accommodate a request to change the venue provided system integrity of the adjudication process is preserved.)
In a nutshell, a reroute strategy is not a good idea for registered nurses.
As a five- to six-month “hang-on period”, while inconvenient, is not overly dramatic, given CIC can implement rule changes without legislation (and therefore quickly), and because rerouting is automatic in most cases, our Firm simply recommends any applicant affected by the cap to continue working on their applications – and then to wait.
Filing Strategy in a 1000-Cap Regime – Lets Beat the FedEx Truck!
Just because the Firm is urging clients to continue on their FSW applications “as if nothing happened”, doesn't mean that there's no activity on our part.
As CIC will quickly come to appreciate, the one-thousand cap process has a fundamental flaw. Similar to the US H-1B cap system, CIO is dangerously close to selecting skilled workers on a lottery basis as opposed to its original mission as stated in Section 3 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) which states that the objectives of our economic immigration policies is to “support the development of a strong and prosperous Canadian economy” by means of “consistent standards and prompt processing”.
For the popular FSW occupations, like management consultants and registered nurses, there's the obvious possibility that professional practitioners will adopt the same “hold-and-file-on-July-1” strategy.
If everybody files on July 1 when the 1000-cap is reset, how will CIO filter out applications if more than 1000 applications are received in one day? How will CIO know which ‘complete' application came first? Will it revert to a random process thereby replicating the US lottery system for H-1Bs? Will it try to maniacally time-stamp applications – which amounts to a random selection given the FedEx truck pulls up in Sydney at a set hour. Or does CIO intend to accept all applications received up until a certain day irrespective of the 1000 cut-off point; a "date-deadline" scenario whereby, for example, where all "complete applications" received on July 1 will be accepted regardless of the 1000 number?
We don't have satisfactory answers to any of these legitimate concerns.
What our Firm will do, however, is “beat the UPS” (or FedEx or DHL) truck” by physically hand-delivering all our nurse and management consultant applications to the Centralized Intake Office in Sydney, Nova Scotia at 8:30 AM on the first date that the 1000-cap is reset (July 31, 2011). The strategy may sound odd, but at the moment, this is the only sure-way tactic to ensure that your FSW application is secure.
Rest assured that our offices takes your decision to settle in Canada very seriously and we will do our outmost to make your Federal Skilled Worker application successful.
courtesy:miguelboogle
[size=10pt]DEAR SENIORS,
can u share ur thoughts?[/size]
regards
rajeev
