You are right, I agree the bar for sponsorship must be high because
1) Employer gives a legal commitment for 3 years of future work for the employee. They can't fire him/her except for disciplinary actions.
2) There is so much coordination needed to be done by HR/Legal/immigration departments within the company to enable this sponsorship for an employee. Which they can't for every Tom dick and harry. Definitely not the Lambdas we often talk about in this thread.
From what I understand most other provinces make the employer nominate first or submit the nomination forms, based on which they send the NOI to the employee. What I meant as a scam is OINP sending 1000s of NOI blindly to employees first. Then the employees will struggle with sponsorship documentation. The clever ones will find the catch and not apply. I'm sure some of the lambdas or the less brainy ones who have received NOIs now might pay the fee and then later realize the employer won't sponsor them.
Apart from sponsorship based on merit, let me tell my personal experience,
- One of my customers wanted me to join them. It is a interesting business and had just started on a large program that will go for 5-6 years so I showed interest.
- I worked briefly for one of their VPs who reports to the CIO, he called me a couple of times, after all interviews and they arranged for the final HR discussion.
- The company right from the start told me they will sponsor me for PR in Quebec (CSQ or whatever it is called), after my employer experience I felt that was good.
- I didn't end up joining them because the initial pay they offered me was 50% of my current pay (mine current one is a a decent pay not large) and after a lot of negotiation they went up to 65% of what I make.
- Their reasoning was the pay they offered me was inline with what their M4 who move from their India offices to Montreal are given, they sponsor those employee WP and PR as well. However I'm felt some employers use this sponsorship probably as a mechanism to lowball the pay.