On June 26, 2010, the new Ministerial Instructions (MI2) came into force. Unless people have a valid arranged employment offer, only those with at least one year of experience in one of the 29 occupations (within the past ten years) are eligible to apply. A cap is placed for each occupation on yearly basis. If the cap is reached, the applicant will have to wait until next year to apply. Also, all applicants are required to submit recognized language test result (IELTS for English, TEF for French), otherwise the application will be considered incomplete and returned.
MI2 substantially reduce the number of eligible applicants under the federal skilled worker program. The upside is, processing times for these applications are considerably faster. Procedurally, applicants will send their applications to the Centralized Intake Office (CIO) in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada, which will screen the applications and then forward eligible ones to overseas visa offices. There are approximately 8,000 people in the MI2 inventory. While processing times are only an estimate due to insufficient data, the CIO is completing eligibility reviews in a matter of weeks. The first permanent resident visa under MI2 was also recently issued in Lima within 5.5 months of receipt at the CIO.
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