Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program application deadline extended to 14 days

The Ontario government is extending the deadline for foreign graduate students to apply online for permanent residency, days after applicants complained of a glitch in the system that has been keeping them from completing their applications.

As CBC reported on Saturday, the Ontario Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration is working on a problem that’s affecting thousands of foreign students in Canada. With just seven days to complete their applications, the would-be applicants to the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program (OINP) are running into problems filling out the online forms.




CBC Toronto has learned the province is extending the deadline to complete the application to 14 days as it deals with technical issues on its website.

But some feel that may not make a difference.

“I’m not sure that it’s going to be any help to us if the OINP doesn’t fix the system,” a foreign student said in an interview.

The 30-year-old, who has just completed his PhD, doesn’t want his name used for fear it could hurt his application, but he’s frustrated.

“I have all the documents right here but the main issue is accessing the system.”

The OINP is a partnership between the provincial and federal governments that grants permanent residence to students who are in Canada for a master’s degree or PhD.

In a statement to CBC Toronto, Laura Sylvis, a spokesperson for Ontario’s Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration, blames the technical issues on high demand for the program, noting it had 10 times the interest of last year.

The website registered 117,000 visits over four days last week.




the program has already reached the limit of how many applications it can consider for the six thousand permanent residencies it can grant.

Sylvis says many of the ongoing technical problems come from repeated attempts to complete an application by those who have already begun the process.

The ministry adds the website is now more stable but a technical team will continue to monitor the system and address any issues that emerge.

Source: cbc.ca