Learn how to apply for permanent residence in Ontario if you are a skilled foreign worker with a job offer in Ontario.
The Employer Job Offer: Foreign Worker stream gives foreign workers with a job offer in a skilled occupation the opportunity to apply to permanently live and work in Ontario.
Your job offer must be in a skilled occupation at TEER (Training, Education, Experience and Responsibilities) category 0, 1, 2 or 3 of the National Occupational Classification (NOC). This stream is open to foreign workers in and outside of Canada.
You must first register in the OINP’s Expression of Interest System and receive an invitation to apply before you can apply online to be nominated by the Ontario government for permanent residence.
If you are nominated, your next step is to apply to the federal government through Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). They make the final decision on who becomes a permanent resident.
Before you can apply to this stream you must:
If you are using a representative, or you are a representative, the submission process is different. Learn more about how to appoint a representative or register as one.
Follow these steps to apply:
Please note your application file number is different than your EOI file number.
To qualify under the Employer Job Offer: Foreign Worker stream, you must have a job offer in Ontario from an employer that meets the following requirements.
Please refer to section 4 of Ontario Regulation 422/17 and the Employer Guide for more details on each requirement.
Important: In order for your application to be approved, the job offer must be effective the date that you are nominated by the OINP, if you are already working for the employer in the approved employment position; or if you are not, on the date you obtain a work permit and begin working in the approved employment position. This means that your employer must adhere to the terms and conditions in the job offer and begin paying you the approved wage once you are nominated and begin working.
Self-employed professionals, including physicians, are not eligible under OINP Employer Job Offer streams. This includes physicians who receive payment under a fee-for-service model such as OHIP or through other contractual service arrangements where there is no legal employer-employee relationship.
Self-employed professionals, may qualify under the OINP’s Express Entry Human Capital Priorities stream through the Federal Skilled Workers Program. To apply under the Human Capital Priorities stream:
Applicants must meet all Express Entry Human Capital Priorities stream eligibility criteria.
The job offer must be for a full-time and permanent position.
Full-time means the job must be a minimum of 1,560 hours a year and a minimum of 30 hours of paid work per week.
Permanent means the job must have no end date (also known as an indeterminate duration). Job offers that are seasonal and/or contract based are ineligible.
Note that your job offer will not qualify if it affects the employment of a person involved in a labour dispute.
The job offered must be in a skilled occupation at TEER category 0, 1, 2 or 3 of the National Occupational Classification (NOC).
The pay of the job offered must meet or be higher than the median wage level, for that occupation, in the specific region of Ontario where you will be working. To find the median wage, go to the Job Bank website. Enter the occupation title and NOC code of the job offer into the occupation search. Then enter the location where you will be working into the filter search. Refer to the median wage level listed on the chart.
If the wage of the employment region where the applicant will work or report to work is not available on the wage report, the Ontario wage should be used.
If you are already working in the position, the wage of the job offer must be equal to or greater than the wage level that the employer currently pays you in that position, in addition to meeting or exceeding the median wage level.
These wage requirements do not apply if you have a collective agreement (a written contract between the employer and a union), in your workplace, that determines your wages.
If you are paid an annual salary, your hourly wage can be calculated as follows:
The program does not consider remuneration by piece work, bonuses, commissions, vacation pay or non-financial compensation as comprising part of your hourly base wage to be included in the calculation of work experience.
The position offered must be urgently necessary to your employer’s business. This means that the job offer must align with your employer’s existing business activities and the position must be urgently needed to maintain or grow ongoing business activity.
The work you do while in the position of the job offer must occur primarily in Ontario.
You or any member of your family may only hold or have held equity in your employer’s business, either directly or indirectly if the equity is/was less than 10% and only if it was obtained as part of the remuneration package as an employee. The combined total amount of equity held by you, or any of your family members, must be less than 10%.
Note that a family member includes your spouse, common law partner and children under the age of 22, including their children.
After you receive an invitation to apply, you may apply to the Employer Job Offer: Foreign Worker stream. You must meet all the requirements in the categories below in order for your application to be approved.
Please refer to section 5 of Ontario Regulation 422/17 for more details on each requirement.
You must meet one of the following requirements depending on the position of the job offer:
To meet the work experience requirement, you must have at least two years of cumulative paid full-time work experience (or the equivalent in paid part-time work) in the same occupation (same National Occupational Classification code) as your job offer.
You must have gained this work experience within the five years prior to the date you submit your application, not the date you received the invitation to apply. If your work experience was gained in Canada, you must have been legally living and working in Canada.
Cumulative means the work you’ve done must add up to two years – it does not have to be two years of continuous work.
Full-time work experience means working in a job with at least 30 hours of paid work in a week that amounts to at least 3,120 hours of paid work over a two-year period.
Part-time equivalent work experience means:
Vacation periods, regular sick leave and other standard paid leave entitlements as provided for in collective agreements, workplace legislation and/or individual employer policies are not considered interruptions to full-time employment. Extended leaves are considered interruptions to full-time employment and are not to be included in the calculation of work experience.
If you are using periods of self-employment, you will need to provide employment documentation that is independently verifiable through third parties. This can include client reference letters indicating your duties and periods of work, as well as evidence of ongoing payments to you personally, for the services provided (for example, invoices). Please also note that your hours of self-employed work must be quantifiable to ensure that you accumulated at least 3,120 hours over two years of employment. Reference letters from yourself, your business partners and/or a family member are not accepted by the program.
If your job offer is for an occupation that requires a mandatory licence or other authorization in Ontario, you must hold a valid licence or authorization from the appropriate regulatory body in Ontario when you apply.
For more information on licences and authorizations in Ontario, please visit the Ontario’s Jobs and Employment website or the Skilled Trades Ontario website.
You must intend to live in Ontario after you’ve been granted permanent residence. We determine this by examining your ties to Ontario, which can include doing things like:
If you are applying from within Canada, you must have legal status (a visitor record, study permit, or work permit) at the time you apply and should maintain that status until the time of nomination.
You may apply if you are in ‘implied status’ at the time of your OINP application submission. ‘Implied status’ means that you submitted an application to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) to renew/extend your temporary status document (a visitor record, work permit, study permit) before its expiry date. You can remain in Canada and continue to work or study under the same conditions as your existing permit until a decision is made on your pending IRCC application.
Please refer to section 4 of Ontario Regulation 422/17 and the Employer Guide for more details on each requirement.
To qualify under the Employer Job Offer: Foreign Worker stream, your employer must:
Employers must demonstrate that reasonable efforts were made to recruit a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident prior to offering the position to the applicant, unless:
The OINP is designed to assist employers in circumstances where their efforts to fill a position domestically were unsuccessful due to skills shortages. Employers are expected to conduct domestic recruitment efforts on their own, or with the assistance of recruitment agencies/specialists (for example, head hunters, human resource consulting firms) who have expertise in recruiting domestic talent.
Please note that the OINP does not consider domestic recruitment efforts carried out by an immigration representative to be reasonable. In such situations, a conflict of interest exists since the immigration representative stands to benefit financially should domestic recruitment efforts be determined to be unsuccessful. If an application indicates that domestic recruitment efforts were undertaken by an immigration representative, the application will be refused.
Your employer’s business must meet the relevant revenue requirements for the most recently completed fiscal year (the year used for tax or accounting purposes):
In cases where the applicant will work at more than one location, the location where the applicant will report to work means either:
Your employer’s business must have at the time of application submission one of the following:
A full-time employee is an employee who has worked a minimum of 30 hours per week.
Your employer must make an application for approval of an employment position by filling out and signing an Employer Form.
Your employer then must give you the form so you can scan and upload it with your application.
When we assess your application, we may need additional supporting documents from your employer to validate information included in the Employer Form. Please read the Employer Checklist for a list of possible documents that may be requested.
Once you register an expression of interest under this stream you will be assigned points based on the following factors.
If you are invited to apply, you will be required to submit specific documents to support each scoring factor for which you received points. Scoring factors are not the same as stream criteria. You must meet all criteria for this stream and provide the mandatory documents with your application. Refer to the document checklist for the Employer Job Offer: Foreign Worker stream.
The work permit must confer legal status.
The work in the job offer position must have occurred within Ontario.
Based on a Notice of Assessment issued by the Canada Revenue Agency in the last five years.
For Regionalization scoring factors, the regions are defined as follows:
If your application is successful, you will receive the following by email:
Once you have the necessary documentation, you must apply to IRCC for a work permit (if applicable) and permanent residence. Please note, a nomination from the OINP under this stream is subject to the following conditions and/or restrictions
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