IMMIGRATION

Our Nova Scotia Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) Immigration Story

I earlier shared our Canadian immigration journey and I tagged it snippets because that was just a tiny fraction of the process. Our Nova Scotia (NS) provincial nomination is a big chunk of our journey. So I thought to share that today.

Like some of you read in my aforementioned post that our first federal skilled worker (FSW) application was returned because the quota for my NOC was filled up. I’d put it up on my insta stories for some of you who didn’t get to read it then, I’d also put up my IELTS and transcipt chronicles. Sharing this is to motivate you and reinforce that the Canadian immigration journey isn’t for the faint hearted.

In 2014, I met one of my children’s paediatricians at British Council office in Ikoyi. So we got to know we were both on the Canadian immigration journey. It was this doctor that convinced me about Express Entry that was going to start in Jan 2015. He said he had heard that his application was going to be returned too as his NOC was filled up. Thank God for fora like Nairaland and Canada Visa.

So when I received our returned FSW application, I sent it via Nigeria Postal Service (NIPOST). Who sends an immigration application through NIPOST? That is to tell you how nonchalant I had become considering our 1st application that we sent via express mail (DHL) was returned. So I said to myself, ‘the federal application that we sent via DHL was returned, why waste money to send the provincial one via DHL’. For my Canadian folks, it’s like using regular Canada Post to send a package to Australia.

I sent it in March 2015, about a week before we went to London for our vacation. Thank God we got UK visas then because it would have been a lot to deal with. So I just went to the UK to ‘cool off’.

Our visit to the UK then further gingered my Canadian quest the more. I kept telling God that I deserve this obodoyinbo (abroad) life. We were in the UK for 1 month so I was almost certain the application would have gotten to Canada in 1 month. We got back to Nigeria in April 2015 and I kept hoping to hear a feedback from NS, all to no avail. Many months passed, so much that I began to loose hope.

Lo and Behold, on Dec 2, 2015, I received an email from the NS Immigration office that they received our application in Apr 2015. So you can imagine waiting for about 8 months to receive a confirmation from them. Thankfully the application is online based now and it’s faster.

The officer asked us to convince NS that we were indeed going to reside in NS since we chose British Columbia in our previous FSW application.

It’s been over 3 years in this province and we have made our little impact. I remember been asked to speak at an event that had the NS immigration minister in attendance.

I look back today and I’m grateful to Canada and more importantly to Nova Scotia because without the nomination, it would have been more challenging. I’m thankful to our doctor friend too because he was one of my motivators on the Express Entry and PNP programs. He’s also in Canada now.