With an ever-expanding British Columbia Provincial Nominee Program (“BC PNP”), the federal government has announced that it will make room in its overall  2012 target for provincial nominees for a record amount of nominees destined to and nominated by British Columbia. CIC plans to admit to Canada as permanent residents between 42,000 and 45,000 people in the provincial nominee programs across Canada in 2012, inclusive of spouses (and common-law partners) and dependent children of the nominees. BC’s proportion of nominations was 17% this year, and while the PNP allotments per province were not finalized as at the time of CIC’s announcement, the government announced that it would continue to provide British Columbia with a record amount of space in the overall provincial nominee program in 2012.

Some noteworthy statistics included in the announcement are as follows:

• The BC PNP has increased more than eight-fold, from approximately 600 people admitted in 2004 to 4,900 people admitted in 2010
• Provincial nominees accounted for 16% of economic class admissions and 11% of total immigration to BC in 2010.

In the BC PNP, the Province of British Columbia has its own immigration categories for the selection of immigrants, while CIC maintains authority for “admissibility issues”, such as medical and security screening, generally speaking.

Read the full announcement here.