The Department of Employment and Social Development Canada (“ESDC”) has very strict procedures for returning incomplete Labour Market Impact Assessment (“LMIA”) applications.
All applications are reviewed for completeness. A “complete” application means that the employer has used the appropriate form and an acceptable version, and:
- filled out all fields in all the necessary forms;
- included all the documents that are requested;
- signed all the forms, where required; and
- provided the payment form for the processing fee (where applicable).
If an application is missing information, an officer will determine if the missing element can be obtained quickly and call the employer to obtain the information. Applications that would have been eligible for priority processing but for the missing information are placed in regular processing, even if the information can be obtained quickly.
If the application is missing information that is not easy to obtain, then the application will be deemed incomplete. Although ESDC officers will typically shred or delete an incomplete LMIA, officers will enter reasons for why the application was incomplete in the employer’s system file notes.
The following information from the ESDC Wiki expands on what is written above.