For my spouse, who is the secondary applicant (dependent), I am mentioning her work experience details while responding to the ITA. However, she is not in a position to produce reference letters from her employers. Since there are no CRS points applicable for the spouse’s work experience, would this pose a risk of my application getting rejected?
Spouse Reference Letters
As long as no points had been claimed, it should be totally fine to apply without references.
During EE profile creation for Spouse employment simply put “not employed”. This is because you are not claiming any points in this category. Points for this category are claimed ONLY in case that spouse has Canadian work experience. Based on this answer in next step when automatic document checklist is generated you will not see request for your spouse reference letter. In case you answered with “yes, she is employed…” the system wil ask you to provide reference letter.
Now, second stage of this thing is something called “personal history”. Here yo have to provide detail for your spouse for the last 10 years in reference to her/his employment, studies, travel unemployment etc. HERE you should put from when to when she/he has been working and where. In this way you are just covering last 10 years and not claiming points for work experience.
Just one little side note, It would be vise to write an Letter of Explanation where you would explain just what I typed above … You are not claiming any points for work experience because he/she has only local work experience and not Canadian. That is the reason you said that he/she is not employed. However, truth to be told, he/she IS actually employed by this or that company from-to date and this has been covered in personal history part.
thats it … and good luck …