The latest Express Entry draw held on March 31st invited 284 new immigrants to apply for permanent residency. All of these had a Provincial Nomination (PNP) from their respective Provinces.
A PNP helps candidates gather 600 points in the Express Entry system. As a result, for this draw, the score for the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) was 778.
The new score may have seemed high, particularly when compared to the previous draw, which had a cut-off score of 449. But even on this draw, without the PNP, the lowest-scoring candidate would have earned 178 CRS points.
According to the tie-break rule, candidates with a minimum score of 778 were only considered if they submitted their Express Entry profile before March 16, 2021 at 16:09:32 UTC. Despite of whether there was a tie, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) publishes the cut-off time for the tie-break rule as an administrative requirement.
Domestic candidates for immigration
Though Non-essential international travel is still banned across Canada’s border, but the Canadian Government still needs to continue to accept significant numbers of new permanent residents. This is because the current government has set a lofty immigration goal of accepting 401,000 new immigrants by end of 2021, the vast majority of which will be welcomed via Express Entry-managed programmes. Since the beginning of the year, IRCC has resumed conducting PNP and CEC-specific draws. On February 13, the department issued an invitation to all CEC (Canadian Experience Class) candidates, in the Express entry Pool to qualify for permanent residence.
As a result of the significant draw, number of ITAs released by IRCC this year already outnumbers those issued last year. Canada has sent out 44,124 invitations to Express Entry candidates so far in 2021.
What is Express Entry?
Express Entry is one of the main Canadian Immigration system that handles applications for four federal immigration programmes: The Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSW), Federal Skilled Trades Program (FST), the Canadian Experience Class (CEC) and the Provincial Nominee Programme (PNP). The system assigns the applicant, a score based on their job history, education, age, ability to communicate in an official language (English and/or French), among other things. The highest-scoring candidates are then invited through a sequence of rounds of invitations by the IRCC. Typically, in a year CIC holds a minimum of 24 draws, at least 2 in a month. Candidates who are invited are given an ITA, which they may use to apply for permanent residence in Canada.
