On March 17, Canada invited 183 Express Entry candidates to apply for permanent residency.

Candidates with a minimum score of 682 were welcomed by Immigration, Refugee, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). This Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) score requirement may appear to be high, but this is due to the fact that everyone invited has previously received a nomination from a Provincial Nominee Program (PNP).

Express Entry candidates who receive a provincial nomination earn an extra 600 points on top of their overall human capital score. That is, those who received the minimum score of 682 would have received a CRS score of 82 without the provincial nomination.

Candidates with a minimum score of 682 were only eligible if their Express Entry profile was submitted before March 4, 2021, at 16:56:20 UTC, as per the tie-break rule. Regardless of if there was an actual tie, IRCC publishes the cut-off time for the tie-break rule as an administrative requirement.

This is the second consecutive PNP-specific draw. Canada welcomed 671 PNP candidates to apply for permanent residency on March 8.

Canada has issued 38,840 Invitations to Apply (ITAs) so far this year. This is about three times the amount of ITAs issued by IRCC at the same time last year. Because of the low number of new immigrants accepted in 2020, Canada has set the ambitious goal of accepting 401,000 immigrants in 2021. Canada has reserved the bulk of the available Express Entry spots for newcomers.

The vast majority of these invites were issued by IRCC on Saturday, February 13, when it issued 27,332 ITAs. Not only was it the largest Express Entry draw in history, but it also had a historically low CRS requirement of 75. In that draw, every single Express Entry candidate in the pool who qualified for the Canadian Experience Class (CEC) was invited to apply for permanent residence.