On 22 July 2020, Canada invited 557 Express Entry candidates to apply for permanent residency.
So far this year Canada has invited 54,357 immigration candidates.
In the latest draw only candidates who had been nominated by a Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) were accepted, which is why the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) cut off was 687. This is the lowest CRS requirement so far in 2020 for a PNP-specific draw.
Each of these candidates have already secured provincial nominations and were awarded a further 600 points against their overall score. This implies applicants who obtained an Invitation to Apply (ITA) in this process will have required a CRS score of at least 87 without the provincial nomination for their human capital.
This is the ninth PNP-specific draw since Canada closed its borders in March in an effort to control coronavirus spread. Since then, the invitation rounds administered by the Express Entry method have adopted a trend in which draws vary between targeting candidates with provincial nominations and Canadian Experience Class (CEC) candidates. Earlier this month the first all-program draw since the start of the pandemic took place.
Express Entry draws that target CEC candidates typically have a slightly lower CRS cut off. Nonetheless, after March CEC draws CRS cut-offs have been slowly decreasing, with the recent CEC draw having the lowest CRS cut off of the year so far.
The latest draws from the Express Entry pool have seen Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) use the tie-break process to rate candidates of the same CRS score.
In this draw a tie-break rule was implemented, and the date and time used was at 8:51:21 UTC on November 11, 2019. It implies that in this invitation round all candidates with a CRS score of 687, as well as those candidates with scores above 687 who applied their profile before the date and period, earned an ITA.
Despite the apparent fact that IRCC has stepped away from the regular all-program draw schedule, which takes place on Wednesdays every two weeks, Canada is on pace to meet the Express Entry goal of 85,800 ITAs in 2020, with 54,357 ITAs issued this year, compared to 45,400 at this point in 2019.
Canadian immigration is federally managed. Express Entry is the government’s immigrant application management system for three economic-level programs: Federal Skilled Workers Program, Federal Skilled Trades Program, and Canadian Experience Class.
Individuals qualifying for one of these programs submit their profile in the Express Entry pool, where they earn a CRS score based on their human capital factors such as age, work experience, education and English or French language skill. The highest-ranking applicants are then invited through frequent Express Entry draws to apply for permanent residency.
Express Entry candidates with scores below CRS cut-offs have a number of possible score improvement opportunities, the most important of which is a provincial nomination.
Most provinces and two territories in Canada have ‘enhanced’ PNP sources connected to the Express Entry system.
As noted earlier, provincial nominations result in significant increases in points and effectively guarantee an invitation to apply for permanent residence in Canada.
Many provincial nomination streams associated with Canada’s Express Entry have issued invites since the beginning of the year, including streams in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and British Columbia.
Need more insights on the same? Get in touch with authorized immigration consultants in Delhi.
