“Through its Express Entry PNP Draw, IRCC has only invited candidates to apply for Canadian immigration in the first two draws of the year.”
On January 19, Canada hosted a new Express Entry PNP Draw, inviting 1,036 immigration candidates to apply for permanent residency.
Only candidates for the Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) were invited by Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). As a result, the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) cut-off score was 745. When PNP candidates apply, their score is automatically increased by 600 points.
Since September, all Express Entry drawings have been for PNP candidates exclusively. The last time candidates for the Canadian Experience Class (CEC) were solicited was on September 14.
IRCC has so far invited 1,428 PNP candidates via Express Entry in 2022. During the previous ten Express Entry PNP Draw, the CRS cut-off has often been in the 700-800 range. The 745 CRS requirement for today’s draw was lower than the 808 CRS requirement for the first draw of the year on January 5.
Fswp And Cec Candidates Make Up Almost Entire Express Entry Pool
As of January 4, there were around 194,000 Express Entry candidates in the pool. Approximately 80% of these individuals are qualified for the Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSWP), and almost 20% are eligible for the Canadian Experience Class (CEC). These figures have been rounded; however the discrepancy represents the number of candidates who are qualified for other programs such as the PNP and the Federal Skilled Trades Program.
Since December 2020, IRCC has not invited FSWP candidates to apply for permanent residency. FSWP candidates were by far the most often invited prior to the pandemic. In 2019, FSWP candidates received around 45 percent of all Express Entry invitations. However, because FSWP candidates have not been able to apply for more than a year, the pool has been filled up.
Since September, the number of CEC candidates in the pool has also increased dramatically. Currently, they account for roughly 20% of the pool, up from around 6% six months ago. That was in June, when IRCC was organizing massive CEC drawings in which 6,000 candidates were invited to apply at the same time.
According to an internal information dated September, IRCC suspended CEC drawings to further minimize application backlogs and return Express Entry processing to six months. The average processing period for Express Entry candidates in 2020 was up to nine months.
Although IRCC was able to increase processing to more than 45,000 applications per month by the end of the year, the backlog of immigration applications increased by 21,000 between October and December. During that period, the Express Entry backlog decreased from 138,000 to 119,000. The majority of the progress was driven by a decrease in CEC application backlogs, which fell from around 48,000 in October to 25,000 in December. The backlog in the Federal Skilled Trades Program (FSTP) also decreased from 931 in October to 805 in December.
Between October and December, the Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSWP) backlog climbed by 1,000 applications, from about 51,000 to about 55,000. In December, the Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) backlog increased by nearly 1,000 applications to 39,000.
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