Canada carried another all-program draw, inviting Express Entry applicants to apply for Canadian permanent residence.
Latest Express Entry Draw
Canada issued a draw on August 5 for 3,900 Invitations to Apply (ITAs) for permanent residency. Candidates need a minimum of 476 Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) score to receive invitations of this round of draw.
For most of 2020, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has issued 3,900 ITAs every two weeks, through Express Entry. While IRCC deviated from all-program draws between March 18 and July 8 and during that period was targeting candidates in only two specific programs, that changed last month. On July 8, IRCC conducted an all-program draw before switching to program-specific drawings on July 22 and July 23, indicating that it will continue to switch between these two kinds of drawings until things gradually return to normal.
Temporary policy changes did not affect the number of ITAs issued in 2020, and remained constant throughout the year. The year began in January with two draws of 3,400 ITAs each, followed in February by one draw of 3,500 ITAs and a record-breaking draw of 4,500. IRCC has held 21 draws since March, and issued almost 40,000 ITAs.
The Express Entry program currently manages three distinct immigration streams, which are the principle sources of skilled foreign labour. The Economic Class immigration programs are — the Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSWP), the Federal Skilled Trades Class (FSTC) and the Canadian Experience Class (CEC). ITAs are issued in regular invitation rounds to the highest ranking candidates in the Express Entry pool.
Today’s draw was the 25th draw of 2020 – and brings to 61,600 the total number of ITAs issued this year, a new record for this date.
A Look at the History of Draws
The minimum score today at 476 was two points lower than the previous all-program invitation round held on 8 July, with a cut-off score of 478.
The higher CRS cut-off are again used by FSWP candidates to secure ITAs. Today included ITAs sent out to applicants with higher CRS scores that might otherwise have been accepted in previous months if IRCC’s Express Entry policies had not been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.
Draw time is an important factor that can affect the CRS cut-off score. Larger gaps between draws indicate that more applicants have time in the Express Entry pool to enter a profile.
In today’s draw, IRCC utilized its tie-break rule. The timestamp used was the 27th of July, at 1:02:47 UTC. That means that in this invitation round, all candidates with a CRS score above 476, as well as those candidates with scores of 476 who entered their profile in the Express Entry pool before the selected date and time, received an ITA.
The tie-break rule is used to rate applicants with the same score on CRS. The CRS score of a candidate remains the primary factor in selecting candidates to be called upon to apply for permanent residence.
Under the CRS of Express Entry, eligible candidates for each program are issued a score that awards points for factors such as age, education, skilled work experience and English or French proficiency.
Although a work offer is not necessary to apply for the Express Entry program, extra points are granted by the CRS to applicants who have one.
A fixed number of the highest-scoring applicants will be given an invitation to apply for permanent residency in Canada by frequent draws from the pool, usually conducted every two weeks. The Government of Canada has a six-month standard for processing applications for permanent residence filed via the Express Entry System.
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