In its most recent draw, 5,000 Express Entry candidates were invited by the Canadian government to apply for permanent residency.

In order to obtain an Invitation to Apply (ITA), applicants had to be eligible for the Canadian Experience Class (CEC) and have a score of at least 432, which was 17 points lower than the previous CEC-only draw.

According to the tie-break rule, candidates with a minimum CRS score of 432 were only invited if they submitted their Express Entry profile before February 16, 2021 at 09:51:22 UTC. Regardless of if there was a tie, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) publishes the cut-off period for the tie-break provision as an administrative requirement.

According to David Cohen, Senior Attorney at Campbell Cohen, “Today was the third-lowest CRS cut-off for a CEC draw since the pandemic.” “Over the past year, only the historic February 13, 2021 CEC draw and the June 25, 2020 CEC draw have had lower CRS requirements.”

IRCC prioritizing in-Canada Express Entry candidates

Non-essential international travel is now prohibited across Canada’s border, but the government must still accept large numbers of potential permanent residents. This is because the current government set an ambitious goal of accepting 401,000 new immigrants by 2021, with the bulk of them going through Express Entry-managed platforms.

IRCC has been hosting program-specific draws that target applicants that are likely already in the country to reach certain deadlines despite travel restrictions. Candidates for the CEC must have at least one year of full-time job experience in a skilled occupation, so they are almost certainly already in Canada before they apply their Express Entry profiles. According to the IRCC, about 90% of CEC candidates reside in Canada.

Canada alternated between conducting PNP-specific draws and rounds of invitation that only welcomed applicants who could be qualifying for the CEC when the border first closed in March 2020. IRCC followed this trend until late in the year, when it resumed conducting all-program draws, which do not single out applicants for any specific programme.

At the beginning of the year, IRCC has resumed conducting PNP and CEC-specific draws. On February 13, the department released an invitation to all CEC applicants to apply for permanent residency.

Candidates from the Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) were targeted in the previous Express Entry draw, which took place on March 31. PNP-only candidates have shown that they have the requisite qualifications to serve the provincial labour market to the province that selected them. Since obtaining a PNP immediately gives Express Entry candidates an extra 600 points, these candidates have better CRS scores.

On February 13, IRCC sent invitations to all CEC-eligible candidates from the Express Entry pool, a total of 27,332 immigration candidates. Because of this extraordinary draw, the number of ITAs released in 2021 has already reached 49,124, almost half of the estimated number of new Express Entry candidates projected to be accepted in that year. IRCC had released 22,600 by this time last year.