This may come as a surprise, but it’s a fact, that Canada sent invitations to 5000 applicants to apply for permanent residence. All the applicants were from Express Entry.
The invite was sent to the applicants who were eligible for the Canadian Experience Class (CEC) and had a 432 score. That was 17 points less than the draw that happened before this.
Only those applicants who received the invite had submitted their profile prior to 16th Feb 2021 at 09:51:22 UTC. The IRCC makes the cut-off time public as per the tie-break rule. It does not depend if there was a tie or not.
“Today marked the third-lowest CRS cut-off for a CEC draw during the pandemic,” said David Cohen, Senior Attorney of Campbell Cohen. “Only the historic 13th Feb 2021 draw and the 25th Jun 2020 CEC draw have had lower CRS requirements over the past year.”
Canada prioritizing in-country candidates of Express Entry
Canada has still not opened the doors for non-essential travel, and there is a restrictions in place. However, the country still needs immigrants to sustain the economy and labor needs. To achieve this objective, Canada has set another goal of welcoming 401,000 newcomers this year. Most of the newcomers are expected to come under the Express Entry.
To try and meet the objective, the immigration department is holding program-specific draws. These draws are targeted toward the migrants already living in the country. Applicants of CEC require one year of work experience while submitting their profile. So that indicates applicants are likely to be in the country. According to the IRCC, around 90% of the CEC applicants are in the country.
When travel restrictions were implemented last year, the immigration officials decided to switch between programs while conducting draws. Instead of PNP, they started inviting individuals who might be eligible under CEC and vice versa. IRCC applied this strategy for a while but later switched to all-program draws.
In 2021, IRCC again started attending the same strategy. On 13th Feb, the immigration department sent an invite to every eligible individual under CEC.
The last draw was for PNP applicants. It was held on 31st Mar. PNP applicants get nominated by the particular province once they demonstrate their skills for the labor market. Applicants under PNP have a higher score as they get additional 600 points from the province after nomination.
On 13th Feb, IRCC sent an invite to 27,322 applicants. With that record-breaking draw, the total invites tallied to 49,124 already for 2021. Last year, the tally was 22,600 at this time.
What is Express Entry?
It is the application management system for federal immigration pathways. The programs are the Federal Skilled Worker Program, the Canadian Experience Class, and the Federal Skilled Trades Program.
An individual wishing to go to Canada under Express Entry will have to check his/her eligibility first if you are eligible, so a score will be given to you on the basis of your demographics and other details that you provide.
The immigration office then calls the applicants with the highest points to apply for PR. This happens in regular rounds of draws.
Hypothetical Example for who was invited to the draw?
Matthew is 34 years old and has a bachelor’s qualification. He has been working in Canada for last almost one year as a data scientist. He also has 7 years of practice in Data science prior to Canada. His English proficiency is on an advanced level. Matthew got a score of 456, and it would make him eligible to get an invite in the last draw.
