The PNP draw sets a record for inviting the highest number of immigrants whereas candidates entering through Express Entry were only 6,470.
6,470 Express Entry candidates will be welcomed in Canada through PNP. Although the total invited candidates in the first three months of this year are comparatively low since 2015 when the Express Entry was launched.
The other smallest was the fourth quarter of 2021 when only 4,735 immigrants through PNP draw were called.
Although the PNP draw has set a record-breaking target by conducting 7 draws in 2022. More than one thousand of immigrants were invited under this category as of February 16, 2022
Fewer Applications for Express Entry
An increase in the Express Entry backlog caused a decrease in released applications for the Express Entry.
The IRCC stopped releasing applications for the CEC category by the end of the third quarter of 2021 because its inventory started to rise and delays completing the application processing.
Also, another draw that has been paused by the IRCC is the FSWP.
Pre Covid, all the draws like CEC, FSWP, and FSTP lying under the Express Entry only required high CRS points to get an invitation.
The IRCC would conduct separate draws for FSTP regularly.
Because of Covid, travel restrictions were imposed in the country. This simultaneously resulted in the pause of all operations of IRCC. In the early months, only invitations for PNP and CEC applicants were released. By the end of the year invitations for FSWP were also released
It seems like the increase in backlog occurred because the IRCC was more focused on permanent residents from temporary residents. In the meantime, the inventory backlog of the FSWP category touched its heights which parallelly resulted in increased processing time from 6 to 36 months.
The IRCC took the step of halting draws so that it can direct its efforts toward minimizing the processing time as well as clearing off the backlog inventory.
In this manner, there would be no additional applications to process and the main focus can be put on the already existing applications of Express Entry.
There have been no assured dates provided by the minister of when the applications for the Skilled Workers category would begin.
The updated data shows that a total of 4,101 applications under the FSWP category have been completed within the first 15 days of March.
This is why the maximum number of FSWP candidates have come into the country in comparison with last year.
Although more than 40,000 existing applications of March still need to alter
It has been extracted from the respective data that more than 10,000 applications under the CEC category need to be processed.
And in the previous month, the IRCC was successful in processing 4,751 applications for the CEC category.
