671 PNP candidates invited in latest express entry draw

Canada invited 671 Express Entry applicants to submit their permanent residence applications on March 8.

Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) invited applicants with a minimum score of 739. This score requirement seems high, but this is because everyone invited had previously received a nomination from a Canadian Immigration Provincial Nominee Program  (PNP).

Express Entry candidates who achieve a provincial nomination automatically receive 600 points in addition to their initial human capital score. This means that those who had the minimum score of 739, had a Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) score of 139 without the provincial nomination.

Applicants with a minimum score of 739 were only included if they had submitted their Express Entry profile by February 16, 2021, at 19:10:25 UTC, by the tie-break rule.

So far this year, Canada has issued 38,657 Invitations to Apply (ITA). This is more than three times more than the number of ITAs issued by IRCC during the same period last year. Due to the low number of new immigrants admitted in 2020, Canada has set itself the ambitious goal of welcoming 401,000 newcomers in 2021. Most of these are allocated through the Express Entry system.

The majority of those invitations came from when IRCC issued 27,332 ITAs in the previous draw on Saturday, February 13. This isn’t just the largest Express Entry draw ever, but also a historically low CRS requirement of 75.

It is unusual to see draws occurring more than two weeks apart. Today’s draw comes 22 days after the Saturday draw when all applicants in the pool who were eligible for the Canadian experience category were invited to apply for permanent residence.