Express Entry Draw: 1002 PNP candidates invited for PR Visa

Immigration, Refugees & Citizenship Canada (IRCC) held their latest program-specific express entry draw inviting 1002 express entry candidates with a provincial nomination to apply for Canadian permanent residency.

The latest CRS score cut-off is 742, and it's high mainly because of the reason that an express entry candidate with a provincial nomination gets 600 CRS additional points to their profile. 

By administrative requirements, IRCC has published a cut-off time for the tie-breaking rule, whether or not there has been a substantive tie. In the new draw, applicants with the minimum score were only invited if they had submitted their Express Entry profile by February 18, 2021, at 04:04:56 UTC.

In the previous PNP-only draw, Canada invited 940 PNP applicants to apply for permanent residence, and the required score was 711 points. This draw was the biggest PNP-specific express entry draw ever.

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Priority to local candidates

Throughout the pandemic, IRCC held only draws specific to the PNP and the Canadian Experience Class (CEC). Indeed, these candidates are more likely to already live in Canada. Until June 21, approved permanent residents could not travel to Canada to complete their settlement and activate their status.

Although Canada's travel restrictions are starting to decrease, the border is still closed to non-essential travel and the ban on flights from India has been extended by one month.

Despite the ongoing pandemic, the federal government plans to admit a record number of new immigrants over the next three years. This year, Canada is expecting to invite 108,500 skilled immigrants through Express entry only.

This year, Canada invited almost twice as many Express Entry applicants as we saw at the same time last year. This number comes from the historic express entry held on February 13 inviting all the eligible CEC candidates from the express entry pool for permanent residency. About 87% of those invited that day applied for permanent residence before the 90-day deadline, according to an email from IRCC.

There are major differences between the requirements for PNP and CEC-only candidates. For Example, express entry candidates with a provincial nomination automatically get 600 CRS points added to their overall score. On the other hand, CEC candidates do not compete with each other to get an Invitation to Apply (ITA). That's why, IRCC invites most of the top-ranked profiles, allowing a decrease in the CRS score cut-off.