CIC Surprises Applicants with Rare Thursday Express Entry Draw

In a surprising situation, the CIC issued 3,900 more ITAs on November 15th, 2018. This is a rare event as Express Entry Draws are seldom held on Thursdays. However, the minimum CRS score for this draw was kept at 449 which is a few points higher than the average score for most draws. Usually, the CRS score for draws is slightly lower or higher than 440 CRS points.

With this batch of ITAs, the IRCC has moved even closer to achieving its ITAs issued last year. Currently, the 2018 issued ITA count stands at 78,100. This means that the IRCC will only need to issue 8,000 more ITAs to surpass the 86,023 ITA mark it set up last year.

How Does the Express Entry Program Work?

The Express Entry Program was established in 2015 and has served as the primary immigration pathway into Canada since then. Overall, it offers three immigration streams to applicants – the Federal Skilled Worker Program, the Federal Skilled Trades Program, and the Canadian Experience Class.

The selection criteria for Canada PR through Express Entry tests on the Comprehensive Ranking System. This system is designed to assess immigration eligibility based on certain core attributes. These include – age, language ability, education, work experience, adaptability, and job offer if applicable.

Now, the applicant has to create an Express Entry profile and provide details on all the factors we have mentioned above. The applicant will also need to provide documentation in support of the information they have given in their profile. Once the information has been verified, their profile is entered into the Express Entry Job Pool. For the Job Pool, they can look for jobs suitable for them.

How Often Are Express Entry Draws Held?

Usually, Express Entry Draws are held once every two weeks. This is done to ensure that the pool of eligible applicants get selected for immigration regularly and there is no backlog. For this particular Draw, the time between it and the previous Draw was 17 days. This resulted in the number of applicants increasing and also causing the minimum CRS score to increase as well.

How Does Express Entry Decide Between Applicants with the Same Score?

Since there are applicants from all over the world applying for immigration, it can happen that two or more CRS cores can get locked together. In such cases, the CIC uses a tie-breaker which is based on time of application. In this particular situation, all applicants who applied before September 16, 2018, 12:41:42 UTC were issued ITAs. All those who applied after that were not given the ITAs.

Which Provinces Are the Biggest Contributors to Express Entry?

Canada has multiple provinces linked with the Express Entry program. Out of these, Ontario is the biggest contributor. It also has three streams dedicated for immigration via Express Entry which is the highest for any province in Canada. Also, these three streams accounted for 95% of all ITAs issued for the province.

Overall, this October has been the largest Draw and ITA issues for Express Entry. October saw 11,700 ITAs issued which is twice the number of ITAs issued last year, which were at 5,558. This also shows that the IRCC is continuing with its multi-year program and increasing its total ITAs in each successive year.

This year, the ITA target is 74,900. In 2019, the number of ITAs to be issued is set at 81,400 followed by 85,800 in 2020 and 88,800 in 2021. With the CIC continuing to issue ITAs this year, it is certain that it will reach its target. Further, it is also possible that the ITA count might exceed the target. It all depends on the number of draws held in November and December this year.