Canada holds a new Express Entry PNP draw on July 7 in which they invited 627 candidates for Permanent Residency. The invitation round was only for candidates who had a nomination from a Provincial Nominee Program (PNP). These candidates needed a score of at least 760.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) also published a cutoff time for the tie-break rule. Candidates who had the minimum score were only invited if they submitted their Express Entry profile before June 14, 2021 at 07:44:05 UTC.
Throughout the pandemic, IRCC has been holding only PNP- and Canadian Experience Class (CEC)-specific draws. This is because these candidates are more likely to already be living in Canada, and less likely to be disrupted by public health measures like travel restrictions.
In recent PNP-specific draws, IRCC has been inviting high numbers of candidates. For the first time ever, IRCC invited more than 1,000 PNP candidates on June 23. Before that, the immigration department invited 940 candidates.
These high draw sizes could be part of a strategy to meet Canada’s immigration targets for 2021. The federal government has committed to welcoming 401,000 new immigrants to Canada this year. About a quarter of these are allotted to come through the Express Entry system. So far this year, Canada has invited 89,342 Express Entry candidates to apply for permanent residence.
Canada has invited almost twice as many Express Entry candidates as we saw at the same time last year. The large number comes from the historic February 13 draw where IRCC invited every CEC-eligible candidate in the pool, a total of 27,332 people. About 87 per cent of those invited that day applied for permanent residence before the 90-day deadline, according to an IRCC email.
PNP-only and CEC-only draws have very different score requirements. PNP draws have higher cutoffs because of the 600-point award, while CEC draws have lower cutoffs because candidates are not competing for invitations from other programs. Which means IRCC takes more off the top, allowing for CEC cutoff scores to dip into the lower levels.