Canada opens Express Entry draw for PNP candidates again- invites 667 candidates

by Rajneesh Kumar Published on 02/Mar/2023

On March 1st, 2023, the Canadian immigration department continued its recent trend of conducting program-specific Express Entry System draws. This time around, the Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has issued 667 invitations exclusively to Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) candidates in the EE system.

The invited candidates in this EE draw had already received a provincial nomination, and as a result, an additional 600 CRS points, making their overall CRS (Comprehensive Ranking System) score to 748 points or higher. This draw is the 4th program-specific draw and 6th overall draw in 2023, emphasizing on the continued significance of provincial nominations in the Canadian immigration process.

Now, IRCC has invited total 16,559 express entry candidates in overall six draws opened this year.

Express Entry Draw on 1 March 2023

Date	EE Draw Category	No. of ITAs	Minimum CRS Score Requirement	Tie-breaking rule
March 1, 2023	PNP Only	667	748	December 12, 2022, at 10:48:12 UTC

The CUT OFF is expected to drop in upcoming EE draws as a significant number of top-ranking candidates already have ITA in last few draws. For remaining applicants the IRCC is likely to reduce the CRS score requirement

Express Entry process

The Canada’s Express Entry system is a point-based and online immigration application system used by the Canadian government to manage and process applications for skilled workers who want to immigrate to Canada on a Permanent Resident (PR) Visa.

It ranks registered candidates based on their age, education, work experience, language skills, and other factors that are considered important to the Canadian economy and labour market.

The EE system is divided into 3 main economic immigration Categories:

Federal Skilled Worker Program,
Federal Skilled Trades Program, and
Canadian Experience Class.

The applicants can register an online profile and enter the EE pool, where they allocated points to form a Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) score based on above-mentioned selection factors, i.e. age, education, etc. Fortnightly, the Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) conducts Express Entry draws, inviting the top-ranking candidates to apply for permanent residency.