Express Entry At a Glance:
Express Entry has been most popular and fastest federal permanent residency program for Canada. There are three categories namely Canadian Experience Class (CEC), Federal Skilled Worker (FSW), and Federal Skilled Trade (FST). While CEC is for people having Canadian experience, FSW and FST offers a permanent residency pathway to people outside Canada having experience in their home country. Applicants create their profile in express entry system and are assigned a Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) score. Express entry system usually declares two draws every month with cut off score. Applicants having score equal to or higher than this cut off are invited to apply for Permanent Residency (PR). Once an applicant submits their documents in the support of the selection factors they claimed in their profile, they get decision within 6 months.
Express Entry Drought For FSW and FST:
This year express entry system has already invited 4,690 more profiles to invite for permanent residency, but there has been drought for applicants outside Canada (FSW and FST) other than those received provincial nomination. Furthermore, outland applicants who received invitations to apply under PNP category are facing delayed processing of their application. Last year express entry issued 68,100 ITAs under “no program specified” draw considering all the categories with specific cut off scores. However, there has been no such draw this year and CEC only invited most of the applicants. Also FSW applicants who received ITAs in the end of 2020 have been waiting to get their permanent residency visa. IRCC has removed progress bar from their profiles which is leaving the applicants in limbo as they are not able to track processing of their applications.
| Express Entry Category | 2020 Invitations To Apply | 2021 Invitations to Apply |
| No Program Specified (CEC, FSW, FST, PNP) | 68,100 | 0 |
| CEC Only | 34,215 | 99,653 |
| PNP Only | 4,785 | 12,387 |
| FST Only | 250 | 0 |
| Total Invitations | 107,350 | 112,040 |
When Will Be Next “No Program Specified” Draw:
As of November 8, 2021 there were 186,522 profiles in express entry profile. So far, Canada has already surpassed their 2021 target for express entry system by inviting 112,040 profiles. High range target for 2021 was 110,500. This is the reason that last 5 draws were PNP only. IRCC has not commented officially on when the next all program draw will be, but as per data chances of having a “no program specified” draw this year is very rare. However, we may see this category of draw in the beginning of next year.
Hope From New Immigration Minister:
New immigration minister, hon’ble Sean Fraser was appointed in the new cabinet of Liberals. We urge him to look into the matter for outland applications of express entry system or at least provide a clarity/comment on when we can expect the “no program specified” draw. Furthermore, IRCC should also provide more transparency to the applications in progress by restoring the progress bar in the EE profiles and providing the actual processing time, so that individuals can plan accordingly. Outland applicants apply for EE seeking to start a new life by permanently moving to Canada and they need to know where they stand in this process. Merely mentioning on the IRCC website “You may experience delays because we have a backlog of applications due to COVID-19.” is not enough. IRCC should provide the plan on how they are addressing this backlog and how much delay should applicants expect.