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EXPRESS ENTRY DRAW #44 - OCT 12, 2016 // 1,518 ITAs // 484 CRS

thourb

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dan_and said:
No offense either but you need to understand that the number of ITAs determines the cut-off score, and not the other way around.

All this conspiracy theory stuff about CIC establishing secret thresholds has been around this forum ever since Express Entry started.

In the beginning, everyone was freaking out about the "fact" that nobody without a job offer or a nomination would ever be invited (because the scores were 700+).

Then, ~450 was a threshold that the CRS score never went below. Theories were established as to why CIC, in all their infinite wisdom, had picked 450 as the permanent cut-off score. None of them made sense.

Earlier this year, to everyone's shock, the number of ITAs was successively reduced and the CRS score went up to >480 as a consequence. Again, theories abound that this is the new 'secret' cut-off.

What all this fails to take into account is the simple fact that the cut-off is a function of the number of invites. Plain and simple.

Express Entry was established to pick the highest-ranking candidates and to allow CIC a more efficient management of applications to avoid the build-up of backlogs and to maintain the 6 month turnaround goal. The latter objective especially means that they will adjust invitations based on work load and immigration goals.

It should therefore be obvious that controlling the number of invitations is a much more useful tool to administer a government authority such as CIC than to manage for some arbitrary CRS goal which could produce huge swings in number of applications to be processed (an operational nightmare).

Besides, it might come as a surprise to you that Canada is a country where the rule of law is of utmost importance. This means that government agencies like CIC can't just flip the officially stated purpose of Express Entry on its head, change the purpose of the program to establish a secret cut-off and undermine the parliament's immigration goals.

Finally, this does not even make sense and you are contradicting yourself. Skipping a draw to maintain a certain score only makes sense if you want to keep the ITAs constant or reduce them. But they skipped a draw and increased the number of ITAs. They could have established the same score last week with fewer invitations.
Finally, some common sense. CIC are looking for 54,000-58,400 immigrants through FSW in 2016. That is what determines how many ITAs they will give out. They do not care about the score of the lowest invited candidate, they are only concerned with the number of ITAs (and consequently PRs) issued. Surely the fact that the score was down as low as 450 only a matter of months ago demonstrates this fact to people. CIC have no reason to artificially keep the CRS score above any predetermined threshold; to do so would make it difficult for them to predict how many ITAs would be issued.
 

rkhan15

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thourb said:
Finally, some common sense. CIC are looking for 54,000-58,400 immigrants through FSW in 2016. That is what determines how many ITAs they will give out. They do not care about the score of the lowest invited candidate, they are only concerned with the number of ITAs (and consequently PRs) issued. Surely the fact that the score was down as low as 450 only a matter of months ago demonstrates this fact to people. CIC have no reason to artificially keep the CRS score above any predetermined threshold; to do so would make it difficult for them to predict how many ITAs would be issued.
Is it just FSW or all EE profiles or both EE and other immigration processing? If it's just EE then numbers don't make sense, I assume there are about 1000-1500 ITAs per draw, which would mean 24000-36000 ITAs per year; which is much less than above quota. Now minus number of rejections from this and the total FSW immigrants to canada will fall further short of 54,000-58,400.
 

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moderator1983 said:
It's too early to say this...
I (and many other members) always believed, it's always draw size (ITA#) which further decides cut-off score and is not other way around...
If you look at how it's run historically, they do a little bit of both. There are numbers that they seem not to like going under, and they will adjust the draw frequency and amount to maintain that score. When the scores stay largely the same, but the draw size changes, they are controlling for score.

In addition, there are times where they keep the number of people drawn fairly consistent, and the score fluctuates more. This is consistent with them controlling for quotas.

They do both.

Technically, the draw score will always be a function of the size. The exact number varies slightly due to the distribution of scores - dropping the score one point may take it over the target, and not doing so keep it under. They have to do it this way, as everyone with that score gets drawn.

Pragmatically, when the score isn't one they like, they just wait a bit or pick a smaller draw target to compensate. There's a reason the score didn't go below 450 - they didn't want it to, and they were willing to wait as long as they needed to, or draw as few as it took.
 

Pitlord

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Aug 23, 2016
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dan_and said:
No offense either but you need to understand that the number of ITAs determines the cut-off score, and not the other way around.

All this conspiracy theory stuff about CIC establishing secret thresholds has been around this forum ever since Express Entry started.

In the beginning, everyone was freaking out about the "fact" that nobody without a job offer or a nomination would ever be invited (because the scores were 700+).

Then, ~450 was a threshold that the CRS score never went below. Theories were established as to why CIC, in all their infinite wisdom, had picked 450 as the permanent cut-off score. None of them made sense.

Earlier this year, to everyone's shock, the number of ITAs was successively reduced and the CRS score went up to >480 as a consequence. Again, theories abound that this is the new 'secret' cut-off.

What all this fails to take into account is the simple fact that the cut-off is a function of the number of invites. Plain and simple.

Express Entry was established to pick the highest-ranking candidates and to allow CIC a more efficient management of applications to avoid the build-up of backlogs and to maintain the 6 month turnaround goal. The latter objective especially means that they will adjust invitations based on work load and immigration goals.

It should therefore be obvious that controlling the number of invitations is a much more useful tool to administer a government authority such as CIC than to manage for some arbitrary CRS goal which could produce huge swings in number of applications to be processed (an operational nightmare).

Besides, it might come as a surprise to you that Canada is a country where the rule of law is of utmost importance. This means that government agencies like CIC can't just flip the officially stated purpose of Express Entry on its head, change the purpose of the program to establish a secret cut-off and undermine the parliament's immigration goals.

Finally, this does not even make sense and you are contradicting yourself. Skipping a draw to maintain a certain score only makes sense if you want to keep the ITAs constant or reduce them. But they skipped a draw and increased the number of ITAs. They could have established the same score last week with fewer invitations.
If this is like as you described why doesn't CIC publish how many people is in the pool at all times, how many points they have, how did they earn them, how many pnps etc.
It is not a conspiracy theory, it's practice. To me this is all a big scam, a big money industry. How can you be certain of people being invited? Do you know all 484 of them from the last draw? How can somebody have a 900 points? By harvesting bananas in tropical Alberta? Are you kidding me? And please don't start with a provincial needs for workforce.
Immigration is not transparent in Canada and lots of us are just sheeps who believed in justice. I don't blame them, I blame us for believing
 

thourb

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rkhan15 said:
Is it just FSW or all EE profiles or both EE and other immigration processing? If it's just EE then numbers don't make sense, I assume there are about 1000-1500 ITAs per draw, which would mean 24000-36000 ITAs per year; which is much less than above quota. Now minus number of rejections from this and the total FSW immigrants to canada will fall further short of 54,000-58,400.
That is the total targeted number of FSW immigrants from all sources for 2016. Source: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/media/notices/2016-03-08.asp
 

thourb

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Pitlord said:
If this is like as you described why doesn't CIC publish how many people is in the pool at all times, how many points they have, how did they earn them, how many pnps etc.
It is not a conspiracy theory, it's practice. To me this is all a big scam, a big money industry. How can you be certain of people being invited? Do you know all 484 of them from the last draw? How can somebody have a 900 points? By harvesting bananas in tropical Alberta? Are you kidding me? And please don't start with a provincial needs for workforce.
Immigration is not transparent in Canada and lots of us are just sheeps who believed in justice. I don't blame them, I blame us for believing
What a lot of nonsese. Although it is true that CIC could publish more data (and I'm sure we'd all like them to), the fact is that there is already a lot of data available which they didn't have to publish for us to go through. The process by which you are eligible or not is clear and the process by which you earn CRS points is also clear. You will know where your points tally stands before you even create an EE profile and every two weeks or so you'll know whether you'll get an ITA as CIC publish the scores drawn. They don't even need to publish the number of ITAs or CRS score required each week. They do this, presumably, as it gives people an idea where they stand relative to the number of points required, which fosters trust in the system.

On your question as to how someone gets 900 points - Somone can get 900 points quite easily if they secure PNP or an LMIA - something that anyone can do if they have the right skills or appropriate work experience. This is a system that CIC have committed to modifying (or at least consuled upon modifying) as they realise that there are flaws in the current system which can be tweaked in order to get the best out of EE.

How can this be a big money industry? Whilst there are undoubtedly the unscrupulous few who "sell LMIAs" (and the government is cracking down on these), the rest of the process including costs are laid out very clearly by CIC and provinces. Express entry itself is entirely free to create a profile, whereas it would be arguable that the Canadian government could quite justifably charge a nominal fee for creating an EE profile to weed out fake profiles and to cover admin charges. Even a nominal $20 charge would have brought in up to $4million for CIC in 2015.

I don't know your own personal situation and/or how many CRS points you have, but your post stinks of resentment towards those who have got the required points. Fortunately for you, CIC has helpfully told you how to increase your points and also how many points would historically get you an ITA. Now it's down to you to do the work to get there.
 

ravdawg

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Specterz said:
I agree, more ITAs means nothing as long as the score doesn't drop.

And, for international student rules coming this fall, even if they provide extra 20-30 points (Just an example), it won't make any difference, since most Intl' students stand between 380 - 450. Just my thought!

@dell2 - Minister said that the rules will be effective in the fall, not next year.
I will gladly accept 20-30 points(or more). But also would help if the 600 pts for LMIA drops down to 200-300 too.

People with 100-200 core CRS points, should NOT be jumping ahead of people with 470+ CRS scores so easily.

Canadian bachelors, strong english and 1 year work experience gets you 444 pts. Currently we're at 464 (2 degrees), and will jump to 477 in September 2017 once the 2nd year of experience is gained.

Here's hoping they fix their mistake of inviting so many low-wage workers, instead of high wage earners. No matter what people say, there is absolutely no need to bring in people for 13$/hr jobs under an economic class. Absolutely none.
 

Pitlord

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Aug 23, 2016
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thourb said:
What a lot of nonsese. Although it is true that CIC could publish more data (and I'm sure we'd all like them to), the fact is that there is already a lot of data available which they didn't have to publish for us to go through. The process by which you are eligible or not is clear and the process by which you earn CRS points is also clear. You will know where your points tally stands before you even create an EE profile and every two weeks or so you'll know whether you'll get an ITA as CIC publish the scores drawn. They don't even need to publish the number of ITAs or CRS score required each week. They do this, presumably, as it gives people an idea where they stand relative to the number of points required, which fosters trust in the system.

On your question as to how someone gets 900 points - Somone can get 900 points quite easily if they secure PNP or an LMIA - something that anyone can do if they have the right skills or appropriate work experience. This is a system that CIC have committed to modifying (or at least consuled upon modifying) as they realise that there are flaws in the current system which can be tweaked in order to get the best out of EE.

How can this be a big money industry? Whilst there are undoubtedly the unscrupulous few who "sell LMIAs" (and the government is cracking down on these), the rest of the process including costs are laid out very clearly by CIC and provinces. Express entry itself is entirely free to create a profile, whereas it would be arguable that the Canadian government could quite justifably charge a nominal fee for creating an EE profile to weed out fake profiles and to cover admin charges. Even a nominal $20 charge would have brought in up to $4million for CIC in 2015.

I don't know your own personal situation and/or how many CRS points you have, but your post stinks of resentment towards those who have got the required points. Fortunately for you, CIC has helpfully told you how to increase your points and also how many points would historically get you an ITA. Now it's down to you to do the work to get there.
You my friend have a great imagination or you work for CIC. I have 465 of those imaginary points. When I said money industry I meant that students are coming from overseas to spend their money on tuition and then through this lovely game called express entry got kicked out. 50k for masters 15k for post grad times thousands of students. If you still don't get it I can't help you.
You said so many things that is hard to answer to all. Government is hiding results from us. It is not transparent. Of course that they don't have to publish any of this. When they put data out in the air through live feed so that we can all see it at any moment than I will believe that I might get invited.
When it comes to pnp and 600 points, this is another way of getting more money through this game. And again how do you know who got the nominee? Or was it 484 or 485 or 48 or 47? Only they know. Why would they publish the truth when the whole thing is not transparent.
If you think that I am crazy, please tell me how many people is in the pool at the moment and how many points they have with their names. I dare you asking your boss, this!
 

thourb

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Pitlord said:
You my friend have a great imagination or you work for CIC. I have 465 of those imaginary points. When I said money industry I meant that students are coming from overseas to spend their money on tuition and then through this lovely game called express entry got kicked out. 50k for masters 15k for post grad times thousands of students. If you still don't get it I can't help you.
Students pay for an education. Not for permanent residency. Just because you were/are a Canadian student does not automatically entitle you to permanent residency. That being said, the government are well aware that international students are a good target for immigration due to their age, education and the fact that they are already settled in Canada. It is for this reason that they have proposed changes which will benefit international students. Have a little patience and you'll no doubt hear more from Minister McCallum in around a month.

Pitlord said:
You said so many things that is hard to answer to all. Government is hiding results from us. It is not transparent. Of course that they don't have to publish any of this. When they put data out in the air through live feed so that we can all see it at any moment than I will believe that I might get invited.
It seems in your world that everything other than total disclosure of all immigration is a sign that things are not transparent. I've agreed with you to the extent that they could release more data, but if you compare what they do release to the immigration systems of many other countries, I think you'll likely find that they release quite a lot of information.

Pitlord said:
When it comes to pnp and 600 points, this is another way of getting more money through this game.
The Canadian government do not charge for PNP. Some provinces do charge, but consider that they have to employ people to actually sift through your paperwork I think that the charges are reasonable. If you take Australia as an alternative, for a single person the base application price is $3600, then on top of that you'll likely need to pay a fortune for a skills assessment amongst other things. Canadian immigration is priced much more reasonably.

Pitlord said:
And again how do you know who got the nominee? Or was it 484 or 485 or 48 or 47? Only they know. Why would they publish the truth when the whole thing is not transparent.
If you think that I am crazy, please tell me how many people is in the pool at the moment and how many points they have with their names. I dare you asking your boss, this!
Only the provinces know who they nominate. The fact that many provincial nominees claim very low levels of CRS (<400 in many cases) seems to indicate to me that CRS score isn't a factor in who they nominate. That and the fact that many provincial nominee programs still use a paper-based application process and are not linked to EE at all.
 

thourb

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ravdawg said:
Here's hoping they fix their mistake of inviting so many low-wage workers, instead of high wage earners. No matter what people say, there is absolutely no need to bring in people for 13$/hr jobs under an economic class. Absolutely none.
Although I disagree that there is no need to bring in people for $13 an hour jobs (I've read articles of places such as Tim Horton's finding it difficult to attract Canadian workers), I'd say that the whole idea of EE was to bring in the brightest and best candidates from around the world. That aim of EE is entirely defeated when you consider that 16% of invited candidates last year were cooks and fast food supervisors.

It has been noted though by the government and they will be bringing in changes to fix this. I'm sure you've already seen this, but the following presentation shows what they've been telling stakeholders that they are proposing.

https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.cerc.ca/resource/resmgr/government_relations/Express_entry_national_stake.pdf

Note that they talk about a "significant reduction" in points awarded to candidates with offers of arranged employment, which will put "significant downward pressure" on the required CRS scores to be selected for an ITA. I read this to mean a very large drop. It wouldn't surprise me if they dropped it as low (or likely even lower than) 200 CRS points.

My thinking behind this is that even if only 200 CRS points were allocated to those with job offers, any candidates with 300 CRS points would still almost certainly get an immediate ITA. 300 CRS is not a difficult score at all to obtain (1 year course at college, 1 year work exp, aged under 30, CLB7 gets you over 300) - so all of these candidates with a job offer at McDonalds would still leapfrog someone with a PhD, 3 years foreign experience, aged under 30 and CLB10 (496 points). Seems to me that reducing the CRS awarded to job offer holders to anything more than 200 would be entirely redundant as just as many low-paid, low-skilled workers would be able to get ITAs as they currently do.

**Maths below possibly not entirely correct - approximations alert**

An interesting thing that I noticed from that presentation is that CIC seem to have been a bit more transparent with their statistics than they are elsewhere - by breaking down CRS scores held by people on March 28th 2016 into 10's rather than 50's. I can only approximate this as the numbers aren't given, only a bar chart without the underlying data - but I'll give it a shot. Bear in mind that the statstics for everyone over 470 CRS reset 5 days prior to that snapshot, as on 23rd March there was a draw with a 470 cut off. It's not an especially large sample on which to base my estimates, but it's about the best I can find. I'm also using the 2015 year end report to assist with my calculations.

In my estimate, it seems that on 28/03 approximately 0.1% of the entire pool had scores in the 270s. On 3rd January there were 60,042 candidates in the pool. Assuming that the numbers remain broadly stable throughout, That would mean that in that 5 day period, approximately 60 people entered the pool with a score in the 470s. The number of people in the 460's is broadly similar, but the number of people who entered the pool in the 480's appears to be around a quarter of the number. Let's be generous and assume half so perhaps only 30 people.

There have been no draws below 470 since April 20th and since then there have been 176 days. On that basis I can approximate that there are 1056 people currently backlogged in the 480s (likely between 480 and 481) and 2112 people with scores in the 470s. That analysis puts away any suggestions that there are thousands of people waiting in the 480s like some are suggesting on here. A very small percentage seem to get that high a score. The difficulty is (and always has been) that with relatively modestly sized draws where half of the draw goes to those with PNP or LMIA there are few places which can be allocated to those based solely on CRS. I'm optimistic that when they change the points given for LMIAs that we will see a reasonable drop in the required CRS score.
 

Sluffy

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Well, the target for 2015 was 300K immigrants overall and according to the stats and articles 321K was admitted - that is a bit more than planned.

According to the stats also in Q1-Q2 2016 they have already admitted 52K for economic immigrants - and target was 58.4
The draws were small just to clear PNPs based on their own quota of 48K and the small % of high-score FSW/ CEC to fit this space between 52K ad 58.4K.

Due to 2016 quotas were announced in March 2016 instead of November 2015, CIC used 2015 quotas to issue ITAs on Nov 2015-Feb 2016 - and this number was larger than really needed.
Now they don't want to take a risk and make large draws for FSW at the expense of 2017 quotas.

So until new quotas for 2017 announced in November, noone is likely to make any guess on the size of draws