Kareem El-Assal - 03 November, 2020
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) missed its October 28, 2020 Express Entry draw due to recent changes it made to the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS).
Last Tuesday, IRCC announced French-speaking Express Entry candidates would obtain more CRS points. The purpose of the change is to help Canada achieve its Francophone immigration goal. Canada wants Francophones to make up 4.4 per cent of all new immigrants arriving to provinces and territories outside of Quebec by 2023.
The following day, on Wednesday, Express Entry hopefuls were awaiting the latest draw results. The draw did not take place, according to IRCC, because it needs time to update the CRS scores of all candidates in the Express Entry pool. IRCC says this process should be completed by next week.
Once the update has been completed, IRCC is likely to return to its bi-weekly Express Entry draws. In fact, IRCC has already committed to bringing Express Entry back to normal as quickly as possible when it announced its historic Immigration Levels Plan 2021-2023 on Friday. Canada will now aim to welcome over 400,000 immigrants per year with an average of 110,000 arriving annually under Express Entry between 2021 and 2023.
Express Entry is the application management system used for these three federal skilled worker programs:: Federal Skilled Worker Program, Federal Skilled Trades Program, and Canadian Experience Class.
Candidates in the Express Entry pool receive a CRS score based on their human capital criteria. Every two weeks, IRCC invites the highest-ranking candidates to apply for permanent residence. IRCC has issued more invitations in 2020 than at the same period since Express Entry launched in 2015. So far, 82,850 invitations have gone out this year and Canada is set to surpass 100,000 invitations by the end of this year.
The number of invitations will only rise as Canada targets 400,000 newcomer arrivals per year under its new Immigration Levels Plan 2021-2023.
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