Canada Invites 545 PNP Candidates in the Latest Express Entry Draw

In the latest Express Entry draw held on May 11, Canada invited 545 PNP candidates to apply for permanent residence. All the invited applicants had a PNP (Provincial Nominee Program) nomination with a minimum Comprehensive Ranking System score of 753. The CRS score was relatively higher because the candidate automatically gets 600 points that are added to their score after receiving a provincial nomination. Without provincial nomination, the lowest score was 172.

In this draw, Candidates who had scored the lowest-eligible points were only invited if they had submitted their profiles to the Express Entry pool before December 15, 2021, at 20:32:57 UTC. In the last Express Entry draw, IRCC invited 829 candidates with a minimum score of 772.

IRCC to Resume FSWP and CEC Draws in July

On April 22, Canada’s Immigration Minister Sean Fraser announced to resume Express Entry invitations for Federal Skilled Worker Program and Canadian Experience Class candidates by early July 2022. The minister also stated that the majority of the latest Express Entry applications will be processed within a six-month service standard.

Certainly, this is a piece of great news for anyone who has been looking to move to Canada through FSWP and CEC pathways. Due to the pandemic, IRCC paused FSWP since December 2020, while draws for CEC candidates have been paused since September 2021. The processing times for these programs are also currently more than six months. Currently, IRCC implemented the temporary interruption to process highly skilled applications waiting in a queue to ease the Express Entry backlog caused by the pandemic.

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Key Highlights of the Announcement

• Express Entry invitations to FSWP, CEC, and FSTP to resume by July.
• The major chunk of new Express Entry applications will get back to the standard six-month processing time.
• Expiring PGWP between January and December 2022 will qualify for an additional open work permit of up to 18 months.
• Candidates will not be required to remain in Canada throughout the entire time of the application process.
• Candidates would get a work permit with validity until December 2024 while they wait for their permanent residence application to be processed.
• To support family reunification, the immediate family members included in a principal applicant’s PR application who are outside of Canada will be qualified to get an open work permit.