Canada invites 6,000 Express Entry CEC candidates in new draw

Canada held an Express Entry draw on June 24, inviting 6,000 Canadian Experience Class (CEC) candidates.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) invited 6,000 CEC candidates to apply for permanent residence. Candidates needed to meet the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) requirement of 357.

This CRS score is the second lowest ever for a CEC-only draw. This draw comes after the record-breaking draw on February 13 with a CRS minimum score of 75. There seems to be a downward trend in CEC-only draws.

CEC candidates must have a minimum of one year of Canadian work experience in a skilled occupation. As well, candidates should have at least an intermediate level of either French or English.

IRCC published a cut-off time for the tie-break rule as an administrative requirement. The IRCC must publish the cut-off time regardless of whether there was an actual tie. In this draw, candidates who had the minimum score were only invited if they submitted their Express Entry profile before February 17, 2021, at 10:15:50 UTC.

Canada has been holding CEC-and Provincial Nominee Program (PNP)-specific draws throughout the pandemic. This is because candidates are more likely to already be living in Canada. Although Canada’s travel restrictions are starting to scale back, the border is still closed to non-essential travel. As well, the flight ban from India was recently extended another month. Justin Trudeau, however, has indicated that more travel restrictions could be lifted in the coming weeks.

So far this year, IRCC has issued 88,715 Invitations to Apply (ITAs) for immigration candidates to apply for permanent residence. At this point in 2020, IRCC had only issued 46,392 ITAs to Express Entry candidates.