Minimum CRS Lowered For Canada Immigration

Posted by Global Tree on May 4th, 2019

The Government of Canada has invited 3,350 candidates who applied for Canada immigration through the Express Entry system to apply for permanent residence in Canada. The invitations were issued after a draw which was held on the 1^st of May.

Minimum CRS Falls to New Low

The minimum cut-off for the CRS score, which would entitle a person to receive an ITA from the Canadian government was set at 450 in the latest draw, which was a whole point lower than the  minimum cut off score, set for the preceding draw, which was held on April 17, and saw a minimum CRS of 451 points

This draw exemplifies the fourth time in a row, that the cut-off score for Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) has been lowered since the draw held on February 20. The Express Entry system is a federal system for Canada immigration that aims to manage the vast pool of candidates who apply for Canada PR under the Federal Skilled Trades Class, Federal Skilled Worker Class, and Canadian Experience Class, which constitute three of Canada’s significant economic immigration categories and together account for the top share of immigrants in the economic class every year.

Candidates who have proven their eligibility for these categories are entered into the pool for Express Entry. Every candidate is assigned a Comprehensive ranking score, or CRS based on a plethora of factors which include education, skilled work experience age, and proficiency in English and/or French. Out of these, only the candidates who have achieved a CRS score that is equal to or higher than the minimum cut off CRS are invited to apply for permanent residence.

The draw that was conducted this week has brought the total number of ITAs or Invitations to Apply that were issued  in the year 2019 to Express Entry candidates to a little over 31,000, which has placed the ITAs issued for this year slightly ahead of the number of ITAs issued for the corresponding period in the previous year.

It seems likely that the ITAs issued for this year may well exceed the record set last year by the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), which saw a whopping 89,800 invitations that were issued in a one year.

The trend of increasing number of invitations being issued may well reflect the increasing targets for  admissions, which the government aims to gather through the three federally run Canada Express Entry programs, which are  managed by the IRCC and are expected to increase every year over the next three years - between 2019 and 2021.

The IRCC used a tie-break in the latest draw to decide between candidates who scored the same CRS with a cut-off date and timestamp of 12:27:07 UTC. The tie break essentially means that all the candidates who have a CRS score of equal to or more than 450, and who have entered their application in the Express Entry system on or before this particular time stamp would receive an ITA. It is quite likely that the minimum score for CRS may see further reductions if the frequency of draws held by the IRCC increases.