On the 13th February, 2021, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) shook the Canadian Immigration industry in a never before Express Entry draw selecting over 27,000 applicants from the Express Entry pool.
The 27,332 applicants now have until the 14th May 2021 to submit a full application for permanent residence via the IRCC portal.
How did this draw change the composition of the Express Entry draw?
You would expect such a huge draw to have a big impact on the composition of the CRS distribution in the Express Entry pool. According to the IRCC, the draw has had very little effect on the current CRS composition of the pool, which likely as a result of more candidates entering the Express Entry system.
A closer look:
Reviewing the current composition of the Express Entry pool, in comparison to the composition just prior to the draw, figure 1 indicates the largest difference in the composition of the pool is for those candidates scoring between 401 and 450 CRS points, with almost 8000 less profiles within this range. In comparison, there are almost 4000 more active in the Express Entry pool with a CRS lower than 400 now than existed before the draw.
Have more people entered the pool because of this draw?
Not only was the draw on the 13th February the largest draw to date, the CRS cut off was substantially lower than any other draw. With this, it makes sense that we now see a huge increase in the amount of applicants who would have previously been deterred from entering the pool because of their CRS ranking.
On the 8th February 2021, just prior to the big draw, there were 152,814 active Express Entry profiles. On March 1st, 2021, IRCC reports 147,688 active Express Entry pool. This means that in a span of 2 weeks, over 22,000 new profiles were entered in to the pool. Prior to the ‘big draw’ on average, 3,000 new profiles were submitted to the pool per week. This average has now increased to 11,000, a 365% increase in demand for the Express Entry pool.
Lauren Boorman
