Permanent Residence in Canada with Express Entry (outside of Quebec)

Regular selection of candidates

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) regularly selects candidates from the applicant pool by choosing the profiles with the most points in the permanent residence category.

Since January 2015, these selections have usually taken place about every 2-3 weeks. In the first few weeks, only profiles which held a valid job offer or a selection certificate from a province were chosen (holding a valid job offer earned 600 points at that time…). But since then, newly selected candidates do not necessarily need to have either of these (although it is clearly an advantage if you do).

• Since the first selections, the lowest score to have received an invitation to apply was 415 points for the Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSWP) and the Canadian Experience Class (CEC).
• However, there may be lower scoring selections for the Federal Skilled Trades Program (FSTP). To give an example, some candidates with a total score between 199 and 332 received an invitation during the selection process for this category.

To find out the number of selected candidates and the threshold of points required for the latest selections, you can take a look at this IRCC page.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has indicated that prior to each selection, the time and date of the selection, the number of applicants who will be invited to apply for permanent residence, and the immigration program(s) for which the selection will take place will be posted on the immigration site. Right from the start, selections have usually taken place at night from Friday to Saturday. You can find a list of the latest selections on the Canadian authorities site.

Furthermore, the Canadian authorities regularly update a table with the number of candidates in the Express Entry applicant pool and their scores.