In its recent draw held on February 20, the Government of Canada invited 3,350 candidates to apply for Canadian permanent residence. Despite the lower number of invitations, this year continues to be the biggest start to a year in the Express Entry system’s five-year history. The three weeks gap from the previous draw held on January 30th, combined to a small drop of the number of issued invitation make the minimum Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) score in this round rises 19 points. All candidates who submitted their profile before the tie-break December 6, 2018 at 12:38:11 UTC, with CRS score above 457 received and ITA in this invitation round.

The Express Entry Annual Target for this year is 81,400 invitations. So far, 14,500 ITAs were issued by IRCC. Keep in mind that there are several ways for candidates to improve their scores: one of them is including a provincial nomination that results in 600 additional CRS points. By the way, linking Express Entry and Provincial Nominee Programs (PNPs) have been extremely active and innovative in 2018.