Express Entry Draw: CRS score drops to 397 for PR Visa

Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) held an unusual express entry draw with the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) score cut-off set at 397 points.

We haven't seen an Express Entry draw with such a low scoring requirement since the historic February 13 draw where the score cutoff was only 75.

1,842 applicants were invited who may be eligible for permanent residence under the Canadian Experience Class (CEC).

IRCC has published the cut-off time for the tie-break rule, by administrative requirements. This does not necessarily mean that there was substantive equality. Immigrants who have submitted their profile in the express entry pool by April 24, 2021, at 12:09:24 UTC with the minimum CRS score of 397 points were invited in the latest round of invitations.

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To date, 68,317 applicants have been invited in 2021. These many invitations issued are mainly because of larger draws held, sometimes inviting 6,000 immigrants in a single draw. In addition, on February 13, IRCC invited every CEC candidate to apply for permanent residence.

To meet their target of 401,000 new immigrants despite the travel restrictions, Canada is targeting immigrants who are currently living in Canada with a provincial nomination or have applied for PR Visa as CEC candidates.

These program-specific express entry draws for CEC and PNP candidates have different CRS score cut-offs. CEC-specific draws have lower CRS score requirements mainly because they don’t compete with each other for invitations. As a result, it allows IRCC to have larger draws with low CRS scores requirement. The last draw for the CEC only required applicants to have a score of 401.

Express Entry candidates with a provincial nomination get an extra 600 CRS points.