776 Invitations to apply for Canadian Immigration have been issued as first round of newly introduced Express Entry Process.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) has conducted the first draw from the Express Entry pool. CIC had previously announced that the top ranked Express Entry candidates would be invited to apply for Canadian permanent residence as a result of a draw that would occur during the final week of January.

So the draw was done on last day of January. 776 candidate were selected, each of which had CRS (Comprehensive Ranking System) of 886. Since this was the first draw, only individuals who were highly ranked and had a valid job offer or provincial nomination were selected. In coming months we will see more candidates with wider selection and less points.

This round of invitations included Express Entry candidates from the Federal Skilled Worker Program, Federal Skilled Trades Program, Canadian Experience Class and Provincial Nominee Program.

Now if you are one of those lucky 776 then you probably already know this but let me re iterate it. Please keep in mind that receiving an invitation doesn’t mean you have been accepted already. It just means that you have been given an opportunity to send your completed application along with all the required documents to Canadian Immigration department for Canadian Permanent Residency. You are given a period of 60 days only.

According to CIC

“Once candidates have been invited to apply for permanent residence, they will need to submit a complete application and will have to meet eligibility and admissibility requirements such as health and security checks. Candidates will have up to 60 days to submit their application online.”

I can’t emphasize enough on having all the documents ready and application up to date so that when you get an invitation you can send it right away and know that you have included all the required documents. Now that this process has started, it is promising to be faster and you will need to keep up in order to take advantage of it.

This is positive news for people currently with job offers or provincial nominations, but I would encourage any eligible candidates to create their Express Entry profiles so that they may take advantage of this potential opportunity.