In a comprehensive and informative report, Immigration, Citizenship and Refugees Canada (IRCC, formerly known as CIC) has provided valuable insights on the first 12 months of theExpress Entry selection system for immigration to Canada, which came into operation on January 1, 2015.

The end-of-year report provides a range of highly useful information for Express Entry candidates for immigration to Canada. The data given in the report covers the entirety of 2015, encompassing the first 23 draws (also known as rounds of invitations), while also providing a snapshot of the composition of the pool taken from a data extract on January 3, 2016. CICNews.com has published a series of articles analyzing this report. In addition to this article, there are also articles covering Canadian provinces and the Comprehensive Ranking System.

Over the course of 2015, a total of 31,063 Invitations to Apply (ITAs) were issued to individuals around the world looking to immigrate to Canada. Through the report, we learned the following:

• Many candidates in IT occupations have been issued ITAs, while individuals working in the food service industry have also fared well.
• The majority of candidates issued ITAs were residing in Canada.
• More than half of all invited candidates were nationals of one of the following five countries: India, Philippines, China, the U.K., and Ireland.
• IRCC has stated that ‘Future invitation rounds from the Express Entry pool will become the main source of applications to meet annual immigration levels targets for certain economic immigration programs under the Express Entry system as the older inventories are reduced.’

Focus on occupations

In the run-up to the launch of Express Entry, the government of Canada stated that the new system would ensure that Canada’s economic and labour market needs are met. For the Express Entry system, as compared with previous systems, intake caps for specific occupations were done away with.

Express Entry is intended to be a flexible system that is more responsive to the immediate needs of Canadian employers and provinces. As such, eligible candidates who obtain a qualifying job offer (supported by a Labour Market Impact Assessment) or provincial nomination certificate are issued an ITA at a subsequent draw from the pool, regardless of their occupation. It should be noted, however, that a job offer is not required in order for a candidate to receive an ITA. Indeed, at least 40% of all ITAs issued in 2015 were issued to candidates who did not have a job offer.