Express Entry: Indians receive most ITAs, with Nigeria in second

(Check out our complete overview of the official 2019 Express Entry Report here.)

These figures are according to the 2019 Express Entry Year-End Report, which was released by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) in June, 2020.

According to the report, 85,300 Invitations to Apply were issued in 2019, with 40,275 of those ITAs going to Express Entry candidates with Indian citizenship. Meanwhile, 5,886 ITAs were issued to citizens of Nigeria, and another 5,668 issued to citizens of China, equal to approximately seven percent of total ITAs, respectively.

Indian, Chinese, and Nigerian citizens also represented the top three countries of citizenship to receive ITAs through Express Entry in 2018. All three countries maintained approximately the same proportion of ITAs from 2018 to 2019. Indians edged up one percentage point from 46 to 47 percent, while Nigerians narrowly edged out China for the number two spot, leap-frogging forward from the previous year. Many Indian citizens have experience in specific tech and IT occupations, and it’s no wonder that when one looks at the most common occupations among invitations in 2019, it is those occupations that dominate.

Receiving an Invitation to Apply through Express Entry allows a candidate to submit an official application for Canadian permanent resident status. ITAs are issued to candidates in the Express Entry pool through Express Entry draws which occur every few weeks.

The growth of Express Entry is understandable, considering Canada has recently been aiming to increase the number of immigrants admitted to the country annually. In Canada’s most recent Immigration Levels Plan, the government announced plans to welcome more than 1 million new permanent residents between 2020 and 2022.

However, the impacts of the coronavirus on global migration are expected to dramatically alter Canadian immigration figures for the year of 2020, so results from next year’s report may present a radically different dataset.

Express Entry 2019 Report: What you need to know

The 2019 Express Entry Year-End Report reviews much of the available data about the associated programs, above and beyond the number of invitations and admissions we outlined above.

We’ve taken the time to create summaries of the biggest findings in the report.

Check out the following summaries to learn more about the topics you care about most:

• Invitations by occupation
• Invitations by program
• Invitations by country of residence
• Which provinces are Express Entry newcomers moving to?
• Updated processing times for Express Entry applications

Be sure to keep up to date on the latest Express Entry draw information by checking back for our latest updates.

If you want to learn whether Express Entry is a good option for you, we encourage you to begin by signing up for our Express Entry Roadmap. This is a free email-education service designed to give you the foundation of knowledge necessary to understand your chances through Express Entry.