How to Avoid being Disqualified after you receive your ITA
Posted on 25/09/2023
When you receive your ITA – Invitation to Appy – to Express Entry you have good reason to celebrate as you’re one step closer to your goal of a PR visa and a plane ticket to Canada. However, caution is sometimes in order even when you get your ITA, despite the fact that you’ve been selected from your pool of candidates in Express Entry.
Let’s find out why.
The key is that you have to ensure that you still qualify as a candidate when you then submit your electronic Application for Permanent Residence, or e-APR. This is because certain factors that make up your profile at Express Entry and your CRS score can change in the period between your ITA and when you submit your e-APR. In fact, immigration officers at IRCC are trained to look for any changes in your information and CRS score between the date your ITA is received and the date you submit your e-APR. If those changes are negative – they cause your CRS points to fall, for example, or cause you to no longer meet the Minimum Entry Criteria (MEC) – then your application may be refused.
So, what can change? Here are some typical changes that could result in your application being refused:
- If the date of your last Educational Credential Assessment becomes 5 years in the period between your ITA and e-APR, your ECA is no longer valid and your education points resulting from that or those ECA(s) may be deducted.
- If your Designated Learning Institution (DLI) is found to be ineligible to grant CRS points for additional factors, those points may be deducted from your CRS total.
- If you have a child born during the period, your settlement funds requirements will go up according to the minimum income table used by IRCC. As a result, you will have to prove you have the additional savings to meet the new higher requirement or you may no longer qualify for a PR visa.
- If your work experience is found to be non-paid and/or from an ineligible employer, you may be found to no longer qualify for your ITA.
However, you will be granted an exemption from any point deduction if your birthday falls between the date of your ITA and the date of your e-APR if you reach the age of 30 or above.
If any and all deductions applied by IRCC officers result in your CRS total being less than the lowest-ranked score in your round of invitations then you will no longer be qualified, and your application will be rejected.
How do you avoid this roller-coaster which ends in rejection and disappointment?
Unfortunately, there is no magic trick or shortcut. The remedy is to avoid short cuts that seem too good to be true, because they may very well come back to haunt you in the end. Here are some ways to help avoid suddenly finding out that you in fact don’t qualify for a PR visa to Canada.
An Express Entry application is really a project lasting many months that you have to manage – involving consultants and institutions and a number of demanding requirements. It’s not easy, and it’s not meant to be easy, so being thorough and mindful of important dates is vital.
Here’s a flow chart to show a possible approach to managing your requirements in such a way that you avoid being disqualified between the date of your ITA and when you submit your e-APR:
Here are some more tips:
- Go through all your required documents and note down the expiry date – if any – for each of them. This is true of language tests, ECA’s, certificates, eligibility periods for certain programs, etc.
- Check with your consultant and at IRCC’s pages as well in forums on processing times. Specifically, how long will it take between your submission of your profile to Express Entry and your ITA?
- Ensure you have a buffer period of at least a couple of months for all your required documents that have an expiry date. A good way to ensure this is to not waste any time once you have all your required documents. Upload them to Express Entry as soon as possible.
Will these tips absolutely guarantee you never face becoming disqualified between your ITA and your e-APR? No, but if you treat your Express Entry application as a project and keep up to date with your personal information and try to schedule your process as shown above, it will definitely help you avoid these types of problems.
Posted in Tips and tagged Express Entry
