Apply for permanent residence

If we invite you to apply for permanent residence, you’ll get a message in your account that includes

• which program you’re invited to apply for
• the next steps you should take

Once you’re invited, you have 60 calendar days to apply for permanent residence online.

1. Check the program requirements

Make sure you’re eligible for the program you’re invited to apply for.

By checking the program’s eligibility requirements you‘ll be

• more prepared to apply
• able to decide if you should accept the invitation to apply

If your personal situation has changed

If your situation (or that of your spouse or partner) has changed, you should recalculate your score before applying for permanent residence online.

If your new score is less than the lowest score allowed in your round of invitations, you should decline the invitation. If you decide to apply anyway, we may

• refuse your application
• not refund your application fee

Some examples of changes that could lower your score include

• you no longer have a valid job offer
• you no longer have a provincial nomination
• your language test scores
  • have expired
  • are lower after you retested

2. Apply for permanent residence

Follow our instructions to apply for permanent residence through Express Entry.

You’ll need to pay

• the processing fee
• biometric fees

You must apply within 60 calendar days. If you don’t apply within that time (and you don’t decline the invitation)

• the invitation will expire and
• we’ll remove your profile from the pool

If we remove you from the pool, to be considered in future rounds of invitations, you’ll have to

• fill out and submit a new Express Entry profile
• meet the eligibility requirements
• be accepted into the pool again

• If you decline an invitation to apply

  If you decline an invitation, we’ll put you back into the Express Entry pool of candidates. We’ll consider your profile in future rounds of invitations if you’re still eligible.

  The cut-off score varies from round to round. If your score isn’t high enough, we might not invite you to apply again. In some cases, to be invited to apply again you may need to

  • improve your score
  • update your Express Entry profile

  There’s no guarantee we’ll invite you to apply again.

  Declining an invitation won’t affect whether or not we invite you to apply again later (when we put you back into the pool).