John was applying for Express Entry under the Canadian Experience Class. He has it all: a Canadian education, a one year of in-Canada work experience, and decent IELTS score. On the face of it all he should have scored high on the Comprehensive Ranking Scale to be selected to apply for permanent residence.
John read all the instruction on the Immigration Canada website about the Express Entry process, and successfully completed his Express Entry profile. However, the score that he received after completing him shocked him – he was not likely to be selected in the next round of invitation. It was too low. John went back into his profile to double check his answers. All looked right and he did not find any mistakes in his answers. He was disappointed. After working so hard to stay in Canada it seemed that he would need to find another immigration program for himself.
John came to Legally Canadian so we could assess his alternative immigration options. When we looked at his documents we could not understand why with his qualifications he was scoring so low in the Express Entry grid. We asked John to give us access to his Express Entry online profile to review his application. Lo and behold, as we went through his answers in the application we found that he put a check mark on a question that caused his score to drop. John simply misunderstood what the questions was asking ( a very common mistake for the Express Entry applicants) and answered it incorrectly. By removing this check mark John’s score jumped additional 50 points up making him shoe in for the next Express Entry draw.
So what happened next?
John was selected to apply for Permanent Residence under the Canadian Experience Class stream the next week. He retained us to review his PR application and his documentation before submitting it. He is now a Permanent Resident of Canada.