Towards Canadian PR - Part 1

This series of posts, written over three months, aim to capture the step by step procedure of our journey to obtaining the Canadian Permanent Residence (PR) through Federal Skilled Worker (FSW) category. I try to cover as-much-details-as-possible-yet-being-precise, in the hope that someone somewhere might find it informative, just the way we benefited from reading a lot of forums, blogs etc, back during our application time and also as a log book for future reference. We will cover the process in three parts - first part will cover the process summary till Invitation to Apply (ITA), second part covers the process of subsequent submission of Application of Permanent Residence, the third part will cover the phase between submission of PR application till getting the PR card and the final part will cover a brief summary of the expenses incurred at all the phases.

• Category
• First and foremost, the category of our application  - Federal Skilled Worker (Express Entry). 
• Eligibility assessment:
• Create a log in under CIC and assess the score and eligibility under the Comprehensive Ranking System. A few of the criteria include age (of the primary applicant), educational level (of both primary applicant and spouse), experience level as well as proving language proficiency (English and/or French).
• Once the eligibility is ascertained, the previous draws of application give an idea of the points statistics in the past rounds, to understand the chances. To fetch the maximum points, we had to provide all credentials and supporting documents for all three of us.
• Language Proficiency test:
• As part of the language proficiency test, we both appeared for IELTS. The results are valid for two years. (The IELTS results must be valid while receiving the ITA). The results were available in three weeks time. It is important to retain the hardcopy of the results mailed from IELTS, as the number mentioned in this document is needed while filling the application at CIC.
• Education Credential Assessment (ECA):
• In parallel, apply for educational credential assessment to claim points for the highest level of completed education. We used World Educational Service (WES). This was required as both of our degrees were not awarded by any Canadian institution. We had to provide
• sealed transcripts from the university, in stamped envelopes 
• copies of the degree certificates, for the highest education level. 
• cover letter explaining the documents. 
• Again, the reference numbers in the WES report (which cites the Canadian equivalent of the highest degree that we have claimed) are required while filling the application page at CIC. 
• We opted normal post for the results to be sent back to us. This is okay as WES also sends the soft copy of the report via email much ahead. The whole process of us sending the transcripts to getting the ECA report took around two months. 
• Entering the Express Entry Pool:
• With the IELTS results and the WES results at hand, we created our profile and officially joined the Express Entry pool. 
• Invitation to Apply
• At our time of application, the CRS ranking from the past round of draws were all above 450 and the recent draws were in and around 480-490. We got our Invitation to Apply (ITA) for Permanent Residence in Jan'17. Once we got ITA, we had 90 (update: as of Oct'18 it is 60) days to apply for the Permanent Residence with lot of documents and a pretty long set of checklist, which is personalized by CIC, for each application. Part-2 will cover this checklist and the process of submitting the application for PR.