Originally Posted by ph2020

So last night I received a notification saying my CIC account was updated. I saw it this morning, noticed the application number and realised it's for my IEC application which I submitted a month ago as a backup, but didn't think much of it since there was only a few spots left vs the thousands of people in the pool. I presumed the message was to tell me that the season is over and all invites have been sent out.. but to my shock I actually received an ItA! I checked their quota page and they doubled the quota for the UK from 5,000 to 10,000, and everyone in the pool gets an invite! In fact there are far less people in the pool than available spaces now. Tell all your friends! The funny thing is I was going to withdraw my IEC application from my CIC profile the other day because it was useless.. thank god I didn't!

I received an IEC ItA this time last year but I rejected it because I was about to start a new job. Now I have a nice backup in case PR doesn't work out for some reason.. in fact getting a year of Canadian experience will get me a nice chunk of PR points.

I will probably go through with it since I have a year to enter Canada, so it's a great backup :-)

Originally Posted by christmasoompa

Congrats! Absolutely do use it, it's also a good way to test life in Canada out before committing thousands on a PR app.

Good luck.