Express Entry Terms Explained: The Glossary You'll Actually Need
Home Affairs has its own alphabet soup — ID book, matric certificate, unabridged versus abridged. Express Entry has a different one, and getting it wrong costs more than a wasted trip to a branch.
The Express Entry terms explained here are the dozen you’ll actually run into in your first month of research, grouped by where they sit in the process — not the full IRCC glossary, and not padded out to look comprehensive.
Getting into the pool
NOC / TEER — the National Occupational Classification groups every job by a TEER number, 0 through 5, roughly by skill level. Most eligibility rules are keyed to TEER now rather than to a job title, so knowing your correct code matters more than knowing your job description in English.
ECA — an Educational Credential Assessment translates your degree into Canadian terms, from a designated body like WES, ICAS, IQAS or CES. It’s required for Express Entry. It is not a licence to practise your profession — that’s a separate, provincial process entirely, and conflating the two is one of the most expensive mistakes South Africans make.
CLB — the Canadian Language Benchmark scale your IELTS or CELPIP score converts to. CLB 7, the Federal Skilled Worker minimum, is IELTS General Training 6.0 across every band.
Being ranked
CRS — the Comprehensive Ranking System, the points score that decides your place in the pool. Everything else in Express Entry ultimately feeds into this one number.
The PNP nomination bonus — a provincial nomination adds a flat 600 points to your CRS. The mechanic itself hasn’t changed. What’s changed, province by province, is how hard the nomination itself is to get.
ITA — an Invitation to Apply, what a high enough CRS score in a draw earns you. An ITA is not permanent residence. It’s permission to submit the actual application.
Getting through
This part of an express entry glossary for beginners is where the immigration acronyms Canada PR paperwork actually turns real — the terms below show up on the documents themselves, well beyond forum threads.
Biometrics — fingerprints and a photo, required for most visitor visa and permanent residence applicants.
COPR — what does COPR stand for? Confirmation of Permanent Residence, the document confirming you’ve actually landed. The date on it becomes your PR start date, which matters later for domestic university tuition and for citizenship day-counting.
The difference between ITA and COPR, in one line: an ITA lets you apply; a COPR confirms you’ve been granted status and landed. Months, sometimes longer, usually separate the two.
LMIA — a Labour Market Impact Assessment, normally required before a Canadian employer can hire a foreign worker. Some routes, like the Atlantic Immigration Program and the rural community pilots, are explicitly LMIA-exempt.
PGWP — a Post-Graduation Work Permit. Not every programme at a genuine, designated institution qualifies for one, even when the institution itself is fully legitimate — check the specific programme as carefully as the school.
DLI — a Designated Learning Institution, a school approved to host international students. Every primary and secondary school qualifies automatically; post-secondary institutions have to be checked individually.
If you’ve seen “e-APR” in IRCC correspondence and wondered what does e-APR mean — treat it as IRCC’s own shorthand for the electronic permanent residence application itself — the one you already submitted, under a different label.
We keep adding to this list as new acronyms turn up in reader questions — Cape2Canada’s own guides use the same terms defined here, so once this vocabulary sticks, the rest reads a lot faster.