100 points for both path to citizenship and family. Only Armenia has the same combination. But the door is closing.
between leaguesOn paper Canada is one of the most generous countries in our sample for people who pass selection. Express Entry grants permanent residence at once: the status does not depend on a job, a spouse gets the same status with full work rights, the family files one application and children attend state school free of charge. Citizenship comes after three years of presence, dual citizenship is allowed, and naturalisation needs only basic English or French at CLB 4 and a simple knowledge test.
Delivery is strong too. Applications are fully online, IRCC runs a public processing-time tracker and comes close to its 6-month standard. Selection, however, has become much tougher. Calculations based on IRCC data show approval rates for applicants from abroad falling from about 92% in 2022 to 69% in 2025, while for people already living in Canada they stay at 94-97%.
The real pressure falls on temporary residents. The 2026-2028 plan cuts work permits by 37% and study permits by 49%, aiming for under 5% temporary population by 2027. Since 28 May 2025 you keep your status during a renewal only if you applied before your permit expired; otherwise you get 90 days to restore it, with no right to work or study meanwhile. Since 26 March 2026 Bill C-12 allows the government to cancel or suspend entire classes of documents, including permanent residence visas, and to end processing of applications already filed, with no transitional rules. In March 2025 job-offer points were also removed from profiles already sitting in the pool.
Once you hold permanent residence, little of this touches you. The law allows the status to be lost on only four grounds: becoming a citizen, failing the residency obligation, an enforceable removal order or cessation of refugee protection. Losing your job has no effect on it.
Daily life has little friction. The right to a bank account is set in law, there is no address registration, and language classes are free and voluntary. The weak spot is credential recognition: selection requires a paid assessment of your education, and doctors and engineers can spend years getting licensed.
The index score ignores nationality. This is what changes for citizens of specific countries.
No visa needed to enter. Under CUSMA, US citizens in listed professions get a work permit without a labour market test (LMIA), skipping the main barrier to being hired in Canada. The right is tied to citizenship: US permanent residents cannot use it.
The same CUSMA advantage: a work permit for listed professions without a labour market test.
A visitor visa is required to travel. The special CUAET travel program has ended, and the permanent residence pathway for family members of Canadians closed to new applications on 22 October 2024. Open work permits issued under the Ukrainian measures can be extended if you apply by 31 March 2027. Express Entry is open on the general terms.
When we checked on 9 August 2026 we found no direct nationality restrictions in Express Entry: nationality is not part of the selection points. A visitor visa is required to travel to Canada.
The place interval 4-10 shows where the country lands when the data is nudged and the index is recalculated. One place of difference in the table means nothing; a difference of a league means something.
Between leaguesThe league holds in fewer than half of the recalculations. Read this country as sitting between two leagues, not as a member of the upper one.
The thin mark on each bar is the average across 97 countries
The strongest category here is Path to citizenship: 100 out of 100, against a 97-state average of 57.1. The weakest is Access to entry: 56 against 65.7. Above the world average: 6 out of 7.
Express Entry leads straight to permanent residence, skipping the intermediate work visa, and few places are built that way. The right to a bank account is written into law, school is free, there are no integration exams, and language courses are free and voluntary.
DownsideAccess to entry scores 56, and it is falling. Work permit issuance is down 37% for 2026 and study permits down 49%, with a moratorium on low-paid streams. Twice in 24 months the rules changed retroactively: in March 2025 bonus points for a job offer were removed, including for people who had already filed a profile, and in March 2026 law C-12 came into force, giving the cabinet the power to cancel and suspend applications.
All 97 states are calculated for one applicant: 35 years old, income of $2,500 and $3,856 a month before tax, passport not counted, the most accessible route that is actually in use.
Your passport, your income and your family do not change the table. They change which of its lines apply to you. A different income makes entry read differently, a family makes the family category read differently, and your passport makes everything read differently.
IRCC's standard is 6 months from a complete application. In July 2026 applications from inside Canada took about 6 months and from abroad about 7; the time spent waiting for an invitation in the pool is not included.
Yes. A job offer is not required for Express Entry: selection is by points, and the Federal Skilled Worker program can be filed from abroad without one. Since March 2025 a job offer earns no extra points.
IRCC fees since 30 April 2026: CAD 990 processing and CAD 600 right of permanent residence per adult, CAD 270 per child. A family of three pays CAD 3,450 once, with no annual fees; separately you must show settlement funds of about C$15,263 for one person.
Only on four grounds set in law: becoming a citizen, failing the residency obligation, an enforceable removal order or cessation of refugee protection. Losing your job does not affect the status.
Permanent residence comes at once, citizenship after 1,095 days of physical presence in the last five years. Dual citizenship is allowed; applicants aged 18-54 need CLB 4 language and a knowledge test.
Permanent residents get nearly full rights from day one: work without ties, family, fast citizenship. Canada has grown cooler towards temporary residents and applicants from abroad: quotas are shrinking, selection is stricter and Bill C-12 allows rules to change for applications already filed.
97 states, 26 indicators, seven categories, 2,522 scores. Every score has a source and a source class: primary means the texts of laws and government portals; reliable secondary means reports by international organisations, tax reviews by audit firms and specialist legal publications; weak means community posts and single secondary sources. The classes add up to a confidence level for the country, and a country with low confidence gets neither a score nor a place.
Every indicator is scored against a fixed ruler, not against its neighbours. Adding new countries therefore does not move the old ones, and a change in a score means a change in policy and nothing else.
A high place does not mean a good country. It means one thing: the state machine treats newcomers predictably and by the rules. Living there may be expensive, dull or hot; that is not our question.
Checked 01/10/2026. Facts come from the country's index card and official websites.
We make mistakes and we will go on making them: policy changes faster than any database. Our answer is not a pose of infallibility but a visible trail of corrections. Every correction is published: what it was, what it became, the source and the reason for the error. The corrections log opens with the second issue, together with the first block of changes.