An applicant wanted to drop their Canadian work experience from their Express Entry profile — it raised their CRS just enough to miss a lower OINP cut-off band, but not enough for a direct invitation. Was excluding it misrepresentation? The thread's guidance:
- You don't have to claim points for every job — but you must still disclose it. The key advice: move the experience to your personal history section instead of the work history section. Personal history requires listing everything you've done in the last 10 years; claiming points is optional. Disclosed-but-unclaimed experience is not misrepresentation, whereas simply omitting it from the application entirely would be.
- Understand the knock-on effects before you do it. Members pushed back with two important checks: (a) if you're counting on OINP, verify whether the stream you're targeting is NOC/occupation-based or requires current Canadian experience — one member believed the targeted stream was NOC-based and didn't require it; (b) if removing Canadian experience is what keeps you eligible under CEC in the first place, you can't have it both ways — CEC eligibility itself requires the Canadian experience to be listed as work experience.
- The takeaway: deliberately lowering CRS by not claiming points is a known, legitimate strategy for targeted provincial draws, but it must be done by disclosing the experience under personal history, and only after confirming your program eligibility (CEC vs FSW, OINP stream rules) still holds without those claimed points.