Every number on this site, and where it came from.

IRCC publishes every Express Entry round as structured data, so these figures are never typed by hand. A scheduled job reads the feed every morning; when a number moves it commits the change, which redeploys the site. The date above is when the figures last actually moved, not when we last looked — a run that finds nothing new leaves the file untouched rather than restamping it, so this date stays honest.

60 rounds since Jan 1, 2026, from IRCC Express Entry rounds of invitations (open data). 449 rounds in the full feed.

These live on ordinary government web pages, so a person reads them and records the date. A daily job re-checks that each figure is still on the page it cites and raises a flag when one is not — but it never edits a figure itself. A scraper that silently rewrote a fee after a layout change would be worse than a stale number, because the stale number was at least confirmed once.

Our estimates

Nobody publishes how long it takes to get from landing as a student to holding permanent residence. It is the most useful number a prospective migrant can have and the easiest to state dishonestly, so here is every one of ours with the reasoning attached. Disagree with them — that is what showing the reasoning is for.

• Canada

  3–5 years

  Two years of study, one to two years of skilled work on the permit to reach the Canadian Experience Class or a provincial stream, then processing. The points system is transparent and you can compute your own position, which is why it is the most plannable of the major destinations.

• United States

  12–25 years

  This is the honest number for an Indian national on the ordinary employment route and it is the most important fact on this page. EB-2 and EB-3 priority dates for India run more than a decade behind, and the per-country cap means the queue does not clear. EB-1A and EB-2 National Interest Waiver bypass it and can complete in three to six years, but they require a genuinely exceptional record — not a good one.

• United Kingdom

  6–10 years

  A one-year master's, then the Graduate Route, then a Skilled Worker sponsorship, then qualifying residence toward settlement. Recent policy has moved consistently in one direction — shorter post-study rights and longer settlement periods — so treat the upper end of this range as the planning assumption.

• Australia

  4–7 years

  Two years of study, two to three on the graduate visa, then a points-tested or state-nominated route. Regional study and work shorten it materially; metropolitan Sydney and Melbourne lengthen it.

• Germany

  4–6 years

  Two years of study, then a job-seeking permit, then an EU Blue Card. The Blue Card reaches a settlement permit in 21 months with German at B1, or 33 months without — which is unusually fast, and is why the German route rewards learning the language more than any other on this list.

• Ireland

  6–8 years

  A one-year master's, a graduate permission, then a Critical Skills Employment Permit — which reaches Stamp 4 after two years, and five years of reckonable residence opens citizenship. The Critical Skills permit is the pivot, and it is gated on salary rather than points.

• New Zealand

  4–6 years

  Study, then a post-study work visa, then the Skilled Migrant Category, which runs on a six-point system tied to qualifications, income and occupational registration. Smaller and less contested than the Australian pool.

• United Arab Emirates

  No estimate

  There is no permanent residence to estimate. The Golden Visa is renewable residency, not settlement, and there is no route to citizenship. It is left blank rather than filled with a number that would imply otherwise, and it is omitted from the cost-against-time chart for the same reason.

Immigration rules change without notice and are applied by officers exercising judgement. A figure correct on the date shown may not be correct on the date you read it, and meeting a published threshold is never a guarantee of an outcome. Check anything material against the source before acting on it.