For Your Information
Migrant Care Workers Saddled with Endemic Immigration Backlogs
In the December 2023 Report of the House of Commons' Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration (CIMM), entitled "In Demand Yet Unprocessed: Endemic Immigration Backlog", the section 'Caregivers' highlights issues that witnesses brought to its attention.
"Caregivers with active applications have applied under several iterations of the caregiver program," the document reads. The Home Child Care Provider (HCCP) Pilot and the Home Support Worker Pilot (HSWP) programs "allow qualified caregivers and their family members to come to Canada to work with the goal of becoming permanent residents. Those who meet the requirements are given an open work permit for a specific occupation but must acquire 12 months of work experience to be eligible for permanent residence. These pilot programs replaced the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP), which ended November 2014, the Caring for People with High Medical Needs and the Caring for Children programs, which ended June 2019, and the transition program, named the Interim Pathway for Caregivers, which ran intermittently from March to June, and then July to October, 2019."
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) continues to process applications that were submitted before each program ended, the report goes on to inform. "In the case of the LCP, applicants can also make new applications if they have two years of related work experience, and are already working in Canada under an LCP work permit or were approved for their first LCP work permit based on a labour market impact assessment submitted on or before November 30, 2014.
The document notes that, "As of 31 December 2021, some applications remained to be finalized under all six caregiver programs."
The report then quotes one witness about the backlogs faced by the various cohorts of caregivers. She said "I have clients who have been under the [Live-in Caregiver program] since 2015 and are still waiting for the approval of PR [permanent residence]. Some of those who applied in 2017 and 2018 applied under humanitarian and compassionate grounds because they could not find any way to achieve PR. ... I still have clients who applied in 2018 and 2019 during the introduction of the interim or new program. They still don't have an AOR [acknowledgement of receipt] at this time.
"She explained that the delays have eliminated the chance for these applicants who have applied for PR to obtain it since the program requires 24 months of work in a 36-month period, and the delays exceed this period."
Caregiver Stream
The report continues: "[A]nother stream that has been significantly impacted by backlogs throughout the pandemic is the caregiver stream, whose processing has been left practically dormant." One witness, an immigration lawyer, "testified that the applications for caregivers have not been processed since the program opened in 2019", while a second witness "noted that the processing time for the two caregiver pilot programs has never been updated."
Recommendations offered by witnesses who spoke to the Committee included:
- "regularization for all migrant workers and caregivers. Create a unique humanitarian scheme where caregivers or migrant workers who might not be eligible can apply for permanent residency. Reduce the demands and create an amnesty program for them;
- "that IRCC remove the cap per program for the home support and home child care programs, or at least increase the number of PR applications for caregivers within the immigration levels."
This type of regularization, one witness suggested, is not without precedent, saying that "if there are caregivers who are sitting in the system for a long time, then one thing the government should at least consider is whether to just push them through. Maybe relax the eligibility a little bit. Maybe relax the checking a little bit. Make sure they're admissible and just push them through.
"It would be pretty easy. All they would have to do is use section 25 of the act [Immigration and Refugee Protection Act], the [humanitarian and compassionate] provision, to make a policy and just say we're going to waive certain things for a specific period of time; we're going to give them a bit of a pass on certain requirements.
"It's not hard to do. They don't even have to change the law. They just have to make the policy.""
Based on this testimony, the CIMM made the following three recommendations in its report:
Temporary Public Policy on Regularization
– "That Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada create a temporary public policy to regularize undocumented people and temporary foreign workers in Canada, including caregivers who have worked in Canada to obtain permanent residence, and where the backlog has directly impacted their lives and livelihood."
Creation of Permanent Residence Portal for Caregivers
- "That Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada create a specific permanent residence portal for the caregiver programs."
Removing Barriers for Home Support Workers, Home Child Care Providers and Caregivers
- "That Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada remove the cap per program for the Home Support and Home Child Care Provider Pilots, and remove the two year work experience requirement for the Live-in Caregiver Program."
This article was published in
Volume 54 Number 20 - March 2024
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2024/Articles/MS542013.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca