Foreign caregivers given new path to residency

Under pilot program, workers will be able to bring families to Canada

Foreign caregivers will no longer have to leave their families behind, and will be preapproved for permanent residency in Canada, under two new pilot programs announced by the federal government Saturday.

The government will now assess caregivers for permanent residency before they are allowed to come to Canada — as opposed to having them apply after two years of working here — and if approved, they will receive an occupation-specific work permit that will allow them to change employers without having to apply for another permit.

Under the five-year pilot program, spouses and commonlaw partners, as well as dependent children, will also be allowed to accompany caregivers using government-issued open work permits and study permits, respectively.

“Caregivers provide care to families in Canada that need it, and it’s time for Canada to care for them in return,” said Ahmed Hussen, minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship, in a press release. “We are providing them with both the opportunity to bring their family members here and access permanent residency to demonstrate our commitment.”

However, the government has yet to spell out the criteria required for permanent residency or what will happen to workers who have overstayed their work permits in Canada because they applied after working for 24 months and didn’t qualify.

A spokesperson for the Landed Status Now Campaign, a coalition of migrant care-worker organizations — which has been advocating for permanent residency status on arrival for migrant care workers since 2014 — says it will wait to comment until it hears more details.

In the past, caregivers had to live with the families who hired them, but in 2014 the Harper government removed that condition. They could apply for permanent residency after two years of work.

At the same time, his government changed the permanent residency criteria to include a year of post-secondary education instead of the equivalent of a high school diploma, and upped the requirements for language proficiency. That meant that many of the caregivers already working in Canada didn’t have the skills to apply.

The Conservatives also instituted a $1,000 work assessment fee, paid by the employer, to ensure the caregiving job was valid and couldn’t be filled by a Canadian, although the fee was later eliminated for families with a yearly income of less than $150,000 or those with medical needs. And they capped the number of workers who could apply for permanent residency.

The government announced early last year that it was phasing out the previous caregiver program in November 2019 and that anyone who didn’t have two years of work experience by then would be ineligible for permanent residency. But this new announcement includes a window from March 4 to June 4 when caregivers who are working here legally can apply to stay permanently if they have at least one year of work experience in Canada, have completed a language test in either English or French and can prove they have the equivalent of a Canadian high school diploma.