Future Canadian immigrants fear having to leave jobs as IRCC deals with backlog
Foreign workers in Canada are losing legal status, as Immigration Canada delays invitation rounds to process backlogs.
Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC)’s pause on
Express Entry invitations to
Canadian Experience Class (CEC) candidates since
September is forcing some to quit their jobs and even leave Canada.
These candidates have at least one year of
Canadian work experience and about 90% are already in Canada. During the pandemic, IRCC issued more invitations to CEC candidates than any other Express Entry-managed program. IRCC invited CEC candidates to apply for
Canadian immigration about every two weeks, and in large numbers. In early 2021, the department invited
every single CEC candidate in the Express Entry pool to apply. This draw resulted in more than
27,000 invitations and was part of IRCC’s effort to land a record
401,000 newcomers in 2021.
Sasha (last name withheld), a marketing professional in Toronto, said she felt certain she would receive an
Invitation to Apply (ITA) when she put her profile in the Express Entry pool in September. Express Entry works on a points system called the
Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS). IRCC invites the top-scoring candidates to apply for Canadian immigration through bi-weekly
Express Entry draws.
Sasha had a CRS score of 476, more than enough to receive an ITA in any CEC-specific draw held in 2021 before the pause.
“I was 100% sure that in two weeks I’m gonna get it,” Sasha told
CIC News, “Then it’s not happening, and then it’s not happening again—and every two weeks I’m getting more and more disappointed.”
Without the ITA, she cannot apply for permanent residence as an Express Entry applicant. After her
work permit expires, she will lose the right to work in Canada, unless she can find another work permit or permanent residency pathway.
When Express Entry candidates get an ITA, they have 60 days to respond with their formal immigration application. Once they get an Acknowledgement of Receipt (AOR) from IRCC, if they are in Canada, they can use it to apply for a
Bridging Open Work Permit (BOWP). They cannot get a BOWP if they are applying from outside Canada, even if they are applying as CEC candidates.
The BOWP allows them to keep working in Canada while they wait to receive a decision on their application. It is especially useful for temporary residents who are in Canada on work permits that cannot be renewed or extended like the
Post-Graduation Work Permit (PGWP) or the
Working Holiday Visa.
Like many CEC candidates, Sasha is in Canada on a PGWP. She worries that if her legal status runs out, she will be forced to leave her job and either have to stay in Canada on a
visitor’s visa and live off her savings, or go back to Ukraine, which she does not want to do.
“If I’m here and I’m getting the invitation I can apply for a bridging work permit and keep working,” Sasha said. “But if I am [in Ukraine] and I apply from there I’m not able to come back. I will need to stay there for a year or so to wait for my PR card… It’s gonna be eight months, 12 months, maybe more, maybe less…It’s the uncertainty that kind of scares me.”
A recently-released
internal memo from November suggested that IRCC would pause draws for CEC,
Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSWP) and
Federal Skilled Trades Program (FSTP) candidates until it could meet its processing standard of six months for all Express Entry-managed programs.
The memo said that since the Express Entry backlog was high enough to meet the immigration targets previously set for 2021-2023, IRCC would not need to hold a draw for CEC, FSWP, nor FSTP candidates “for at least the first half of 2022.” Express Entry draws would only continue for
Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) candidates.
CIC News spoke to two people for this story who requested to remain anonymous. Both are PGWP holders in Canada, one eligible for CEC, the other eligible for the FSWP. Canada has not held a FSWP draw since December 2020.
“I am grateful to the people of Canada for allowing us to call this great nation our home and to the employers who let us work to fulfill our Canadian dream but no one understands how much it all takes a toll on a person’s mental stability,” the FSWP candidate, who works for a municipality in Saskatchewan, wrote in an email. “How difficult is it for anyone to realize that we (FSW inland) are already here, same as CEC applicants, and are working and contributing towards the economy of Canada.”
The CEC candidate says she and her husband do not know how they will manage expenses in Canada if their PGWP eligibility runs out and they are forced to quit their jobs. PGWP holders have all graduated from a Canadian post-secondary, meaning they have paid international student fees.
“We have invested so much money thinking we would be a permanent resident here,” the CEC candidate said in a phone interview. “If you look until last year, CEC was the main option for the international students who can actually become a resident here.”
How this happened
In 2020, the pandemic forced the border to close and IRCC operations to shut down. As a result, Canada only admitted
184,000 newcomers in 2020, far short of its immigration targets.
In order to make up for the lost year, Canada set an ambitious target in 2021 of admitting
401,000 new immigrants. Of these, 108,000 were expected to come through Express Entry.
To meet these targets amid travel restrictions, IRCC invited only CEC and PNP candidates in its Express Entry draws. No FSWP or FSTP candidates were invited in 2021, unless they had a provincial nomination.
Canada also created a new immigration pathway for essential workers and international student graduates, the
Temporary Residence to Permanent Residence (TR to PR) pathway. This would allow the government to land about 90,000 newcomers who had been working in Canada during the pandemic.
It was this strategy to land in-Canada applicants that led to the backlogs, according to another
IRCC memo. It said that focusing on only inland applicants “led to significant inventory growth, creating a backlog of applications, and processing times in excess of the service standards for all economic categories.”
The initiative to resettle Afghanistan refugees also led IRCC resources away from processing economic and
spousal sponsorship applicants. Even so, Canada continues to admit Afghan refugees at a trickle.
Immigration Minister Sean Fraser has said 7,000 Afghans have been resettled since the Taliban took over. Canada has promised to take in 40,000.
Canada did meet its target of
401,000 newcomers in 2021, but not without a backlog of about
1.8 million applicants. As of December, the Express Entry backlog was more than 119,000, down from nearly 138,000 in October.