By Anna Mehler Paperny
TORONTO (Reuters) – Migrants living in Canada are facing longer waits to renew paperwork that would allow them to keep working legally, as growing backlogs and changing rules stymie efforts to maintain legal status, according to interviews and data obtained by Reuters.
Losing status means people who have paid taxes cannot work or access medical care and other services in a country that has long prided itself for its universal health care.
Canada is trying to reduce the number of migrants in the country as they have been blamed for straining services – a sharp change after years of growth – and is relying on people to leave voluntarily to meet its targets.
Canada’s immigration department said people can work while their application is processed but did not respond by the deadline to a question about people who lose status because of long waits.
According to the immigration department’s website, people can keep working as long as they get a labour market impact assessment needed to maintain their status within 60 days of applying to renew their work permit.
Reuters spoke with four families who lost work permits because they have been waiting for much longer than that. It is not known how many people are in this position.
The labour market impact assessment processing time for temporary workers hoping to become permanent residents in Canada has been increasing since at least fall 2022, and almost tripled from 58 business days in September 2023 to 165 business days in March 2025, according to data from Canada’s employment department obtained by Reuters.
The department said the lengthier waits are due in part to an influx of applications but would not provide the number of applications pending by month. Lawyers and experts say changing rules, as well as more applicants, may be contributing to the growing backlog.
The number of people applying for work permits within the country has grown compared to last year – as has the share of those applications that Canada is refusing, data from Canada’s immigration department shows.
An email seen by Reuters from Service Canada, which processes these applications, said that as of April 1, 2025, the department was still processing labour market impact assessment applications submitted a year earlier.
“We are seeing a backlog now of more than a year. … It’s the first time we are seeing such a delay,” said immigration consultant Kanwar Sierah.
People are losing their immigration status, Sierah said, and some are working under the table for exploitative employers or falling victim to “unscrupulous actors” who give them bad advice, for example by urging them to apply for asylum when they may not have a strong case.
Reuters spoke with migrants who have returned to their country of origin and to people living legally in Canada with no ability to support themselves.
Living undocumented in Canada has been rare in part because it is so difficult to access services without status. Estimates have put Canada’s undocumented population in the hundreds of thousands in a country of some 40 million.
Canada’s Liberal government pledged to give undocumented people status but then backtracked and said it would provide it on a small scale for people working in certain sectors.
Prime Minister Mark Carney, who leads polls ahead of an April 28 election, promises to cap immigration for now.
A DREAM ‘SHATTERING’
Devi Acharya was too scared to go to a hospital when she started to miscarry in early March – she could not afford another medical bill.
“If I got medical attention on time, maybe we could have saved the baby.”
Acharya does not have health coverage for the same reason she cannot work: Her work permit expired while she waited for a labour market impact assessment, so if she seeks medical care, she could be handed a hefty bill.
Canada’s temporary foreign worker program requires most employers wanting to hire non-citizens in Canada temporarily to file for a labour market impact assessment that says the position cannot be filled by a local resident.
A spokesperson for the employment department said demand for its temporary foreign worker program varies, that it received a high volume of applications prior to last fall and that it expects processing times to improve over the next six months.
Acharya came to Canada from India with her husband and son in October 2022, working in housekeeping at Prince Rupert’s Highliner Hotel in British Columbia.
She liked the work. She and her husband bought a house.
They applied for new labour market impact assessments in September, her immigration consultant told Reuters. They have received no response. Their work permits expired. They are in Canada legally but cannot work. Navdev, now five years old, cannot go to school.
“Two years before we were dreaming of making Canada home,” she said, “and now it’s shattering.”
(Reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny; Editing by Caroline Stauffer and Aurora Ellis)
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