Canada has ended a policy that allowed people on visitor visas to apply for work permits from within the country. This temporary policy, introduced in August 2020, was initially put in place to help visitors who couldn’t return home due to COVID-19-related border closures.
Canada Ends Visitor Work Permit Policy
The policy meant that the visitors could now apply for work permits without having to proceed to Canada. It also permitted those who formerly had a work permit within a year and later transformed to the ‘visitor’ category to legally work in Canada while waiting for a decision on the new work permit application.
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Although this policy was to expire on February the 28th 2025, Canada has decided to cut it short. The IRCC’s decision forms the part of a strategy to regulate the number of temporary residents in the Country coupled with the protection of the immigration system in Canada.
The IRCC ensures the population that all the applications that were under the policy before August 28, 2024, will still be considered. That said the early termination is partly due to allegations that some people were using the policy to lure foreign nationals to work in Canada contrary to the law.
This change is among many other recent shifts of approach for Canada towards temporary foreign workers. In the course of the 2nd of September, 2024 the government submitted a freeze on the processing of some of LMIA applications under the Low Wage TFWP stream.. This pause is to be effective starting September 26, 2024 and it will affect applicants that are in a state that has an unemployment rate of 6% and above.
Moreover, on December 1 , 2010, Canada set new restrictions by limiting the number of employees under the TFWP by capping it at a maximum of 10% for the employer’s total staff. The maximum term of employment of Workers in the Low-Wage stream has also been cut down to a year from two.
These modifications are in line with the revitalization process of Canadian immigration and tender towards foreign workers so that the proportion of foreign workers to the national labor market is equilibrated.
