By Catherine Sas, Q.C.
Special to The Post

This past February 23, 2019, Canada’s Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, Ahmed Hussen announced the “Interim Pathway for Caregivers” program to provide a means to permanent residence for in home care-givers for children and the elderly who may not otherwise qualify due to changes to the program in 2014.

Historically Canada’s caregiver programs have always provided a path to permanent residence and caregiver applicants were always assessed as potential immigrants when applying for their work permits. However, changes to the Caregiver program revised the criteria and caregiver applicants were assessed as temporary foreign workers and not as future permanent residents.

Recognizing that there was considerable confusion about the new program requirements and that many caregiver workers had come to Canada believing they would be able to qualify for permanent residence after meeting the two year work experience threshold, Minister Hussen introduced the “Interim Pathway for Caregiver’s Program” allowing caregivers to apply for permanent residence between March 4 - June 4, 2019.

There are specific criteria to be eligible to apply under the interim program. Most notably, applicants must be in possession of a valid work permit issued under the temporary foreign worker program (TFW) as a caregiver. This means that at the time of obtaining your work permit, you were assessed under the existing caregiver criteria. Persons with other types of work permits such as working holiday, young professional or post-graduate work permits are not eligible to apply for permanent residence under the Interim Caregiver program notwithstanding that you may have work experience as a caregiver.

Applicants must also demonstrate one year of full-time work experience as a home childcare provider or home support worker or a combination of both. In addition, applicants must provide a valid language test with a CLB 5 score for each of the four language proficiencies and an Educational Credential Evaluation (ECA) confirming the equivalent of a Canadian high school education or higher. If you have not yet received the results of either your language test or your ECA, you must include proof that you have applied for them. Please refer to our recent blog describing the interim program in detail- https://canadian-visa-lawyer.com/caregivers-interim-program-opens-route-....

It is the goal of our blog to cover a wide variety of immigration topics for our readers. However, the “Interim Pathway for Caregivers Program” has a very short three-month window and applicants must submit a complete application between March 4 and June 4, 2019 so we felt that this topic warranted repetition.

Canada’s TFW caregivers provide a valuable service to the Canadian families that they work for while sacrificing time apart from their own families. If you have come to Canada as a caregiver after Nov. 30, 2014 and have not yet qualified for permanent residence through the existing program criteria, be sure to see whether you qualify for this program not to miss the deadline. Full program details can be found at the IRCC website at:

https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/news/2019/02/caregivers-will-now-have-access-to-new-pathways-to-permanent-residence.html.

Catherine Sas, Q.C. has over 25 years of legal experience. She provides a full range of immigration services and is a leading immigration practitioner (Lexpert, Who’s Who Legal, Best Lawyers in Canada). Go to canadian-visa-lawyer.com or email [email protected].