Foreign caregivers face lengthy wait for permanent status

More challenges for CIC:

It’s taking twice as long for foreign caregivers to get permanent resident status in Canada as it did a year ago despite Ottawa’s promise to expedite the process.

According to an immigration department internal memo titled “advice to minister,” the processing time for caregivers’ permanent residency reached a record 50 months in January, up from 26 months a year ago. That’s on top of having to work two years alone in Canada — separated from family — in order to meet the residency requirement.

Immigration officials are still wrestling with a huge backlog. As of February, more than 17,600 caregivers who had met the work requirement — down from a peak of 24,600 last year — were still waiting in the queue to be reunited with their spouses and children living abroad.

Delays in granting permanent status and reuniting families often lead to family breakups and cause other adjustment problems for caregivers’ children, including high school dropout rates, said immigration lawyer Richard Kurland, who obtained the government memo.

“Caregivers waiting for PR (permanent residency) are unfortunately subject to longer processing,” said Kurland. “In the long term, it’s going to have expensive consequences.”

Ottawa introduced two new caregivers programs in November to replace the decades-old live-in caregivers program. The two programs — designed to bring in caregivers for children and people with high medical needs — remove the live-in conditions but are limited to a combined 5,500 applications a year.

“We have improved the program to make it faster, safer and provide better career opportunities for caregivers across Canada,” Kevin Menard, spokesperson for Immigration Minister Chris Alexander, told the Star.

“We have taken aggressive action to reduce backlogs by planning 30,000 caregiver admissions this year alone, an all-time record, and we will completely eliminate it by the end of 2016.”

Foreign caregivers face lengthy wait for permanent status | Toronto Star.