COMMENT: The Temporary Foreign Worker Program is a failure, and new immigration limits make a bad situation worse

Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) was seemingly set up to fail. Multiple successive governments have long passed the buck to the next and still none are willing to fix it.

The human rights abuses and lack of access to citizenship pathways built into the TFWP have been noted by experts time and again, garnering considerable attention during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since 2000, there has been exponential growth of temporary permit holders in Canada driven by both employer demand and by policy. From 2000 to 2010, the TFWP overshadowed the permanent immigration system, as illustrated by a historical flurry of policy and program changes.

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Glorified employment agency

Originating in Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) and not in Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the TFWP has been used like a de facto migration program, which it was never intended to be.

That means the current state of affairs should be no surprise. The TFWP has steamrolled ahead like a glorified employment agency in response to the demands of employers as IRCC struggles to support the communities taking in these newcomers — or to develop policy infrastructure to address the many problems the program has created.

Prevailing concerns (including access to pathways, human rights and labour violations, barriers in accessing health care, legal support and other services) about the TFWP have been echoed in reports by the Office of the Auditor General of Canada in 2021 and 2023, and the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology in 2024.

Canada’s latest Immigration Levels Plan is the most recent example of ignoring historical and scholarly evidence. With a major goal to reduce the numbers of temporary migrants in Canada from 6.5 per cent to five per cent of the population, the plan claims that “more temporary residents will transition to permanent residents or leave Canada, compared to new ones arriving.”

Both scenarios seem unlikely. As one Statistics Canada analysis shows, low-wage temporary migrants represent a very small proportion of those who have transitioned from temporary to permanent status. Furthermore, it is well-established that when visas expire, people stay, in Canada and around the world.

Labour market needs

Ignoring reality doesn’t change that fact, and neither does labelling migrants undocumented or irregular. In Canada, the majority of people with undocumented/irregular status came to Canada through regular pathways with authorized temporary permits (including international student and work permits), but they overstayed.

They should be permitted to stay. Canada needs them. The labour market needs them.

It is estimated that roughly three million non-permanent residents are living in Canada in 2024, of which roughly half are authorized to work.

Canada’s available workforce doesn’t fully meet its needs, particularly in the agriculture, service and care sectors. Labour shortages in these vital sectors will only get worse because the incoming generation of workers can’t compensate for the upcoming wave of retirees.

People with work permits — whether in the country under the TFWP, the International Mobility Program or under the Post Graduate Work Permit Program — have been propping up critical sectors of the Canadian economy and society by filling labour and skills gaps. They also contribute to the social and cultural fabric of Canada.

So why are those with expiring work permits — estimated to be held by 1.2 million people, including roughly 200,000 international students — being forced to leave when their status expires in 2025?

And if they don’t leave, what happens next?

Integration at no cost to Ottawa

Some will access a permanent pathway — approximately 30 per cent — while some will leave and many will join the more than 500,000 people living in Canada without status.

Absurdly, these temporary migrants have already done the hard work of integration, without costing the federal government a dime. Many have effectively paid to integrate, as either international students or as workers — but both are ineligible for funded settlement support available to permanent immigrants and refugees.

Deportation orders and removals, on the other hand — the only way the federal government can ensure people actually leave — cost the system millions.

In the 2018–19 fiscal year alone, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) spent about $34 million on its removal program and only successfully removed 9,500 people, including 2,800 people refused entry at the border.

By that math, if the government aimed to deport 500,000 non-status immigrants, it would cost more than $1 billion.

What’s more, the recent changes will significantly increase the number of people in Canada without status, potentially ballooning the economic costs of removal orders and deportations. This will also come with a significant social cost as the number of people without status who are working and living in our communities climbs and a culture of fear, division and above all, precarity, is created.

It’s poor economics and poor governance to deport them, and it’s even worse to let them stay without status.

Non-status numbers will increase

Unless Canada wants to embark on large-scale regularization programs similar to those in Europe — broad-based efforts designed to provide access to status for those without it — pathways for permanent residency must be expanded for temporary migrants.

However, despite the government’s multi-year “Explore Ways of Regularizing Undocumented Workers” initiative, Immigration Minister Marc Miller recently made it clear that Canada will not pursue a broad regularization program for undocumented individuals — even though the majority have simply overstayed following expired work permits or student visas.

But the changes outlined in the 2025 Immigration Plan will undoubtedly increase the numbers of non-status people in Canada.

Forcing 200,000 international students to leave when their permits expire; curtailing spousal work permits; limiting low-wage work permits (except for primary agriculture) to one year; and charging migrants high fees to renew their work permits annually are just a few of the most recent moves to push migrants into irregularity and set Canada up for continued failure.

Without accessible direct pathways to permanent residency — or better yet, permanent status on arrival — work-permit holders in Canada have been relegated to a permanent temporary status at best, and non-status at worst. Canada’s TFWP was seemingly designed to fail, and fail it will continue to do.

—Jenna L. Hennebry is a professor with the International Migration Research Centre at Wilfred Laurier University