With a possible election on the horizon, farmers, international students, refugees and undocumented migrants are demanding the federal government grant full and permanent immigration status for all.

“Today, 1.6 million people in Canada, 1 in 23 residents, are without permanent resident status,” said Migrant Rights Network, which organized a march in Ottawa last Sunday bussing in hundreds of demonstrators from other cities including Montreal and Toronto.

The event was organized after thousands of essential workers seeking permanent residence were effectively left holding useless completed applications when the stream closed months ahead of schedule.

The Essential Worker Stream for non-healthcare related positions of the Federal Temporary Resident to Permanent Resident Pathway program reached its cap of 30,000 on July 16, merely 10 weeks after it launched on May 6. This was far ahead of the estimated six months the government expected it would take to fill that quota.

“Thousands have spent the last two months trying to get their applications together, spending thousands of dollars on documents, immigration consultants or lawyers, English language tests, and medical exams, including for families overseas, only to lose everything,” according to a press release from the Migrant Rights Network (MRN).

MRN argues that the first-come, first-serve nature of the program is “unfair” and exclusionary due to language, technological and financial barriers it places on applicants. Consequently, the release states, “racialized migrants (who are) in the most precarious conditions, and facing the most restrictions and exploitation are the ones who were not able to meet the arbitrary deadline.”

Migrants have always been in crisis but this crisis has worsened during COVID-19. Migrants have lost work and wages during the crisis but many have been shut out of emergency supports, said MRN.

“Those already without wages have been abandoned. They cannot pay rent, have faced starvation, lost life savings and are sacrificing essential health care. Many are excluded from healthcare and social services and cannot unite with their families. Lack of permanent resident status makes it difficult, and often impossible, for migrants to speak up for their rights or access services, including those they may be eligible for, because of a well-founded fear of reprisals, termination, eviction and deportation,” the organization said.

“In 2020, Canada closed its borders even to refugees. But in the same year, more people were deported by the federal government than in any of the previous 5 years. Even life-saving healthcare including vaccines is being denied to many migrants.”

In an email statement, the IRCC’s communication analyst Isabelle Dubois said the caps to the Essential Worker Stream were necessary to “balance other existing and expected inventories in other lines of business and to limit the risk to operational processing capacity in light of the significant backlog which could have been created with a fully uncapped program.”

Though the statement did not make clear why or how the backlog “could have been created,” or why the French streams do not have any caps, Dubois asserted the “caps protect Canada’s managed migration model.”

Jael Duarte is an immigration and family lawyer out of Fredericton, New Brunswick, with clients who have been essential workers in Canada for years. But precisely because of the nature of their work and inability to safely take time off, as well as lack of computer and internet access or know-how, they weren’t able to submit their applications before July 16.

One of her clients, who is a truck driver, has been working for more than seven years under the temporary worker program, constantly away from his wife and kids. Without higher education and being over 40, he didn’t qualify for permanent residence under other streams or programs. So “this program was his opportunity,” said Duarte, an immigrant from Colombia, in a phone interview. But when he finally was able to book his English test, he was sent to another part of the country for work, and “he couldn’t apply.”

“That’s what I find at all levels of government across Canada,” she added: “Not understanding the reality of essential work.”

Dubois said that while it’s true that many essential workers “filling vital jobs…didn’t have the option of staying home,” the government has been “deliberate in ensuring that spaces were set aside for those temporary workers who have been contributing to the Canadian economy without a clear pathway to permanent residence.”

Still, Duarte says another challenge for applicants is the fact that, under this specific government immigration program, lawyers couldn’t apply for their clients, as they normally could otherwise.

Duarte says this can be a very expensive and cumbersome process that “requires certain expertise to understand what the forms are really asking,” as well as technological skills and access, which many applicants lack. According to the government’s fee list, the application alone costs $1,325 per person. The price duplicates for a spouse, and each dependent is an additional $225. Duarte said with lawyer, documentation, police certificate and language tests fees added, each application could easily be more than $3,000. “You have to have time to get all the documentation, and that is money, of course.”

The uncertain nature of the evolving program was another factor that made it harder for people to properly complete their applications. “Many people were trying to prepare, but we (lawyers) were saying, ‘I can’t tell you what is here,” she explains. “We had to prepare (applications) without really knowing what was needed.”

Though the government has been “flexible” with the medical requirements, it has been adamant about the English requirement, which is also shutting many “out of the program,” says Duarte. In New Brunswick, for instance, there were only two English testing centres. Due to COVID-19 restrictions and isolation requirements, many couldn’t travel to other provinces to take the test. “And the Minister was really firm,” she says. “If you don’t have the English test language requirement, please don’t apply.”

MRN said COVID-19 has ravaged communities around the world, deepening economic and political crises that have been created and exploited by governments and corporations in places like Canada.

“Canada must support migrants and refugees here, reunite families, and ensure that no one is forced to leave their homes… We will not stop until everyone has full and permanent immigration status, with no exceptions. We will leave no one behind.” – Mata Press Service and New Canadian Media.