Vancouver – On 19 December 2025, Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) announced that it was pausing intake on applications under Home Care Worker Immigration Pilots (HCIP). The Migrant Workers Centre (MWC) is calling on IRCC to cancel its plans to pause application intake and to ensure that the program is reopened in a way that can properly accommodate all migrant care workers in Canada. MWC also calls on Premier Eby to remind the federal government of the important role migrant care workers play in our province.
MWC’s Board Chair, Mary Grace de Guzman, worries about how IRCC’s announcement will negatively impact migrant care workers. “As a former migrant care worker, I feel disappointed hearing this news. I know that there were a lot of care workers waiting for this program to open with the hope that their lives and futures in Canada would finally become stable. This pause will leave the most vulnerable workers in limbo”, says Ms. De Guzman.
The HCIP replaced the Home Support Worker (HSW) and Home Child Care Provider (HCCP) Pilots that ran from 2019 to 2024. Under the HSW and HCCP, care workers came to Canada with sector specific work permits, finished the required amount of work, and then submitted their work experience to IRCC for final processing. The HSW and HCCP also allowed workers who were already in Canada under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program to apply.
When the HCIP was announced, it offered reduced education and language requirements, the high expectations for which prevented many workers from applying under the previous programs. The HCIP also offered permanent residence on arrival for workers who qualified for the program and were not already living in Canada. However, no spots were ever actually opened under the Permanent Residence on Arrival category. Only workers already living and working in Canada were allowed to apply in March 2025.
When the HCIP opened on 31 March 2025, the spots were extremely limited and filled up within minutes. Many hopeful applicants reported being shut out by technical issues and IRCC system crashes before then learning that spots were filled. Workers who tried unsuccessfully to apply in 2025 have been eagerly waiting for the program to reopen. Many migrant worker groups anticipated that the program would reopen on 31 March 2026. In their recent announcement, IRCC did not mention when the pause would end and they have not provided any assurances to workers that it will.
IRCC’s announcement has left many care workers who are already living and working in Canada feeling abandoned. Ms. De Guzman states, “I am crying for these workers. It is just so unfair to treat us like this after we have contributed so much to Canada. The government keeps breaking its promises to care workers”.
MWC’s Legal Director, Jonathon Braun, shares Ms. De Guzman’s frustrations. He states, “Migrant care workers must often leave their own families to take care of Canadian children and elderly. For many of these workers, a pathway to permanent residence was a pathway to being reunited with their own families. IRCC’s announcement means that these families will continue to be torn apart”. He continues, “It is absolutely gut-wrenching. The very least that our government can do for these workers in thanks for their sacrifice is to provide a safe and reliable pathway to permanent residence. Instead, our government has betrayed migrant care workers”.
“If the government wants to make things right for our vital migrant care workers, they need to reopen the program immediately and ensure that all migrant care workers in Canada can apply”, says Mr. Braun.
For more information, please contact MWC’s Legal Director, Jonathon Braun, at 604-446-2561.