The current mandate letter for the Immigration Minister, issued in December 2021, calls on the Minister to “Build on existing pilot programs to further explore ways of regularizing status for undocumented workers who are contributing to Canadian communities.”[1]
IRCC defines an undocumented migrant as an individual who has no authorization to reside in the country and it states common reasons for becoming undocumented including overstaying one’s temporary status or remaining in Canada after a rejected asylum claim.[3] IRCC has recently pursued regularization initiatives, including regularizing some 8,500 “Guardian Angels” since the pandemic, who were pending and failed asylum claimants who worked in direct patient care.[4] In 2019, the department introduced a pathway for out-of-status construction workers in the Greater Toronto Area which has regularized over 1,000 individuals.
Little had been said by IRCC on how they intend to implement this mandate letter commitment until recently, when reports indicated that Minister Miller had presented a plan to cabinet.[5] A month later, Miller told reporters that cabinet was split on which course of action to pursue.[6]
It is not difficult to understand why cabinet is divided. On the one hand, a strong case can be made to regularize undocumented workers. Many are employed, and contribute to vital areas of the economy including in sanitation, construction, healthcare, and agri-food.[7] This labour is especially useful as the country’s workforce ages. But their lack of status leaves them vulnerable to exploitation, and unable to access services in Canada. Moreover, their labour goes untaxed, which hurts Canada’s fiscal standing. Removing all undocumented workers is simply unfeasible. In 2021-2022, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) removed just 7,453 people despite $300 million in border enforcement spending.[8] There are also additional humanitarian aspects to regularizing status such as assisting those who entered Canada as minors, as well as those who face danger if they return to their country of origin.
Conversely, a hallmark of Canada’s immigration system is the control that the federal government is able to exert over the border. An argument can be made it would undermine the integrity of the immigration system to regularize those who broke the law. There is also the perception that it would be unfair to reward such individuals, and give them a spot in the queue while other candidates follow the rules and wait their turn for IRCC to assess their applications. There are also concerns that regularizing existing undocumented workers would encourage new cohorts of foreign nationals to seek entry into Canada in hopes that Canada will also show them compassion down the line and allow them to stay. Further, it would be very difficult, and perhaps incompatible, for IRCC to offer more regularization pathways amid declining public support for immigration and IRCC’s stated policy goal to reduce the temporary resident population.
Even if cabinet had a consensus on the need to act, they would still face a host of difficult choices. For one, it would not be easy to offer regularization pathways at scale when there are up to 500,000 undocumented workers in the country. The aforementioned regularization initiatives have been limited in nature and regularization volumes would need to be much higher to make more meaningful inroads to address this challenge. Another major issue is what eligibility criteria to use that balances the need to screen for Canada’s labour market needs as well as to protect the health, safety, and security of Canadians without having screening criteria being too onerous that it undermines the humanitarian intentions of regularization initiatives.
It is unlikely this issue will disappear despite the current gridlock in cabinet. As noted above, the absence of CBSA enforcement means most of those who overstay their status will be able to remain in Canada. In addition, Canada’s temporary resident population will likely continue to rise over the long-run due to its need for foreign nationals to address labour shortages, plus the rise in the global population seeking to move abroad to study, immigrate, and flee conflict, and Canada’s ongoing broad desire to welcome temporary residents for various economic, social, and cultural reasons. All told, these factors will probably increase the chances of more temporary residents overstaying their status in the future.
This reality will give the Canadian government two broad choices. They can either seek inaction, or seek to introduce more regularization initiatives that will simultaneously regularize migrants at scale and be accepted by the Canadian public.
[1] https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/mandate-letters/2021/12/16/minister-immigration-refugees-and-citizenship-mandate-letter
[2] Ibid.
[3] https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/transparency/committees/cimm-oct-24-2023/regularizing-undocumented-workers.html
[4] Ibid.
[5] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-plan-to-let-undocumented-migrants-stay-in-canada-to-be-examined-by-pm/
[6] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-ottawa-holds-off-on-program-to-let-migrants-without-papers-stay-with/
[7] https://www.cba.org/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=7cf7c452-8723-4cd6-b20c-bf000a4f9e99
[8] Ibid.