Question Period Note: Home Care Worker Immigration

Immigration Pathways for Caregivers and Processing Plan

• Home care workers play an essential role in supporting seniors, children, and people living with disabilities across Canada.

• This spring, we launched new Home Care Worker Immigration Pilots for home child care providers and home support workers.

• Despite controls to prioritize home care workers already in Canada, demand was high and caps were reached almost immediately.

• Managing intake is a crucial measure in returning immigration rates to sustainable levels.

New Home Care Worker Immigration Pilots
• The Home Care Worker Immigration Pilots test new approaches to advance caregiver programming by addressing key issues identified through program evaluation, consultations, and stakeholder feedback.
• While caregiver programming continues to evolve and improve, ongoing concerns remain. Consultations indicate that, where home care workers arrive in Canada without a direct pathway to permanent residence, they may face challenges such as isolation, prolonged family separation, and unique issues associated with in-home work.
• Additionally, the language and education requirements of previous programs have been identified as barriers, preventing many home care workers in Canada from qualifying for permanent residence, despite demonstrating their ability to perform the work in these occupations.
• The 2025 pilots seek to address these challenges and vulnerabilities through a one-step immigration process that does not require applicants to obtain in-Canada work experience in the occupations.
• They also feature reduced language and education requirements to broaden access while still ensuring that candidates possess the requisite skills and competency to perform the work effectively.
• Applicants are eligible to apply where they can demonstrate a minimum language proficiency of Canadian Language Benchmark (CLB) 4, hold the equivalent of a Canadian high school diploma or higher, have recent and relevant work experience or training and have an offer of employment for full-time work in a home care occupation.
• Additionally, the pilots expanded the types of employers eligible to make job offers beyond private households to also include organizations that directly employ homecare workers full-time, but deploy them to clients’ homes. This will help Canadians who need more flexible home care supports, such as part-time assistance.
• Initially, intake is allocated to workers in Canada to help transition temporary foreign workers to permanent residence. This includes a limited number of spots in 2025 reserved for certain out-of-status and unauthorized home care workers in Canada. The pilots are set to open to home care workers outside Canada in future years.
• Including certain out-of-status and unauthorized workers in the 2025 Pilots allows these individuals to benefit from rights and workplace protections, which are currently inaccessible due to their lack of legal immigration status.
Legacy Programming

• Home care workers have had multiple pathways to permanent residence, including through the Live-in Caregiver Program (1992-2014), the Caring for Children and Caring for People with High Medical Needs pilots (2014-2019), the Interim Pathway for Caregivers (2019), and the Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker pilots (2019-2024).
• Any applications received under closed programs continue to be processed until a decision has been reached. Additionally, foreign national home care workers already in Canada continue to be able to apply for work permit extensions in these occupations through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (supported by a Labour Market Impact Assessment). They may also apply for permanent residence through the new pilots or any other program they qualify for.
If pressed on levels spaces and processing delays:

• Immigration levels have been reduced to align immigration planning with community capacity. As a result, many applicants may experience notable increases in wait times.

• Demand for this pathway is greater than spaces available. Pilot programs are limited to processing up to 2,750 applications per pilot, annually.

• As of May 20, 2025, processing times for the previous home care worker pilots were between 17-34 months.

• In 2024, over 6,000 applicants obtained permanent residence through caregiver programming.

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