MEDIA RELEASE: Migrant Rights Network is calling on the government to stop the caps and exclusions and ensure permanent resident status for all.
Toronto & Vancouver, March 31, 2025 – Migrant care workers across Canada are frustrated, angry and upset after a federal immigration program for home childcare and support workers closed within 4 and a half hours of launching. Thousands of racialized women who provide essential care for families will now have to wait another year for the chance to apply, despite meeting all the requirements and being promised a path to permanent residency when they first arrived. In the coming year, their work permits may expire with limited chances of renewal and their children may age past 21, leaving these workers locked into exploitative working conditions and separated from their families. Migrant groups had repeatedly warned against the limited program and called on the federal government to remove the intake cap to avoid the crisis that has just begun.
This morning’s launch was mired with problems (see thread on X). Within ten minutes of it opening at 10am EST, the application portal crashed. For the next three hours, hundreds of applicants at offices of Migrant Rights Network organizational members across Canada were unable to upload documents as the portal kept freezing. Eventually only applications using Microsoft Edge were working – no other browser would work. Without any prior warnings, the program began to close one stream after another at 2:30pm, and by 3:15pm – the portal stopped working.
The program closure was met with shock and tears by migrant caregivers who had been waiting for years to apply, had all their forms ready, but could not upload their application. Most had completed the online application, and were refreshing the portal which would not allow them to upload their supplementary documents.
Maria Vanguardia is a migrant care worker from the Philippines who has been in Canada since 2023. She was unable to upload documents for hours, getting a ‘technical error’ response and the program closed before she was able to apply. “This is so depressing, my life, my time is flying away. My dreams are shattered. The government needs to re-open the program!”
“I logged in before 8am. Just to be ready,” says Flora Santiago from Calgary who was also not able to apply. “I was logged in and couldn’t even type my name without the portal freezing. I had everything prepared, it was difficult to get an English test but I got it – I got the marks, I got my education accredited, all of it cost time and money.”
Still in disbelief, Flora says “This is so sad, I am still logged in now. I keep hoping that suddenly my forms will upload. I am worried that if I close the screen, I will lose the chance even though I know the program is closed. Without my PR, there is no life, I can’t do what I want to do, I can’t get a driver’s license, I can’t get healthcare, I can’t be with my children. I even missed my father’s funeral. The struggle is everyday. When this program was announced, it was a relief, but this shutting down was not what I was expecting. We want the government to give all migrants status.”
Immigration Canada has been incorrectly asserting that there is a legislative restriction of a maximum of 2,750 spots in any immigration pilot program. This is blatantly untrue – there is a cap on PR processing not application intake. Removing the application intake cap would have meant all workers could have applied today and gotten into the queue.
Despite championing this program as a critical step toward gender equality, the federal government chose to place an intake cap as a part of a broader attack and restriction on migrants in response to migrant scapegoating for the housing and affordability crisis.
Migrant Rights Network calls on the federal government to stop shattering migrant lives. All migrants in Canada must get access to permanent residency. Migrants have been scapegoated for the housing and affordability crisis; which has resulted in these arbitrary caps and exclusions.
For more information, contact:
Jhoey Dulaca, 416-897-4388, Migrant Workers Alliance for Change
Julie Diesta, 778-881-8345, Vancouver, Committee for Domestic Workers and Caregivers’ Rights