Canada’s live-in caregiver program, which strives to provide reasonably priced nannies from abroad, is set to be overhauled.
Public service workers have claimed the program is being abused as a way to achieve “family reunification,” particularly for Canada’s Filipino community.
The program has granted permanent residency to more than 60,000 people between 2008 and 2013, and according to government estimates, many of these caregivers have had ulterior motives.
Internal documents show the Canadian embassy in Manila has been alerting colleagues since at least 2007 that fraud was an “ongoing problem” in the program and the absence of mothers was proving “disruptive” to families left behind in the Philippines. Similar warnings were repeated in a 2011 report by Citizenship and Immigration, which highlighted that large percentages of nannies are brought in to work for relatives.
The live-in caregiver visa is part of the Temporary Foreign Worker program, itself subject to major changes revealed recently. It is different from other temporary worker visas in that once caregivers complete two years of full-time employment, they are allowed to apply for permanent residency in Canada for themselves and their families – a unique benefit for those in low-skilled work.
Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland, who obtained internal reports on Canada’s live-in caregiver program through Access to Information, said he thinks Ottawa will announce this fall that the program will be phased out.
According to Manuela Gruber Hersch, head of the Association of Caregiver and Nanny Agencies, employers of caregivers will be badly hit by the program’s cancellation. She agreed the live-in caregiver program is open to abuse, but said the problem could be fixed by putting an independent agency in charge of placing nannies with families.
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