Nov 4, 2014 | Caregiver Program
An overhaul of the Live-in Caregiver program will remove the requirement that caregivers must live with their employers. The changes to be implemented will also speed up the processing of their permanent resident applications.
Live-in caregivers come to Canada with hopes and dreams of one day becoming permanent residents of Canada and brining their families for a better future. As it has been for years, caregivers would leave behind their families including their own children to have an opportunity to care for our loved ones. The program required the caregivers to secure a job offer with a Canadian family and reside with them for 24 months in order to be eligible to apply for permanent residence. In many cases, employers treated their caregivers as modern-day slaves, and the government felt that it was time to revamp the program andgive the caregivers a choice.
We are saying to the whole Canadian population, to caregivers above all, the time of abuse and vulnerability is over,” said Minister Chris Alexander at a Toronto news conference.
The changes which are scheduled to be implemented on November 30, 2014 will remove the live-in requirement and make it optional for caregivers to live with their employers. In addition to this major change, the program will be split in 2 streams, one for child-care workers and one for those working as health-care aids.
After working in Canada for 2 years and applying for permanent residence, caregivers would often wait up to 3 years for their applications to be processed. During this time, the caregivers must wait and continue to spend time apart from their families for even longer before being able to bring them to Canada. With over 60,000 applications in the current backlog, the wait times are destined to increase even more. As part of the overhaul to the program, and to reduce the backlog, Canada will cap the number of applications it will accept. A total of 2,750 for each stream will be accepted and they will be processed within 6 months; reuniting caregivers with their families that much sooner.
The changes to the program will affect caregivers applying for permanent residency, but will not disturb the process or procedures currently in place to obtain a work permit under the program. Employers wishing to hire caregivers must still apply for a Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA), and provide evidence they were unable to fill the position with someone who is already in Canada.
For more information on these changes, please contact our office directly.
Jul 24, 2014 | Caregiver Program
The Ontario Filipino Ministerial Fellowship (OFMF), a group of 70 pastors with 40,000 parishioners, is outraged over recent comments made by Minister of Multiculturalism Jason Kenney about Canada’s Live-In Caregiver Program (LCP).
Rev. Teck Uy, Ministerial President of the OFMF, said Kenney has unfairly branded the LCP participants with his statements.
“Characterizing LCP participants in general in such a negative light by claiming that they are using and abusing the program to the extent that it has mutated into a family reunification program is grossly unfair,” he said.
Rev. Teck Uy was referring to Kenney’s comments in June, where Kenney said the LCP has become “an extended family reunification program” where the majority of entrants were “actually coming to work for relatives.”
Kenney said he had met with 70 nannies at a seminar in Manila who were “all” going to work for relatives in Canada, but his claim doesn’t align with the findings of a two-year research project led by Gabriela Ontario, a Filipino women’s rights group.
The project surveyed more than 630 current and former live-in caregivers in six cities, followed by 55 focus groups, to explore the demographic profile of the caregivers and their transition into Canada.
It found that 88 percent of the Filipino caregivers who arrived in Canada over the past five years were hired through recruitment agencies directly or by unrelated employers through referrals. Of those who arrived more than 10 years ago, only 36 percent came in through recruiters, and 47 percent through a direct hire.
Rev. Teck Uy said the majority of the Filipinos who came to Canada via the program “came through legitimate employment contracts and have become successful immigrants who are actively contributing together with their families in making Canada a better country.”
Jul 1, 2014 | Caregiver Program
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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