Ottawa: Canada has announced the opening date of new pilot programs for permanent residency. 'Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada' (IRCC) has announced that new immigration pilot programs for home care workers will open on March 31, 2025. These new pilot programs are collectively referred to by IRCC as Canada's 'Home Care Worker Immigration Pilot'. These pilot programs will replace previous permanent residence (PR) pathways for care workers that have expired, reports CIC News.
Who is eligible for permanent residency through these pilot programs?
To be eligible for these new pilot programs, foreign nationals must have an official language ability equivalent to level four on the Canadian Language Benchmark (CLB) scale. They must qualify as equivalent to a Canadian high school diploma. Foreign nationals must have recent and relevant work experience and must have received a full-time employment offer for a home care-related job.
According to the report, candidates for the previous Home Care Worker Immigration Program only needed 6 months of experience to be eligible for permanent residency by June 16, 2024. IRCC has not yet announced further details and eligibility requirements.
These two pilot programs were closed last year.
IRCC first announced its intention to open new immigration pilot programs for home care workers on June 3, 2024. At that time, few details were given other than the eligibility criteria. A few days later on June 17, 2024, the Immigration Department closed the Home Child Care Provider Pilot and Home Support Worker Pilot. The new home care worker immigration pilots will replace the previous caregiver immigration routes.
How many PR spots are available under the new program?
According to IRCC, about 10,920 new immigration admission spots will be allocated under its Federal Economic Pilot category for the period 2025-2027. The exact number of spots for the home care worker program is not yet available, but experts estimate that it will be about double that of previous programs. The earlier programs, which were discontinued to introduce this new program, offered approximately 5,500 PR spots.
