Canada Faces Temporary Resident Surge in Extension Applications
Temporary resident applicants in Canada are filing baseless extension requests to stay longer while they wait for permanent residence. Lou Janssen Dangzalan, an immigration lawyer, said it’s technically legal but improper for people to submit “dummy” applications.
The tactic has grown alongside longer waits. Visitor extension applications rose from 167,955 to 275,905 in the last five years, while work permit extension applications climbed from 442,715 to 1,039,275.
Canada Immigration Backlogs
Those filings sit inside a larger system strain. In the first quarter of this year, Canada had 2.15 million immigration applications in the system, including 865,000 temporary residence files; 38 per cent of temporary residence applications were deemed backlogged for exceeding service standards.
Mark Holthe said of the filings, “It buys time,” and added, “That’s what drives the ship.” Applicants can keep their status while a decision is pending, which gives the extension request value even when the case would otherwise be refused.
Visitor And Work Permit Delays
The pressure shows up in refusal rates and processing times. Visitor extension refusals rose from 6 per cent to 12.1 per cent, and work permit extension refusals rose from 6.5 per cent to 10.1 per cent. As of the end of May, visitor extension processing time was 312 days and work permit extension processing time was 201 days.
Salih Sezen and Polina Sezen are among the temporary residents facing the wait, along with their two-year-old daughter, Lina. Polina Sezen came in 2023 to study and later received a three-year work permit under Ottawa’s one-time policy for people already in Canada from regions of Turkey devastated by an earthquake.
Ottawa’s Permit Expiry Pressure
Ottawa wants to cap the temporary resident population and reduce immigration backlogs, but the queue keeps growing as more permits approach expiration. Canada issued a record number of visitor, study and work permits in 2022 and 2023, and nearly 1,940,000 of those permits are slated to expire by the end of this year.
Another 1,039,840 visitor, study and work permits are slated to expire in 2027, keeping pressure on the same processing system that has already slowed extension decisions. For people waiting inside that queue, a filing that would be refused on the merits can still function as a pause button while the system takes months to move.
