The applicants for the PGWP extension, on the streamlined public policy process, had new work permits issued with errors in the end date, and claim to have had an additional 18 months added to the previous end date because of what they were promised or “baited and switched”.
April 15, 2023: On April 6, 2023, Immigration,. Refugees & Citizenship Canada began accepting applications from eligible candidates under the new Public Policy designed to extend their stay in Canada for an additional 18 months. Some applicants were chosen to participate in a ‘streamlined process’ to expedite approvals.
By April 12, 2023, several work permit holders who had ‘opted in’ for the streamlined process began reporting errors with the new expiration dates on their newly issued work permits. Read the full story here.
Update on this:
IRCC confirmed that the Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada website was only updated on April 14, 2023, to improve the clarity of policy instructions.
According to the program guidelines, originally, candidates who chose to extend their PGWPs through the streamlined process ‘were supposed to’ get a new work permit with an expiry date 18 months from the date their initial work permit expired, NOT 18 months from the date of approval.
The issue was covered by +1 News after candidates started receiving errors in their new work permit’s expiry date, following the PGWP extension, and reached out to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada for comment.
IRCC quietly altered the PGWP extension‘s program guidelines to ‘avoid fixing the error’:
A screenshot taken of the “New” program guidelines for the PGWP extension reveals that the IRCC quietly changed the program details to:
“Select opt in to stay and work in Canada for up to an additional 18 months from the date this extension is approved.
- For example, if your PGWP expires in 4 months and your extension is approved, you can expect to get an additional 14 months, for a total of 18 months, for no additional fee.”
Although the content on the IRCC website now is different from what it was when people were being asked to apply, most of the people who went along with the ‘streamlined’ process are angry at having lost precious time in their stay that could have been used to accrue even more eligibility for permanent residency.
Jagat Singh was interviewed by +1 News on April 12, 2023, and commented on the issue, saying: “If I knew that it would happen, I would never opt in and would have kept the 7 months that I have lost now.” He added that he regrets trusting IRCC.
Steven Paolasini is submitting that this PGWP extension opt-in process error does not give him confidence in the department. He feels that while a client expects their application to be errorless and up to the mark, the department might not be perfect. Additionally, he feels the remedy that IRCC should offer is the opt-out of the opt-in and apply manually to give back to those applicants the time they had lost in this ordeal. This would cure the defect of there being too many people with an expiry status of the same date.
“This is just another of the IRCC ‘under-delivering’ incidents, whereby the organization would promise something and then simply not deliver the promise. Ideal in this situation would have been clear communication and accountability, but the IRCC did the opposite by discreetly changing the program guidelines instead of correcting the error.”
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