Former international student fears deportation due to Canada’s backlogged immigration system

The subject of this story is currently a Rogers employee at CityNews 680

Tijuana Turner, 28, worries she’ll be forced to leave Canada as her work permit is set to expire in 12 months and the backlog in Canada’s immigration system has halted the application process for permanent residency.

“I’m terrified, I don’t have any family to go back to” she tells CityNews. “I’ve lived here almost 8 years, it’s the first time I have felt so free”

Turner came to Toronto in 2015 as an international student and was granted a three-year work permit after graduating university.

Since then, she has been working in radio at CityNews 680 and has qualified for Express Entry, an application system for international students, skilled workers and provincial nominees seeking to settle in Canada.

For those in Turner’s position, once they qualify, they have to wait for an invitation to apply for permanent residency and normally thousands are sent out every month, but that process has been halted since September, with invitations only going out to some provincial nominees.

“You are sitting there kind of watching the time go by – and watching the day your permit is going to expire thinking ‘Ok am I going to get pulled?’ because if not, I have nowhere else to go,” she tells CityNews.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) tells CityNews travel restrictions throughout the pandemic delayed the processing of overseas applications, leading to a heap of files and a major backlog.

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“To manage this inventory, in September 2021 we temporarily paused invitations, as a result, the processing inventory has been cut by more than half, decreasing from approximately 111,900 people in September 2021 to just 48,000 people by March 2022.” The statement read.

Just over a week ago, the IRCC announced in a news release that Express Entry candidates with work permits set to expire this year will qualify for an 18-month extension to help deal with the country’s labour shortage.

The IRCC tells CityNews that process will begin this summer with more details coming soon. 

CityNews also learned Express Entry invitations will resume in July, information Turner says is not posted on the website and has been impossible to find.

“It is a surprise to me, even when they stopped the draws, they never made an announcement they never said anything.” Tuner said for a while she was calling the IRCC everyday and never got through and sometimes she’d be locked out of the on-line portal for days.

Turner said she hopes to bring awareness to the issue that so many international students and skilled workers are dealing with and to cross her fingers that everything works out.

“This is the future I have been building for myself and if this doesn’t work out, I’m going to lose that and that’s hard to wrap your head around,” said Turner.