The Canadian government is preparing to unveil a suite of measures to clamp down on temporary immigration and has no plans to follow through right now on a broad programme offering status to undocumented residents, Reuters reported.

“The era of uncapped programs to come into this country is quickly coming to an end. This is a big shift. You can’t just slam on the brakes and expect it to stop immediately,” the report quoted Marc Miller, the country’s immigration minister.

Canada has seen a dramatic increase in the influx of new residents, especially temporary ones, as many employers struggled to fill vacancies coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, immigrants are being blamed for a worsening housing situation along with an affordability crisis in the country. Critics have accused the federal government of bringing in too many people.

Canadians “want a system that makes sense. And they want one that still has a lot of welcoming aspects we’ve been proud of, but it’s got to make sense,” Miller said.

In January, the Canadian government announced a two-year cap on international students – an area of Canada’s immigration system that got “overheated” and was not meant to be “a backdoor entry into Canada”.

In March, the immigration minister announced Canada’s first-ever cap on temporary immigration. Canada wants to reduce temporary residents to 5 percent of the total population over the next three years from 6.2 percent in 2023. That would be a cut of about 20 percent from Canada’s 2.5 million temporary residents in 2023.

However, in its recent monetary policy report, the Bank of Canada expressed doubts that the government could meet its temporary residents goal, noting that non-permanent residents made up 6.8 percent of the country’s population as of April and that “the share is expected to continue rising over the near-term”.

Canada is seeing record levels of refugee claims – more than 18,000 in June, according to the Immigration and Refugee Board despite efforts to deter people by closing the land border to asylum-seekers through a contested bilateral agreement with the United States and by implementing new visa requirements for Mexicans.

Less jobs for immigrants 

Meanwhile, immigrants who moved to Canada eyeing a better life are grappling with the worst job crisis in a decade. The unemployment rate for recent immigrants in the last five years was 12.6 percent in June, the worst in 10 years. Indians, being the largest aspirants to get permanent residency in Canada, are likely to be the worst hit.

The unemployment rate of 12.6 percent is four percentage points lower than 2023, according to Statistics Canada. In 2023, out of the 471,810 new permanent residents, Indians were 139,785 or nearly 30 percent.

Since 2019, according to data from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), of the new permanent residents, 1,841,250, Indians were 514,435 in number.

 “There were 1.4 million unemployed people in June 2024, an increase of 42,000 (+3.1 percent) from the previous month,” Statistics Canada revealed in a recent report.