As hospitals across the country struggle under the weight of severe staffing shortages, an immigration backlog described by lawyers as the worst they’ve ever seen is leaving qualified health professionals sitting on the sidelines.
In February 2021, Sharlene Ullani applied for a permanent resident card after working for years in Canada as a childminder. Eighteen months later, the internationally trained nurse with more than seven years of experience has not heard from Immigration Canada about the status of her application.
Online, the government estimates the processing time for new permanent residence cards is 2.6 months, or 81 days, beginning August 2.
“I’ve been emailing twice a month and the response is always the same: ‘You have to wait, thanks for your patience. We have this pandemic,'” he told CTV National News.
Ullani currently has a temporary work permit, but it does not allow her to change jobs, even from child care to adult care, without losing her status. In the months since she completed an application for permanent residence, Ullani has written exams and completed the paperwork necessary for her foreign credentials to translate into a valid license to work in Ontario as a registered practical nurse.
“It’s heartbreaking to see nurses working so hard and we’re here to help,” she said. “We are willing to help, but we can’t because of our status.”
The Registered Nurses Association of Ontario said there are approximately 26,000 nurses “ready and waiting” to work in Ontario, 14,000 of them are registered nurses. Executive Director Doris Grinspun says the vast majority of those people are waiting for the university to approve their international qualifications, but thousands have already passed their exams and are waiting for their immigration status to change so they can work.
“The big impact of patient backlogs for patients is that either they’re getting a change in quality of care or they’re not getting all of it,” he said. “If you look at home care, they probably don’t get care together. If you look at ICU or ER being closed or downsized, even in an emergency, it’s desperation.”
Recently, Grinspun worked with the federal government to approve the immigration applications of 26 nurses. Given the health care staffing crisis across the country, Grinspun said the government should prioritize applications submitted on behalf of applicants with a background in health care, especially nurses.
“To have internationally trained nurses, RPNs … able to join the workforce when they’re ready to work in Ontario, and especially those who’ve already passed their exams and are just waiting for work permits from the feds, get moving. Get moving. because nurses and patients desperately need them,” she said.
Speaking at a news conference in Ottawa on Thursday, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh echoed Grinspun’s calls, saying he has called on Ottawa to implement an expedited immigration system for skilled health workers. Singh said he doesn’t know why Ottawa has not yet complied.
“There is no excuse for this,” Singh said. “I can’t understand why the government isn’t willing to do this… We need to respond urgently because these are people who can work here and want to work here.”
In June, the immigration department said there were more than 2.4 million applications pending, up from 2.1 million in June. CTV News has contacted the department multiple times for updated figures, but has not received a response at press time. The department said it typically takes five business days to process and collect statistical data.
Toronto immigration attorney Chantal Desloges attributes the delay to a “perfect storm” of factors related to the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many embassies and consulates closed and immigration staff began working from home. .
“When everyone else was doing business online, it wasn’t that easy for the government to change,” he said. Desloges added that when the offices were closed, applications were still being submitted, but no one was there to process them.
“All of these things happening at the same time created a toxic soup of circumstances.”
To speed up the process, Desloges said immigration staff who can’t do 100 percent of their work from home should return to the office. He also suggests that the government could speed up the approval process by reducing the number and frequency of applicant interviews.
“It’s really hard to predict how long it’s going to take to sort this mess out, if it ever happens at all,” he said.
On Tuesday, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) introduced new measures to expedite the processing of applications for foreign nationals with expired or expiring post-graduation work permits, and for temporary residents to permanent resident applicants. Under the change, people in either of those cases will have their current work permits extended while their applications are processed.
CanadaVisa.com Policy Director Kareem El-Assal applauded the change but said it should have been implemented in 2020.
“This is a solution that should have been adopted from the start of the pandemic and would have saved applicants a lot of headaches and also saved the Canadian government a lot of time,” he said.
As delays drag on, applicants like postdoctoral researcher Julie Ottoy are left in limbo, unable to leave the country or attend international conferences for work.
“It’s very frustrating,” he said. “It’s been close to five months with no word from IRCC and interestingly last year I submitted this application around the same time and the exact same renewal was approved in two weeks.”