Over the weekend a new pathway for immigration was announced for caregivers wishing to come work in the country. While the government is still working out the rules they are looking at prescreening all applicants from outside of Canada who come as caregivers for permanent residency. Another new option with the pathway is that any temporary foreign worker who will be working in a caregiving capacity, their spouse will have an open work permit and their children will be able to get student permits. according to Daphne Lavina with Southeast Newcomers Services, these are changes for the better.

"The issue before was they would get separated from there families for years, and you know how difficult it is to be away from your family, so families breakdown because of the distance. There is also an interim pathway it will be effective March 4th to June 4th, 2019 it would be a program for those caregivers who are already here on a temporary foreign workers permit. So temporary foreign workers can now apply for permanent residency as long as they have one year of full-time work experience as a caregiver since November 2014. Another requirement is they will need to have a secondary equivalent to high school English to be able to quaily for the program and of course have a valid work permit or be reapplying for their work permit. It is a very limited time frame but its a very good program for those who wouldn't qualify under the current program. 

The Purpose of the Program is to help retain caregivers for people with high critical needs and Children. one point Daphne wanted to really drive home was the fact time to apply is limited.

"I'm just going to reiterate they have to apply as soon as possible, the language test itself, if they haven't done that already takes time for them to book their exams and to get the results. Three months is not much time so they should be putting together their applications now."