Asylum seekers will no longer have to wait long months to obtain a work permit.
Immigration Canada announced this week that it has adopted a new approach to expedite the processing of work permits granted to asylum seekers.
Until now, they first had to hold the asylum seeker document (DDA), issued by a Canada border services officer.
If obtaining this document took less than 24 hours before the pandemic, this delay is now several months since an in-person meeting had to take place with a border services officer in order to receive the DDA.
Thus thousands of asylum seekers, awaiting their DDA, cannot work and have to resort to social assistance.
According to the new simplified procedure announced by Ottawa, the DDA can now be granted to asylum seekers “according to the information provided by the applicant in his application”, that is to say, at the beginning of the process.
“This approach will allow work permits to be issued more quickly than is the case in the current process”, assures the press release published last Wednesday.
The office of the new Minister of Immigration, Christine Fréchette, was delighted with the news. Quebec has been calling for such a measure for some time.
“The federal announcement is a step in the right direction, now we will wait to see how it will be implemented”, indicated the press secretary of Mme Frechette, Alexandre Lahaie.