Good news, work permit validity time extended again

A few days ago the federal government again announced that they are going to increase the time for work permits that are about to expire to extend their validity from 180 to 540 days more after their expiration since unfortunately the work permit renewal process is taking very long. In other words people whose work permits expired since October 26, 2023 and have already applied for renewal will benefit from this extension and will be able to remain eligible to work for at least one more year, also in most cases they will be able to renew their driver's license.

It is important to note that this extension is not for all categories of people who are renewing, but includes groups such as TPS, political asylum and also applicants who are in the process of changing their status to legal permanent resident. It is estimated that there are over 800,000 individuals who were at risk of being left without a current work permit prior to this new rule and unfortunately this indicates that the government is still taking too long to process applications, in this case for work permits, even though they have supposedly made changes to try to streamline the process.

This was a necessary measure according to the chamber of commerce and other employer groups in addition to the obvious need of the immigrants themselves who were losing their jobs due to the negligence of the federal government.

It should also be understood that although the extension automatically extends the validity of the work permit it does not affect the period of authorized temporary stay for the immigrant, that is, the time to remain in the country legally does not extend beyond the time originally allowed, it only allows them to continue working if they have already applied for the renewal of their work permits.

Another piece of good news is that the government is granting work permits for a period of 5 years in many cases to eligible immigrants instead of the 1 or 2 years that was previously the norm.

If you have further questions on this topic and have a pending work permit renewal application you can contact my office.