Canada Caregiver Immigration

On This Page, You Will Find:

• The current status of Canada’s caregiver immigration programs
• Why the Home Care Worker Immigration pilots were paused
• What the pause means for applications already submitted
• Caregiver admissions under the 2026–2028 Levels Plan
• Fees for caregiver permanent residence applications
• Routes still open to caregivers and home support workers
• What a redesigned caregiver pathway might look like
• How to prepare while intake is closed
• Frequently asked questions

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Anyone researching caregiver immigration to Canada needs one fact before anything else: Canada is not currently accepting new caregiver permanent residence applications.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) announced on December 19, 2025 that it was pausing intake for the two Home Care Worker Immigration pilots – Child Care and Home Support – until further notice. The pilots had been expected to reopen in March 2026. They did not. No new applications are being accepted, and IRCC has not published a reopening date.

That makes almost every guide written before December 2025 actively misleading, including material describing how to secure one of the 2,750 spots in each stream. This page sets out what applies now.

What Happened, and Why

The Home Care Worker Immigration pilots launched on March 31, 2025, replacing the earlier Home Child Care Provider Pilot and Home Support Worker Pilot. They offered permanent residence on arrival to qualifying home care workers, and demand overwhelmed the available spaces almost immediately.

IRCC’s stated reasoning for the pause is straightforward: interest “continues to exceed the spaces available, leading to longer wait times,” and pausing intake allows the department to prioritise processing the applications it already holds rather than adding to a growing inventory. IRCC framed the decision as part of the broader recalibration under the 2026–2028 Immigration Levels Plan, which aims to return immigration to what the government calls sustainable levels.

Ministerial instructions set intake at zero from March 31, 2026, and reporting on those instructions indicates a closure window extending to March 30, 2030 – though IRCC’s own public notice says only “until further notice,” and any future update will be announced publicly. Prospective applicants should treat the pause as open-ended rather than assuming a fixed 2030 reopening.

IRCC acknowledged in its notice that the decision “will be disappointing for prospective applicants and their families.” That is worth stating plainly: many caregivers had built plans, and in some cases relocated, around a March 2026 intake that never opened.

What the Pause Means for Existing Applications

If your application was received before intake closed, it is unaffected in principle. IRCC has confirmed it “will continue to process applications received to date, in line with the Immigration Levels Plan.”

Practically, that means:

• Applications already in the system remain in the queue and will be decided on their merits.
• Processing is expected to be faster than it would have been, because the pause prevents further inventory growth.
• Applications are processed within the annual admissions allocation, so pace is still bounded by the Levels Plan.
• Applications under earlier caregiver programs – the Home Child Care Provider Pilot, Home Support Worker Pilot, Caring for Children, Caring for People with High Medical Needs, the Interim Pathway for Caregivers and the Live-in Caregiver Program – continue to be processed to completion.

If you have an application in progress, keep your contact details current in your IRCC account and respond to any request for documents promptly. Applications are not being cancelled, but they can still be refused for the ordinary reasons – incomplete documentation, unmet eligibility, admissibility issues.

Caregiver Admissions Under the 2026–2028 Levels Plan

Caregivers do not have their own line in the Levels Plan. They sit inside the Federal Economic Pilots category alongside Agri-Food, the community immigration pilots and the Economic Mobility Pathways Pilot. That combined category is targeted at:

• 8,175 admissions in 2026 (range 5,000–11,800)
• 8,775 admissions in each of 2027 and 2028 (range 6,600–12,400)

Because the figure is shared across several pilots, the number of caregiver admissions is not fixed in advance and will depend on how IRCC allocates processing within the category. For context, total economic admissions are set at 239,800 for 2026 within an overall permanent resident target of 380,000.

Fees for Caregiver Permanent Residence

Fees rose on April 30, 2026. For applicants under the Home Care Worker Immigration pilots opened in 2025:

• Your application, including the right of permanent residence fee: $1,590
• Your application, without the RPRF: $990
• Include your spouse or partner, including the RPRF: $1,590
• Each dependent child: $270

For the earlier caregiver programs still being processed to completion, the amounts are lower: $1,260 including the RPRF, $660 without, and $180 per dependent child. Applicants under the Home Child Care Provider Pilot and Home Support Worker Pilot who are also applying for a work permit must pay the work permit fee separately and include both receipts.

The right of permanent residence fee is now $600. Critically, it is charged at the rate in force on the day you pay it – so applicants who deferred the RPRF and are asked for it after April 30, 2026 owe the full $600 even though they applied earlier. Our Government of Canada immigration fee schedule lists every current fee.

Routes Still Open to Caregivers

The permanent residence pilots are closed, but working in Canada as a caregiver is not impossible. The realistic options are:

• A regular employer-specific work permit supported by a Labour Market Impact Assessment. This is a temporary route and confers no direct path to permanent residence, but it does build Canadian work experience. Be aware that low-wage stream LMIAs face restrictions in some regions and labour markets.
• Provincial nominee streams. Several provinces operate streams covering health care and care-adjacent occupations, and a nomination is worth 600 points under the Comprehensive Ranking System. Criteria vary by province – see our Provincial Nominee Program overview.
• The Canadian Experience Class, for caregivers who have already accumulated qualifying skilled Canadian work experience. Eligibility depends on the TEER classification of your occupation, so check where your specific role falls. See our Canadian Experience Class guide.
• Express Entry health care and social services category rounds, which continued in 2026. These target occupations such as nurse practitioners, pharmacists and psychologists rather than home care roles, so they will not fit most caregivers – but they are worth checking against your credentials.

What is not available is a shortcut. Since March 25, 2025, an LMIA-supported job offer no longer adds CRS points, so securing caregiver employment does not improve an Express Entry score the way it once did.

What a Redesigned Pathway Might Look Like

IRCC has signalled that it intends to redesign caregiver immigration to better balance labour demand and immigration sustainability, but no design details have been published and none are expected before late 2026 at the earliest.

Treat everything beyond that as speculation. Any website or consultant offering to prepare or reserve an application under a future caregiver program, or claiming to know its criteria, is not working from published information. There is no application to file, no queue to join, and no fee that should be paid toward a program that does not yet exist.

How To Prepare While Intake Is Closed

If caregiver immigration remains your goal, the useful work is preparatory:

• Take a language test and, if your score is below CLB 5, work toward improving it. Every caregiver pathway to date has had a language floor, and higher scores help across every alternative route.
• Get your credentials assessed through an IRCC-designated organisation. An educational credential assessment does not expire quickly and is required for most economic streams.
• Document your work experience carefully – reference letters with job titles, duties, hours and dates, matched to the relevant occupational classification. Poor experience documentation is a routine cause of refusal.
• Consider French. Francophone admissions targets are rising to 9 per cent of admissions outside Quebec in 2026 and 10.5 per cent by 2028, and French is worth up to 50 CRS points.
• Follow IRCC’s own announcements rather than intermediaries. Any reopening will be announced publicly by the department.

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Frequently Asked Questions