By Ollie Williams and Aastha Sethi | Cabin Radio
Yellowknife resident Sarmistha Mustafi moved to the city last year as her final attempt at applying for Canadian permanent residency.
Mustafi, who works for Northview Residential REIT, said her employer wants to help her secure a nomination through the Northwest Territories Nominee Program.
Nominee programs are immigration streams that award points to foreign workers who wish to stay and work in a certain province or territory.
The number of points you accumulate over time has an impact on your ability to qualify for some means of acquiring permanent residency. A place in a nominee program can make a huge difference because it offers 600 points (the maximum score in the system being 1,200).
The score you need to become a permanent resident changes over time. The federal government routinely issues cut-off scores, inviting people with scores above the cut-off to become permanent residents.
Mustafi is one of many temporary residents who were ready to file an application to the N.W.T.’s nominee program on Thursday morning, when the portal was expected to reopen for 100 applicants – each hoping to collect the 600 points that help them along the road to residency.
Some applicants had spent months waiting for the opportunity since, in July last year, the territory paused its program after hitting its 300-applicant cap for 2024. The cap is controlled by the federal government and determines how many applicants each province or territory can accept annually.
Unexpectedly, the N.W.T.’s Department of Education, Culture and Employment called off the program’s reopening late on Wednesday night.
The department said it had just been told by the federal agency responsible – Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada – that its annual allotment for the program had been halved from 300 to 150. The territory said it would pause the reopening to buy time to “reassess” what it does with a far lower cap than expected.
The sudden reversal left workers like Mustafi struggling on Thursday to keep up.
Mustafi arrived to Canada from India on a student visa in July 2021. She said she had since relocated four times amid “all sorts of financial struggles and stress” in order to secure a place in a nominee program. (The various jurisdictions’ nominee programs are often abbreviated to PNP as, in most of Canada, they are known as provincial nominee programs.)
Mustafi relocated from Ontario to Edmonton to see if applying for permanent residency was any easier there. When nothing changed, she began working in Peace River, Alberta and tried to apply for the Rural Renewal Stream Program.
Then she drove to Yellowknife in the hope of settling in the community.
“The 2024 program was paused so we could not do anything. As the program was about to start, everything was ready. My representative, myself, my family, everybody was in a standby mode,” she said.
“I am deeply disappointed and I am sure many others are. Immigrants who come here, their only purpose is not financial gain. Although it is a factor, their main purpose is to settle here with their families and build a stable life.
“I have spent three years in this country paying tax, hoping to secure permanent residency for my future. It seems very uncertain with the things going on right now.”
Though Mustafi’s work permit is set to expire next year, her partner’s permit is only valid for the next five months.
‘Prepared but not prepared’
Arun Singh of ECEN Immigration, a consultancy based in Yellowknife, said he has been answering calls from worried clients. He said some could not sleep after Wednesday night’s announcement that the N.W.T.’s program would not reopen as planned.
“I have clients who were crying on the phone last night because their permits are expiring next month, the following month,” he said.
“Understanding the IRCC situation right now with their programs, they have no hope.”
Singh said employers have also expressed concern about not being able to retain workers they have trained over a long period. Some workers may move out of the territory to apply for a stream elsewhere, while others will be required to leave the country once their work permit expires.
The federal government already planned to cut PNP allocations by half from 110,000 in 2024 to 55,000 this year. Though people were aware of this, Singh said that was not expected to be the case for the N.W.T.
The territorial government was instead trying to secure an increase in its annual allotment from last year’s 300 candidates to 500, on the grounds that international migration into the territory has sustained its population and parts of its economy in recent years.
During a visit to Yellowknife last year, Canadian immigration minister Marc Miller had appeared supportive of efforts to sustain more immigration in the territory and gave no indication that numbers would go down.
“Everyone was prepared, but not prepared. When the government said they are opening with 100 applications, that was very stressful for the candidates, too,” Singh said, pointing to the uncertainty associated with the first-come, first-served approach the GNWT had planned to use before it called off the reopening.
Singh said that approach has been ineffective in other provinces. He wants the GNWT to do things differently.
“We have no clarity how they would handle so much load on the website. It happened in Nova Scotia, it happened in Alberta as well. The system opened at nine o’clock in the morning and crashed at 9:06am,” he said.
“There should be something [that involves] a skillset. If they’re like, ‘You’re working for this much time, you have this much education, you’re good,’ it brings acceptance rather than an open race marathon. It’s not that way.”
Aimen Mushtaq has been waiting to submit an application since last year. She said all of her documents were ready when the program shut down. Now, she is trying to renew documents that have expired since.
Mushtaq said her only viable option is to apply for a PNP. Another route would have been to get a job supported by a Labour Market Impact Assessment – a tool employers can use to demonstrate the need for a foreign worker – but the federal government stopped awarding points for those in December. Points are all-important in deciding what happens to someone’s application.
“It’s such big news to me right now, so I am just trying to get my head wrapped around it to move forward,” Mushtaq said.
“I’m just in a bit of a shock right now with all these changes. They have put me in question about my entire future.
“IRCC needs to understand that N.W.T. businesses need people. I think 500 [allotted applicants] would really help because that would mean that we would be able to retain a lot of people. That means the businesses that were already worrying about losing people and starting from scratch to find new employees, they would not have to do that.”
‘Very disheartening’
Maya, not her real name, immigrated to Canada in 2021 from Bangladesh. After finishing her studies at Toronto’s Centennial College, she worked in the city for two years and relocated to Alberta to try her luck in the province’s PNP process.
When she got there, the province’s immigration stream was closed, so Maya initially waited for the process to reopen. After six months, she decided to move to Yellowknife in 2024.
Even with all of her documents in hand and an employer willing to assist her with the application, she could not apply for PNP because of the program’s early closure last year.
With a year remaining on her work permit, Maya did not worry much about the wait for the program to reopen in early 2025. After the N.W.T. government announced its reopening plan for January 16, she said she had “high hopes.” Then Wednesday night’s announcement came.
“I was just going to bed and checking my documents and then I heard the news … One of my colleagues called me and said ‘Maya, it’s not happening,'” she said.
“We need the right guideline. Them giving us all the hope in something and then taking all the hope [away] is very, very disheartening.
“It’s already 300 at first and now it’s dropping down to 150 [allotted spots for the year]. Now, we don’t know what the process will look like … Next year is it promised? The government is not even allowing work permit extension. Am I going to live in Canada? What’s going to happen next?”
Maya said the uncertainty about how many skilled workers will be accepted within the year’s PNP intake concerns her. She said she has noticed “drastic changes” in the way immigration guidelines have evolved in recent years.
Maya’s educational qualifications include a bachelor’s degree from back home and a two-year diploma gained in Canada. Her partner has a master’s degree in business administration.
Typically, international student fees are a lot higher compared to those paid by domestic students. According to a 2024 Statistics Canada report,international undergraduates pay nearly five times more in tuition fees, on average, than Canadian students.
Maya believes immigration streams like the Canadian Experience Class – for skilled workers who have work experience in Canada and want to become permanent residents – demand too many points of people for qualification, even after studying in the country, working in the Canadian economy and securing high language scores.
“Frustrating? definitely. When you want to start a marathon, you know it is going to end. But right now, there is no end point. You don’t know what will be the next step. Express entry is closed, PNP is closed. Now what?” she said.
Maya said she will wait for GNWT’s next announcement and one more PNP draw to see if her application is successful. If not, she will move to a fourth location.
“It’s very tiring, mentally. This PR journey feels like it does not matter how much you have worked hard. It’s not coming through,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter even if I give more taxes. It’s not even about taxes. It feels like there is only one way. I am giving everything, but when it is time for return, I am not getting anything back.
“They are indirectly saying to us, ‘leave Canada.’ Nothing else.”
