Jimmy Emerson, DVM/Flickr. Creative Commons.
Tens of thousands of law-abiding foreign workers residing in Canada became deportable last April. This sudden vulnerability to deportation resulted from the Parliamentary passage of a small legislative change called the “cumulative duration rule”, known colloquially as the “4 in, 4 out” or the “4 and 4 Rule”. Under this rule, non-citizens working on temporary labour visas for four years who had not transitioned to permanent resident status must leave the country for four years—or transfer to visitor or student status—before applying to return.
What this means for children depends on where they were born. Canadian-born children have Canadian citizenship and can stay, while their non-citizen parents must leave; foreign-born children have been asked to quit school and leave. Either way, their parents who have not successfully transitioned to permanent resident status are being faced with the tasks of packing up their (working) lives, including their tax rebates, unpaid wages, and Canadian Pension Plan contributions in a short timeframe.
