He had been studying in Montreal when Mahsa Amini died.
He watched as her death, in the custody of Iranian police after being accused of violating the country’s headscarf law, sparked massive protests — and a fierce crackdown by authorities.
Frightened by the brutality he saw happening in Iran, he said he was grateful when Ottawa launched a special humanitarian program offering Iranians already in Canada, like him, study and work permits.
Even before the U.S. attacked Iran this year, he said it felt unsafe to return home, and he only travelled as far as Turkey to visit his family.
But now that nine-day trip in April 2025 is coming back to haunt him. The Immigration Department is signalling that migrants in Canada under in-Canada crisis response measures such as those for Ukrainian and Hong Kong nationals will lose their temporary resident status if they travel outside Canada before applying under the public policy.
The Montrealer, whose name the Star isn’t publishing as he fears repercussions if he goes back, is among a growing number of Iranians who have recently been denied work permit renewals under that policy for failing to maintain a “continuous physical presence in Canada” prior to submitting their application — a requirement that they say wasn’t there at the time of their applications but is now implemented retroactively.
“That wasn’t the rule when I applied to renew my work permit,” said the 38-year-old electrical engineer. He applied in October and got his refusal in late June.
“If we had known that was the requirement, we would not have travelled.”
Immigration Department updates rules
On April 2, the department updated its expired 2025 Iranian policy to require that an applicant stay in Canada until they submit the application, though they may leave the country while the application is pending.
That appears to change the original rule, which stipulated that an applicant remain in Canada at the time of application and until a decision is rendered.
Refused applicants said they had applied for their work permits before the update, and accused Ottawa of moving the goalposts midway in a push to get temporary residents out of the country.
What’s fuelling further confusion is the 2026 edition of the policy, also time-stamped on April 2, which said “short absences from Canada (i.e. 1 to 2 weeks) may be accepted” for applications received on or after March 1 this year.
Immigration data showed that 93,760 work permits were valid under the Iranian policy in 2026, though half of them will have expired by year end. From March 2025 to April 2026, 2,845 applications were approved and 505 were refused.
In response to the Star’s inquiry, the Immigration Department said there have been no changes to eligibility under these measures.
The updated instruction is simply “more explicit that the applicant must maintain temporary residence in Canada from the date of their arrival (pre-Feb. 28, 2025) up to the date that they submit their application under these measures,” it said in an email.
“This long-standing requirement is consistent with other in-Canada crisis response measures, including those implemented for Ukrainian and Hong Kong nationals.”
The department said the “clarified” guidance is meant to ensure the public policy is consistently applied to support Iranian nationals seeking work permit extensions who arrived in Canada before Feb. 28, 2025, have maintained temporary residence in Canada up to the time of application, and may be unable to safely return to Iran.
It said when a foreign national leaves Canada, they no longer hold temporary resident status and must be reassessed if they seek to return. Depending on an individual’s circumstances, travel outside Canada before applying under the public policy may affect their eligibility, it added.
“Work permit extensions issued under these temporary measures do not contribute to the Government of Canada’s objective of reducing the temporary resident population to five per cent by the end of 2027,” the department maintained.
“These measures apply only to eligible Iranian nationals who are already in Canada and do not authorize new temporary residents to enter the country.”
(The federal government’s 2024-26 immigration levels plan did take departures of study and work permit holders into account in its projection for reducing the share of temporary residents in the overall population, including an outflow of 1.26 million non-permanent residents in 2025, 1.1 million in 2026 and 875,129 in 2027.)
What an immigration consultant was told
Toronto immigration consultant Yalda Ghani said one of her clients was refused in December on the grounds that the person had been out of the country. She contacted the department for clarification via a channel dedicated to immigration counsel.
The response, a copy of which was shared with the Star, said the policy does not stipulate that the foreign national must have “continuously” remained in Canada since their arrival on or before Feb. 28, 2025.
“They would still be eligible to apply from within Canada,” the email reply said, “regardless of whether they had left Canada and subsequently re-entered after their original date of entry.”
Ghani said the department then updated the policy in April and started refusing applicants for failing to remain in the country before applying for work permits under this measure. Those refused not only include people visiting Iran but also others who had travelled to Mexico for vacations and to the U.S. for business.
While many applications were refused, she said a fraction were approved despite evidence that the applicants had travelled before applying.
“People are getting devastated with this change because the day the work permit is refused, they lose their status and can’t work anymore,” said Ghani, who runs a Telegram group with about 2,000 concerned members.
“They’re not refugees here. These people are working here. Why shouldn’t they be able to go out and come back?”
What a lawyer says applicants should do
Vancouver immigration lawyer Will Tao said it has become too common that officials are altering guidelines, or changing a website that suddenly tightens program eligibility. What the department published in April did not appear to be an update or clarification but a different rule, he added.
Tao said the department notice didn’t say the physical presence requirement would apply retroactively to people who submitted their applications before that date, hence these refusals raise serious procedural fairness concerns.
“It should follow the way that it was when they applied, not the way it changed midway through,” he explained. “The person who is applying would have no clue what the thing would be.”
Canada has issued 575,025 temporary resident permits to people affected by wars, violence and natural disasters through various special measures since 2022. While Ottawa’s one-time immigration initiatives to shelter Ukrainians, Hong Kongers, Sudanese and Gazans, among others, are seen as well-intended, many of the newcomers are clinging to temporary status, unable to get permanent residence due to reduced immigration quotas.
Although some of them could have met the criteria for asylum in Canada, Tao said that avenue has been closed under the law passed in March that stipulates claims must be made within a year of a person’s arrival in Canada. Anyone who first arrived after June 24, 2020, is subject to the changes, regardless of whether they left and returned.
To applicants seeking renewal of their permits under these special measures, Tao said they shouldn’t just put a link to the policy in their submission, but include a PDF copy of the relevant webpages with a time-stamp on it.
“That would be very key down the road if you’re thinking about asking for reconsideration or judicial review,” he explained. “It’s like, ‘Hey, I’d told you the policy that I was applying under.’”
