Living undocumented in Canada has been rare in part because it is difficult to access services

International news via Reuters:

Migrants living in Canada are facing longer waits to renew paperwork that would allow them to keep working legally, as growing backlogs and changing rules stymie efforts to maintain legal status, according to interviews and data obtained by Reuters.

Losing status means people who have paid taxes cannot work or access medical care and other services in a country that has long prided itself for its universal health care.

Canada is trying to reduce the number of migrants in the country as they have been blamed for straining services – a sharp change after years of growth – and is relying on people to leave voluntarily to meet its targets. 

Canada’s immigration department said people can work while their application is processed but did not respond by the deadline to a question about people who lose status because of long waits.

According to the immigration department’s website, people can keep working as long as they get a labour market impact assessment needed to maintain their status within 60 days of applying to renew their work permit. 

Reuters spoke with four families who lost work permits because they have been waiting for much longer than that. It is not known how many people are in this position. 

The labour market impact assessment processing time for temporary workers hoping to become permanent residents in Canada has been increasing since at least fall 2022, and almost tripled from 58 business days in September 2023 to 165 business days in March 2025, according to data from Canada’s employment department obtained by Reuters. 

The department said the lengthier waits are due in part to an influx of applications but would not provide the number of applications pending by month. Lawyers and experts say changing rules, as well as more applicants, may be contributing to the growing backlog.

The number of people applying for work permits within the country has grown compared to last year – as has the share of those applications that Canada is refusing, data from Canada’s immigration department shows.

An email seen by Reuters from Service Canada, which processes these applications, said that as of April 1, 2025, the department was still processing labour market impact assessment applications submitted a year earlier.

“We are seeing a backlog now of more than a year. … It’s the first time we are seeing such a delay,” said immigration consultant Kanwar Sierah.

People are losing their immigration status, Sierah said, and some are working under the table for exploitative employers or falling victim to “unscrupulous actors” who give them bad advice, for example by urging them to apply for asylum when they may not have a strong case.

Reuters spoke with migrants who have returned to their country of origin and to people living legally in Canada with no ability to support themselves.

Living undocumented in Canada has been rare in part because it is so difficult to access services without status. Estimates have put Canada’s undocumented population in the hundreds of thousands in a country of some 40 million.

Canada’s Liberal government pledged to give undocumented people status but then backtracked and said it would provide it on a small scale for people working in certain sectors.

Prime Minister Mark Carney, who leads polls ahead of an April 28 election, promises to cap immigration for now. 

A DREAM ‘SHATTERING’

Devi Acharya was too scared to go to a hospital when she started to miscarry in early March – she could not afford another medical bill. 

“If I got medical attention on time, maybe we could have saved the baby.”

Acharya does not have health coverage for the same reason she cannot work: Her work permit expired while she waited for a labour market impact assessment, so if she seeks medical care, she could be handed a hefty bill. 

Canada’s temporary foreign worker program requires most employers wanting to hire non-citizens in Canada temporarily to file for a labour market impact assessment that says the position cannot be filled by a local resident.

A spokesperson for the employment department said demand for its temporary foreign worker program varies, that it received a high volume of applications prior to last fall and that it expects processing times to improve over the next six months. 

Acharya came to Canada from India with her husband and son in October 2022, working in housekeeping at Prince Rupert’s Highliner Hotel in British Columbia.

She liked the work. She and her husband bought a house. 

They applied for new labour market impact assessments in September, her immigration consultant told Reuters. They have received no response. Their work permits expired. They are in Canada legally but cannot work. Navdev, now five years old, cannot go to school.

“Two years before we were dreaming of making Canada home,” she said, “and now it’s shattering.”

Reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny; Editing by Caroline Stauffer and Aurora Ellis

Died in the Vatican at the age of 88 after battling illness

International news via Reuters:

Argentines, fresh from holding Easter family gatherings around the parrilla barbecue, woke on Monday to the sad news that Pope Francis, the former archbishop of Buenos Aires, had died in the Vatican at the age of 88 after battling illness.

Born in Buenos Aires as Jorge Bergoglio in 1936 to Italian immigrant parents, Francis was the first Latin American pope. Some in his homeland regretted that he never returned as pontiff, but he gained plaudits for his focus on the poor.

“It is with profound sorrow that I learned this sad morning that Pope Francis, Jorge Bergoglio, passed away today and is now resting in peace,” Argentina’s libertarian President Javier Milei wrote in a message on social media platform X.

Milei, a bombastic economist strongly in favor of free markets, had clashed with the pope previously, lambasting him as a socialist and even calling him the devil’s representative on earth, though patched things up once in office.

Argentina’s presidency office praised Pope Francis’ focus on inter-religious dialogue, building up spirituality amongst the young and for pushing cost-cutting in the Vatican, something that tallies with Milei’s ‘chainsaw’ austerity.

“Despite differences that seem minor today, having been able to know him in his goodness and wisdom was a true honor for me,” Milei added on X. “I bid farewell to the Holy Father and stand with all of us who are today dealing with this sad news.”

In the still-dark early morning outside the Buenos Aires cathedral, most Argentines were still just finding out about the news as they made their way to work. A mass for Pope Francis was expected to be held at 8.30 a.m. local time (1130 GMT).

Reporting by Lucila Sigal; Writing by Adam Jourdan

Experts say the problem is exacerbated by emissions from heavy vehicles and its topography

International news via Reuters:

 Two-year-old Sumaiya Ansari, a resident of India’s Byrnihat town which is ranked the world’s most polluted metropolitan area by Swiss Group IQAir, was battling breathing problems for several days before she was hospitalised in March and given oxygen support.

She is among many residents of the industrial town on the border of the northeastern Assam and Meghalaya states – otherwise known for their lush, natural beauty – inflicted by illnesses that doctors say are likely linked to high exposure to pollution.

Byrnihat’s annual average PM2.5 concentration in 2024 was 128.2 micrograms per cubic meter, according to IQAir, over 25 times the level recommended by the WHO.

PM2.5 refers to particulate matter measuring 2.5 microns or less in diameter that can be carried into the lungs, causing deadly diseases and cardiac problems.

“It was very scary, she was breathing like a fish,” said Abdul Halim, Ansari’s father, who brought her home from hospital after two days.

According to government data, the number of respiratory infection cases in the region rose to 3,681 in 2024 from 2,082 in 2022.

“Ninety percent of the patients we see daily come either with a cough or other respiratory issues,” said Dr. J Marak of Byrnihat Primary Healthcare Centre. 

Residents say the toxic air also causes skin rashes and eye irritation, damages crops, and restricts routine tasks like drying laundry outdoors.

“Everything is covered with dust or soot,” said farmer Dildar Hussain.

Critics say Byrnihat’s situation reflects a broader trend of pollution plaguing not just India’s cities, including the capital Delhi, but also its smaller towns as breakneck industrialisation erodes environmental safeguards.

Unlike other parts of the country that face pollution every winter, however, Byrnihat’s air quality remains poor through the year, government data indicates.

Home to about 80 industries – many of them highly polluting – experts say the problem is exacerbated in the town by other factors like emissions from heavy vehicles, and its “bowl-shaped topography”.

“Sandwiched between the hilly terrain of Meghalaya and the plains of Assam, there is no room for pollutants to disperse,” said Arup Kumar Misra, chairman of Assam’s pollution control board.

The town’s location has also made a solution tougher, with the states shifting blame to each other, said a Meghalaya government official who did not want to be named.

Since the release of IQAir’s report in March, however, Assam and Meghalaya have agreed to form a joint committee and work together to combat Byrnihat’s pollution.

Reporting by Tora Agarwala; Writing by Sakshi Dayal; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan

Being held on charges of treason against the Tanzanian government

International news via Reuters:

Tanzania’s main opposition party said on Saturday its leader Tundu Lissu, who has been held and charged with treason, had been moved to a different prison, a day after the party said his whereabouts were unknown.

The charges against Lissu have brought new scrutiny to President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s human rights record as she bids for re-election in late October. Hassan has frequently said her government is committed to upholding human rights and good governance.

A spokesperson for Lissu’s CHADEMA said the party’s leaders had met Tanzania Prisons Service officials and been informed that he had been moved.

“CHADEMA would like to inform the public … Lissu has been transferred to Ukonga Prison,” party spokesperson Brenda Rupia said in a statement.

Tanzania Prisons Service spokesperson Elizabeth Mbezi did not respond to calls and text messages requesting comment.

Gerson Msigwa, the government spokesperson, said once a person is charged any comments related to their cases was the responsibility of the authorities in charge of the case.

On Friday, CHADEMA had said party officials, Lissu’s lawyers and family members had tried unsuccessfully to get access to him at a jail in the capital Dar es Salaam where he had been held since April 10.

Rupia later told Reuters the party had not been told why their leader was transferred to the new prison. 

Lissu, the runner-up in the country’s 2020 presidential election, was charged with treason last week over what prosecutors said was a speech calling on the public to rebel and disrupt the election due later this year. He was not allowed to enter a plea on the treason charge.

Last weekend the election commission said CHADEMA would be disqualified from the election over its refusal to sign a code of conduct as it demands electoral reforms.

Hassan earned accolades after coming to power in 2021 for relaxing repression of political opponents and censorship of the media that took root under her predecessor John Magufuli, who died in office.

But she has received mounting criticism from human rights activists over a series of arrests and unexplained abductions and killings of political opponents.

Writing by George Obulutsa; Editing by Hugh Lawson

Teaser Paragraph here…,

International news via Reuters:

A Russian court handed down a prison sentence of nearly three years to Darya Kozyreva, a young activist who used 19th-century poetry and graffiti to protest the conflict in Ukraine.

A Reuters witness in the court on Friday said Kozyreva, 19, was found guilty of repeatedly “discrediting” the Russian army after she put up a poster with lines of Ukrainian verse on a public square and gave an interview to Sever.Realii, a Russian-language service of Radio Free Europe.

She pleaded not guilty, calling the case against her “one big fabrication,” according to a trial transcript compiled by Mediazona, an independent news outlet.

She was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison.

Kozyreva is one of an estimated 234 people imprisoned in Russia for their anti-war position, according to a tally by Memorial, a Nobel Prize-winning Russian human rights group.

In December 2022, aged just 17, Kozyreva sprayed “Murderers, you bombed it. Judases” in black paint on a sculpture of two intertwined hearts, erected outside St Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum and representing the city’s links with Mariupol, a Ukrainian city largely razed to the ground during a siege that spring.

In early 2024, after being fined 30,000 roubles ($370) for posting about Ukraine online, Kozyreva was expelled from the medical faculty of St Petersburg State University.

A month later, on the conflict’s two-year anniversary, she taped a piece of paper containing a fragment of verse by Taras Shevchenko, a father of modern Ukrainian literature, onto a statue of him in a St Petersburg park:

“Oh bury me, then rise ye up / And break your heavy chains / And water with the tyrants’ blood / The freedom you have gained.”

Kozyreva was swiftly arrested and held in pre-trial detention for nearly a year, until she was released this February to house arrest.

Addressing the court on Friday, Kozyreva said she believed she had committed no crime.

“I have no guilt, my conscience is clear,” she said, according to Mediazona’s transcript.

“Because the truth is never guilty.”

($1 = 80.9000 roubles)

Reporting by Reuters in St Petersburg and Mark Trevelyan and Lucy Papachristou in London; Writing by Lucy Papachristou; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise