EDITORIAL: How immigration’s Hail Mary pass works

Howls of dismay from those who believed their temporary visas were an express pass to permanent residency.

Published Jul 31, 2026  •  Last updated 19 minutes ago  •  2 minute read

Former Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship of Canada and Former Alberta Premier Jason Kenney. Photo by Hyungcheol Park /Postmedia Network

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Canada has a proud history of compassion, combined with common sense, when it comes to immigration. It’s a country built on the backs of newcomers who arrived with skills and talents and high hopes.

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Successive waves of refugees from war-torn countries arrived looking for a free and democratic country, better economic prospects and a brighter future for their children.

For decades, it worked well. Then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau massively ramped up immigration to unprecedented levels. By 2025, half a million newcomers a year were arriving, exacerbating a critical housing shortage and putting a strain on health care and social services.

In 2024, Trudeau finally admitted what most of us already knew: In what was the understatement of the decade, he said, “We didn’t get the balance quite right.”

The massive influx was driven mostly by the temporary workers program and student visas. Mark Carney’s government has now slowed that by about 70% over 2024 figures.

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Predictably, this has led to howls of dismay from those who believed their temporary visas were an express pass to permanent residency.

Canada’s longest-serving Immigration minister, Jason Kenney, made some observations on X about a flurry of sob stories in left-wing media about people whose visas have run out.

He calls them the “Hail Mary pass” and part of the playbook of certain immigration consultants and lawyers.

“This poor person came to Canada temporarily (or illegally) and wants to stay forever, but can’t,” he said.

“When their client runs out of legal recourses to convert their inadmissibility or temporary residency into permanent residency, they call their favourite bleeding-heart reporter at the (Toronto) Star or the CBC, and voila — a completely one-sided ‘human interest’ story.”

Their case gets the attention of the immigration minister ahead of millions of other files with which the ministry is dealing. We may feel empathy for those who want to stay here permanently but don’t qualify, but “a well-managed immigration system must be based on the rule of law, not empathy,” Kenney said in his post.

The great tragedy of Trudeau’s mismanagement of the immigration system is that the Liberals have undermined what was once a successful, well-managed system and turned it into something Canadians — especially those who jumped through all the Immigration hoops to come here legally — now view as a negative.

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