Canada could have 1 million undocumented Indian immigrants by mid-2026

Canada could before long feature to struggle with a swamp of undocumented immigrants, nearly half of them from bharat, as record numbers of work permits expired in 2025 and will continue to do so in 2026.

According to data from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada or IRCC approximately 1,053,000 work permits expired by the end of 2025 and another 927,000 will do so in 2026. These statistics were obtained by Mississauga-based immigration consultant Kanwar Seirah, who shared them with the Hindustan Times.

As these work permits expired, their holders go out of status, living illegally in the country, unless they transition to another visa or obtain permanent residency. Each of these pathways has narrowed with the Canadian Government has continued the process of curbing immigration, particularly in the non-permanent categories that include international students and temporary workers while also introducing new norms to mitigate burgeoning asylum claims.

“It’s going to get very chaotic,” Sierah said, alluding to the number of immigrants in danger of losing legal status in the country.

He pointed out that Canada has never had to contend with such high numbers of people going out of status. The first quarter of 2026 alone will have a record high of nearly 315,000 expiries, creating a “bottleneck” in the system, according to Sierah. In the last quarter of 2025, that number was over 291,000.

He said it would be safe of assume there will be at least two million undocumented immigrants in Canada by the middle of 2026, and with those from India comprising at least half that number. He said the figure for Indians was a “very conservative estimate.”

In fact, the numbers may well be higher given that tens of thousands of study permits will also expire and asylum claims will be denied.

This phenomenon of a growing undocumented population in the country has led to social issues like encampments in wooded areas of the Greater Toronto Area or GTA like Brampton and Caledon. Brampton-based journalist Nitin Chopra, who documented one such tent city there, said there was anecdotal information of out-of-status immigrants from India working for cash and fly-by-night operators opening bureaus for marriages of convenience.

Groups like Naujawan Support Network, an activist group for workers’ rights, are planning to protest the evolving immigration situation in January including the crisis of expiring permits. Toronto-based Bikramjit Singh, an activist with the Network, said they were trying to “build momentum” towards joint action to address the plight of immigrant workers lacking pathways to remain legally in Canada. As the Network’s campaign slogan states, “Good enough to work, good enough to stay.”

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