DZSURDZSA: 4.9 million visas just expired and the Liberals have no clue how many overstayed
"As of December 31, 2025, nearly five million temporary visas in Canada expired, and the government doesn’t know how many of those people became illegal immigrants by refusing to leave."
Did you know that as of December 31, 2025, nearly five million temporary visas in Canada expired, and the government doesn’t know how many of those people became illegal immigrants by refusing to leave?
As Canada enters January 2026, the Liberal government is attempting to project an image of action on immigration. However, the system has fundamentally lost its capacity for self-correction and enforcement.
The widely cited figure of 4.9 million expiring visas has now passed, and by its own admission, the federal government has no way of knowing whether millions of people have actually left the country.
The current system is facing a bottleneck. By the end of 2026, the Canadian government expects another 927,000 work permits to expire. Broken down quarterly, that’s 315,000 people with temporary status with expired visas by March. We are effectively demanding a population equivalent to a mid-sized Canadian city to simply disappear overnight. Perhaps they will, but if the government is so confident in the process, why have they provided so few answers to the Canadian public?
In the recent past, Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab declined to disclose the number of illegal immigrants in Canada when questioned last summer. Pressed on whether these individuals should face deportation by Conservative immigration critic and MP Michelle Rempel Garner, Diab stated the Liberal government merely “expect[s]” them to leave.
“We have rules in this country, and we expect people to follow those rules,” Diab said.
Based on Diab’s assertions, the entire immigration system seemingly runs on administrative hope and faith that temporary immigrants, who have compelling reasons to remain in Canada, will leave voluntarily.
Former Immigration Minister Marc Miller had also admitted to a House committee last year that simply “nobody really knows” how many people stay behind when their status ends.
The government’s plan for 2026 relies on the dubious principle of “voluntary compliance.” Their official statement that “the vast majority leave voluntarily” is essentially asking the public to “just shut up and trust us.”
The government’s other defence, to quiet critics, is that removals (deportations) are at “record highs.” The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) has touted roughly 19,000 enforced removals in 2025. While that sounds impressive to those not paying attention, it is a drop in the bucket compared to the number currently in the country.
Consider the non-compliant international student crisis. If 47,000 individuals entered on student visas but potentially never stepped foot in a classroom, and we can only remove 18,000 people a year in total across all categories, it would take nearly three years just to find and deport the students who lied to get here.
By relying almost entirely on “voluntary compliance” for individuals whose livelihoods and life savings are tied to remaining in Canada, the government has created an enforcement vacuum.
This is being done without adequate enforcement or tracking, creating a situation where violations are not deterred by consequences. That is the scale of the crisis the government has chosen to ignore.
The reason they don't know is that they really don't care. If they did there would be procedures in place that flagged individuals who were still in the country after an expiring visa. Passports are routinely scanned at all departing flights, and can be compared to expired visas - it's not rocket science although it may conflict with the capabilities of the DEI Hires. When I re-enter Canada they ask when I left and my departure date is already on their screen in front of their eyes. So they don't know because they don't care. Let that sink in about what we are paying for.
Wow. The feds added 40% more government workers under JT, with many of them during Covid. And they paid them better than ever. You'd think that someone, somewhere would have found them something to do. This is the exact stuff our overly intrusive public service should be good at. So I guess that in the end no one really cared to develop a system to monitor and regulate every minute of a visa holders life, like they do with so many other things.
As I have commented before, we should stop all immigration, all student visas, all work visas, until we make a system whereby we know where these people are, whether they are still in school, and that when they are supposed to leave they actually leave, or we can take them to the border. Beyond that the ability to deport people, either just overstays or those convicted of crimes, without a 20 year appeals process. Until we do that, everything should stop.