Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has issued formal notice that its revamped online asylum claim system will go live at 11:59 p.m. Eastern on November 2, with the first full business day of operations coming on November 3. The change, announced late yesterday, replaces the legacy “Secure Account” form with an integrated portal that pulls biometric, travel-history and work-permit information directly from IRCC and Canada Border Services Agency databases. Claimants who start but do not submit an application before the switchover must re-enter their data in the new format; those who have already submitted or whose files have been referred to the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) are unaffected. IRCC says the redesign will reduce duplicate questions by 40 percent and cut average submission times from 90 minutes to 45. For employers, the key takeaway is that the public-policy exemption allowing referred asylum seekers to apply for an open work permit remains in force. However, the new system will trigger automatic work-permit eligibility checks against biometrics, meaning claimants with expired passports or pending identity verifications could see processing pauses. HR teams should therefore anticipate longer onboarding timelines for new hires who file claims after November 3. The portal is part of Ottawa’s broader Digital Platform Modernization (DPM) initiative, a CAD 829-million project slated to overhaul all immigration case-management systems by 2028. IRCC has already migrated citizenship grants and certain student-visa functions to the new architecture; permanent-residence streams are scheduled next year. Immigration lawyers advise claimants to download a copy of all screens before submission because the new portal will no longer e-mail a PDF of the entire application—only a confirmation number. They also stress that the IRB will continue to communicate by e-mail and regular mail, not through the portal, so address changes must still be reported separately.
Source: IRCC.com
