Canada’s 2025 Immigration and Citizenship Law Changes

Overview

In 2025, Canada introduced sweeping changes to its immigration and citizenship laws. These reforms aim to enhance border security, improve document integrity, and expand citizenship rights for Canadians born abroad. This article summarizes the most impactful updates, based on verified sources from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).

1. Bill C-3: Expanded Citizenship by Descent

In June 2025, the Government of Canada introduced Bill C-3, which amends the Citizenship Act to eliminate the “first-generation limit” on citizenship by descent.

Key Changes:

Citizenship by descent is now available beyond the first generation, provided the Canadian parent has a substantial connection to Canada. A substantial connection is defined as 1,095 days (three years) of physical presence in Canada before the child’s birth or adoption.

The bill restores citizenship to “Lost Canadians”.

2. Strengthening Border Security and Immigration Integrity

In January 2025, IRCC published a backgrounder detailing new measures to reinforce Canada’s border and immigration system.

Major Actions Taken:

Expanded Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA): Now applies to the entire land border, including internal waterways, reducing illegal crossings.

Partial visa requirement for Mexican nationals: Resulted in a 97% drop in asylum claims from Mexican citizens at airports.

Ended “flagpoling”: This practice—used to obtain immigration services at the border—was reduced by 86%, saving thousands of workdays.

Enhanced data sharing: Automated information exchange with the U.S. now includes eTA applicants and permanent resident data.

Visa integrity improvements:

Heightened scrutiny of applications from high-risk countries.
Ended automatic issuance of 10-year multiple-entry visas.
Cancelled the visitor-to-worker public policy.

Express Entry reform: Removed additional points for job offers to reduce misuse of Labour Market Impact Assessments (LMIAs).

3. IRCC’s Forward Regulatory Plan: Enhancing Document Control

IRCC’s Forward Regulatory Plan 2025–2027 includes a proposal titled “New measures in respect of certain applications and documents”, aimed at improving control over immigration documents.

Key Features:

Officers will have expanded authority to cancel, vary, or suspend immigration documents (e.g., visas, eTAs, permits) on a case-by-case basis.

The goal is to ensure that only genuine and legitimate visitors are issued documents.

These changes build on regulations that came into force on January 31, 2025, and aim to improve consistency and integrity in enforcement.

Citizenship