Yan Li doesn’t want to uproot her two young daughters again and be forced back to China, but she fears that could happen if Ottawa doesn’t heed calls for an extension to federal work permits this year.

She joined more than 100 people who rallied at the steps of the Manitoba Legislative Building on Tuesday to call on government to extend federal work permits that are set to expire.

“Most of us here … work permits will be expired this year, and if we don’t have [an extension], we go back where we come from,” Li, 38, said. “That would be very terrible.”

Li came to Winnipeg from Wuhan two years ago and graduated from a culinary arts program at the Manitoba Institute of Trades and Technology. Now employed as a cook, she hopes the provincial government is advocating for people like her so her daughters can stay.

The rally comes about two years after Ottawa said it would no longer be extending post-graduate work permits.

That announcement came in late 2023, though in 2024 the federal government approved a request from Manitoba to extend permits for thousands of workers for at least two years.

The cut and past extensions came on the heels of a spike in the number of temporary foreign workers and international students who arrived during the COVID-19 pandemic amid a labour shortage.

After that spike, Ottawa cut the number of permanent residency nominations it allocated province to province as the federal government pulled back on immigration.

In early 2025, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada reduced provincial nominee allotments to 55,000 for last year, down from 110,000 in 2024.

Manitoba Immigration Minister Malaya Marcelino managed to persuade the federal department to increase Manitoba’s allotment to 6,239 last fall, up from the 4,750 announced in January 2025.

But despite that 30 per cent bump, reductions from Ottawa have forced Marcelino to rejig her provincial nominee strategy, prioritizing applicants who have ties to Manitoba or are already in the province on temporary work permits. As of January, there were around 80,000 temporary residents in Manitoba.

Sukhveer Singh said he hopes Marcelino’s office is again trying to negotiate with the Carney government for permit-holders like him anxious about being forced to leave Canada.

Singh has been in the country for eight years. He’s gone through schooling and is now a trucker.

He isn’t sure what he and his wife, and their seven-month-old daughter, will do if his work permit expires before an extension is granted.

“We want to stay here legally, so we are requesting the Manitoba government here to give us a fairness about [an] extension policy,” said Singh, who is originally from Punjab, India.

Marcelino was unavailable for an interview on Tuesday because she is in Ottawa, her office said. CBC News asked if one of the reasons she was there was to negotiate an extension.

A spokesperson with Marcelino’s office told CBC News in a statement that “people with temporary work permits are vital to growing our economy” and that the minister is “in Ottawa advocating for the workers that Manitoban businesses need.”

Ralliers plan to show up at the legislature steps again Wednesday and Thursday.

“We are requesting an extension only, so we can survive and we can see our future ahead over here,” Manpreet Kaur, who got a master’s degree in India before coming to Canada, said at the rally.

“We stand with Manitoba…. We just request that the Manitoba government stand with us.”