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Community agencies say Edmonton is experiencing a large wave of undocumented migrants as changes by the federal government to the temporary foreign worker program hit hard, a city council committee was told Monday.

The recent cap on temporary foreign work permits meant new permits were denied, even for families who had worked in Canada for more than a decade, said Marco Luciano with Migrante Alberta.

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Children who were born in Edmonton are now being denied access to schools, said Luciano, and parents are afraid to access Edmonton libraries and request subsidized transit passes while they work under the counter, put in new residency applications and hope something might change to allow them to legally find jobs.

“It’s easy to say, ‘You finished your work permit, why don’t you just go back home.’ A lot of these migrants came here because there’s just no opportunity back home. They go hungry when they stay home,” said Luciano, who was lobbying for the city to grant access for undocumented migrants to city services without risk of deportation.

The federal Conservative government implemented the four-year term limit on temporary foreign workers in 2011. Now community agency officials estimate there are between 10,000 and 25,000 people in Edmonton with no immigration status or uncertain immigration status.