2. Risk of cessation for protected persons

You're a protected person if:

• you made a refugee claim in Canada and the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) accepted your claim, or
• a visa officer outside Canada accepted you for resettlement to Canada as a refugee.

Most people who have a successful Pre-Removal Risk Assessment are also protected persons.

Most protected persons apply to also become permanent residents. You remain a protected person even after becoming a permanent resident. This means that you can hold two kinds of status at once.

If you're both a protected person and a permanent resident, you must meet the residency obligation explained in Step 1 to keep your permanent resident status. If you lose your permanent resident status only because you did not meet the residency obligation, you still keep your protected person status. And you can apply again for permanent resident status.

Cessation of status

You can lose both your protected person status and your permanent resident status if you do something that suggests you might not need Canada's protection anymore. For example:

• you travel to your home country for any reason, even for a short time
• you apply for a new passport from your home country
• you use a passport from your home country to travel to other countries, even if you got the passport before becoming a refugee
• you relocate to your home country, buy a home, or run a business there
• you become a citizen of a new country other than Canada

Losing your protection this way is called cessation. If your status is ceased, you become inadmissible to Canada. And you could be deported from Canada to the country you were afraid to return to.

You can lose your status and be removed from Canada even if you have been here for many years.

Get legal help

Get legal help right away if:

• you're thinking of doing something that could start a cessation case against you
• you did something that could cause a cessation case against you

there's already a cessation case against you