Border enforcement officials have slowly — and quietly — restricted foreign nationals from validating their permanent resident status and processing work and study permits at land ports of entry in southern Ontario and Quebec.

The move to limit the immigration services at the land border has wreaked havoc for temporary residents in Canada who try to immediately obtain or renew their status by briefly travelling to the United States and back — a long-standing practice known as “flagpoling,” symbolizing applicants making a quick U-turn at flagpoles.

Under a pilot program launched last summer, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) began to restrict “flagpoling” to Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday each week at the Rainbow, Queenston-Lewiston and Peace bridges. It has since expanded to the Lacolle and St-Armand ports of entry in Quebec.

“This is unlawful because there is nothing in the law that authorizes CBSA to deny the processing of these applications for permits and landing documents,” said Barbara Jo Caruso, chair of the Canadian Bar Association’s immigration section.

“We appreciate that CBSA has 90 different legislations they need to adjudicate on. They have drugs and guns to deal with and immigration is one more thing. But these people are Canadian taxpayers and they are being denied services.”

Although members of the bar association were notified about the changes, Caruso said there has been no public notice issued and the border agency’s website includes no cautions about the pilot.

“Given the consequences, to say this is misleading is an understatement,” she said. “We think the oversight is deliberate because to post otherwise would be to publish a process that is contrary to the regulations.”

Flagpoling has been the preferred way to obtain and validate Canadian immigration status for those who are already in Canada because it typically takes less than 30 minutes for the border processing, allowing applicants to bypass the weeks or months for the immigration department to process the same application or schedule a permanent resident landing interview inside Canada.