If you wanted to work as a stripper in Canada during the 2000s, your visa application came with an unusual requirement: fully nude photographs of yourself performing. No partial nudity allowed—immigration officers needed to verify you were the real deal.

Immigration lawyer Mendel Green, who worked with these applicants, was blunt about the policy: "They can't be partially nude. If they don't have pictures in the nude, they are not going to wiggle their bottoms in Canada."

A Program Born from Bureaucracy

Canada's exotic dancer visa program existed as part of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. At its peak in 2003, the country issued 601 work permits to foreign exotic dancers—582 of them to women from Romania alone. Between 2001 and 2005, a total of 1,713 visas were granted.

The stated purpose? To fill a supposed shortage of exotic dancers in Canada. But the nude photo requirement served a different function entirely: preventing fraud and ensuring applicants were actually experienced performers, not victims of human trafficking being smuggled into the country under false pretenses.

The Government's Awkward Defense

When news of the nude photo policy broke, the Canadian government found itself in an uncomfortable position. Officials denied reports that visa officers were "sifting through hundreds of nude photos," but simultaneously confirmed they did require "photographic evidence" of an applicant's trade.

The justification? Cracking down on trafficking. The irony? The program itself became linked to organized crime and exploitation.

The End of an Era

By 2012, the writing was on the wall. The Conservative government's omnibus budget bill C-38 gave immigration officials the power to refuse and invalidate exotic dancer work permits. The curtain fell completely in 2013 with new regulations:

Paragraph 200(3)(g.1) of Immigration Regulations prohibited work permits for exotic dancers
Officers were legally required to refuse applications for employment in the adult entertainment industry
All temporary resident permits now include a condition: "Not valid for employment in businesses related to the sex trade"

The number of permits had already plummeted—only 12 exotic dancers entered Canada in 2011, down from hundreds annually in the early 2000s.

Today, the "stripper visa" is a relic of immigration history. But for nearly a decade, Canada really did require nude photos to prove you were qualified to take your clothes off professionally. The bureaucratic logic is almost as mind-bending as the policy itself.

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