A student finishing a 2-year program faced a clash: the PGWP must be applied for within 90 days of completion, but their passport expired ten months later. Members who had been through this laid out the options:
- Why it matters: the PGWP is capped at your passport expiry. If you apply with a soon-expiring passport, the permit will be issued only until that date — and you'll later have to file extra paperwork to extend the PGWP to its full length. One member called this out as 'very inconvenient' and avoidable.
- Renew the passport before applying for the PGWP if at all possible. Members corrected the poster's assumption about renewal windows: Indian passports can be renewed up to one year before expiry (not just 7 months), and renewal was taking about six weeks. In this case, that meant renewing a couple of months before the course ended — comfortably inside the 90-day PGWP window.
- If timing doesn't work out, the permit itself can be fixed later. A member whose roommate hit the same issue explained: the three-year work permit was granted, but the visa stamp (TRV) was issued only to the passport expiry; after renewing the passport they submitted the new passport for a fresh TRV stamp.
The order of operations that saves the most hassle: renew passport → receive new passport → apply for PGWP within the 90-day window.