Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today on behalf of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, a coalition of 27 migrant-led organizations and allies. I am also on the coordinating committee of the Migrant Rights Network, Canada’s national migrant justice alliance.
The truth is that a person’s ability to access health care, assert their rights at work, be with their families or protect themselves in a pandemic is directly linked to their citizenship. This is true because the law makes it so. Just as one example, migrant agricultural workers know that a single COVID-19 infection on a farm puts them all in immediate danger, but they cannot risk speaking out because doing so means termination, homelessness, loss of income and deportation.
On Saturday night, Juan Lopez Chaparro passed away. He is the third Mexican migrant farm worker to die in Ontario from COVID-19 following Bonifacio Eugenio-Romero and Rogelio Muñoz Santos. Their pictures are right here.
There are at least 1.6 million temporary or undocumented migrants in Canada, or one in every 23 people. Canada has failed to provide equal rights and support during COVID-19 to at least one in every 23 people. This includes over half a million people in the country with no immigration status, most of whom do not have access to Canada emergency response benefits or even health care.
Undocumented migrant women are forced to move in with abusive men. Families choose unassisted home birth over years of indebtedness to medical bills, and thousands have became homeless. Those who did not lose work faced dangerous conditions but without any essential worker wage top-up.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of migrant domestic workers are trapped by their employers who refuse to let them leave their homes even to buy groceries or send remittances home. These migrant care workers are forced to stay in these conditions to complete hours of work requirements toward permanent residency status. In addition, they must fulfill impossible language and educational assessments to have a chance to reunite with their families.
Over 850,000 people on study or postgraduate permits are unable to find work, have lost wages and are struggling. Many are only eating because of food banks, but post-secondary institutions have raised tuition fees, and existing immigration requirements mean that most will not qualify for permanent resident status.
Tens of thousands of migrant farm workers in Canada came here and are choosing to stay, despite fear of getting sick, because they cannot access income support. We released this report with complaints on behalf of over 1,000 migrant workers about increased racism, surveillance, wage theft, exploitation, labour intensification and inhumane housing.
A multi-tiered system of immigration, where some have permanent residency and therefore rights to health care, family unity and freedom from reprisals while others are temporary or without status, engenders exploitation. That inequality and exploitation have been exacerbated during COVID-19. Not only migrants are saying it. Consider an op-ed published on May 5, 2014, in the Toronto Star which said that this is a “basic issue of fairness” and “Canada needs to re-commit itself to bringing permanent immigrants here who have a path to citizenship”, authored by then MP, now Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau.
Recommendation 16 from this very committee’s report in September 2016 called on Canada to “review the current pathways to permanent residency for all temporary foreign workers, with a view to facilitating access to permanent residency for migrant workers”.
Recommendation 19 from this committee’s study in December 2012, under the previous Conservative government, recommended that Canada should consider “offering better opportunities for temporary foreign workers to eventually become permanent immigrants”.
The reason that permanent immigration has always been a central component of any review on vulnerability and exploitation of non-permanent residents is simple. As Minister Carla Qualtrough said just three days ago, “There’s a power imbalance that exists in this system.” The power imbalance exists wherever there is temporary migration or people are undocumented. By denying them the rights that come with citizenship, laws and lawmakers are tipping the scale in favour of abuse, exploitation, exclusion and death.
We are going to provide this committee with detailed recommendations, but the solution is very simple. Ensure full immigration status for all migrants immediately without exclusion, without exemption, and ensure everyone arrives with full immigration status in the future. This is a matter of life and death.
I have a few final words. First, a path to citizenship or permanent residency is not the solution. A pathway, like the recently launched agri-food immigration pilot, is a promise of future security for some workers if they can jump through impossible hoops, leaving them more at the mercy of employers.
Second, increased inspections, while also necessary, will not solve the problem. Inspections ensure that employers are not breaking the law, but most of what employers are doing is legal. The law does not mandate social distancing, does not create national housing standards and is not a mechanism through which workers can complain.
Third, this is not just about being good enough to work, good enough to stay or guardian angels. Yes, migrants are in jobs that are essential during a public health pandemic, but whether migrants are disabled, homeless or unable to work, they must have the ability to take care of themselves and their families. Whether it is migrant sex workers or migrants working in warehouses, in construction or delivering food, every person is essential. No one deserves to be exploited. Everyone deserves to live.
We need a single-tier system of immigration. That means full immigration status for all in the country, and full immigration status for everyone who arrives in the future. This is essential. It's necessary. It must happen now. People are dying.
Thank you.