Hello everybody.
Basically, my wife Lek and I have been working with Thai migrant workers since January, when we discovered there were Thais in the area. It turned out they had been in the area for four or five years, but migrant workers lie so low under the radar that you don't notice they're there. We first found out about them from a neighbour who had seven of them, and we basically helped out, with him, in terms of communication, because there were a certain number of communication problems. Out of that we started teaching English. We have several classes once a week in Leamington, Blenheim, and Dresden, and through that we've learned about all the different problems they've come out with.
Everything I've heard reflects what Sister Sue has mentioned about their history in Thailand--the indebtedness. They come here as debt slaves. That's what people from Asia come here as when they come as workers with the low-skilled workers service program.
So we've been trying to help them out through teaching English, and also by having them have some understanding of their rights, which is very difficult to get across. We're also working, for instance, in rescuing workers. There were two groups of workers who came here last September: one group of 35 women in Chatham and another 100 in Toronto. They are people who come here and then within several weeks, within two or three weeks, all the work is done. So you have people here who pay $10,000 to come overseas and within a week or two all their work is finished; they have no work. Their employer does not have work for them. So what are these people going to do? Who do you go to? Do you call up HRSDC? What can they do? They have no mandate to go into the field anyway, so they cannot go into the field and try to help sort things out.
So basically we help to make connections between certain employers who do need people, who have LMOs with HRSDC. They have need of people and they can then transfer these people onto their LMO. So this is not a very complicated thing, but we've managed to help 49 people this way, people from Toronto and Chatham who have gotten lost in the system. There are still large numbers out there who are working in sweatshops, underground places, different kinds of places. I have names, but I don't think I should mention them here, where basically they're working for cash money. They have no health coverage. They have no protection from the law. They are basically working in sweatshops. I would say half of the Thai migrant workers here in Ontario are already illegal.
It's very difficult to help these people, so all we can do is provide some English training for them. In one case we provided mattresses for them because they had no mattresses to sleep on in their house, and also we've been able to give very limited medical aid to a few of these people. For the great majority of people we can't really do too much. They get people who come to them, agents who will promise that they will get them refugee status. And they will quote them. They will say, “For $1,500, I will get you a year of refugee status. For $3,000, I'll get you two years of refugee status.” Of course, it's all hokey, but these are the kinds of things to which these desperate people are subjected, and in fact, labour agents who use them illegally also often force them to apply for refugee status as part of the deal for their staying on with them.
Our biggest thrust is to try to find a solution and to try to build a better model for this system. With seven greenhouse employers in Leamington, basically once they've gotten to understand the problems with having a labour contractor and going through a labour contractor, they have come around to the fact that they have to be able to handle their own paperwork, to be able to deal directly with their workers, to be able to deal directly with HRSDC, and to be able to get some stability in the program.
With these several employers, for instance, we had a meeting a few weeks ago, again to work on their different problems and to work through the paperwork to try to successfully make this program work.