Thank you for this invitation.
I wish to highlight three issues that speak to what I believe essentially stems from a paucity of gender analysis with regards to immigrant sponsorship policies.
Firstly, I ask that we reflect on the language used to describe this issue. In much of the discourse women are described as vulnerable, as victims, and in need of protection. However, people are not inherently vulnerable. They are instead made vulnerable by material, political, and socio-cultural conditions. Therefore, we need to ensure that women or any other potentially marginalized group are not compelled to bear undue negative impacts as a result of policies and practices. If we focus on the ways to highlight women's agency and their right to autonomy throughout the immigration process, we would be better able to build on women's capacities and capitalize on what they can offer to Canadian society.
Secondly, I ask us to consider how the structure of spousal sponsorships ultimately creates and/or reinforces dependent and unequal relationships that belies Canada's commitment to gender equality, as the policy endows one person, usually the male in heterosexual couples, with power over his partner. Amongst immigrant couples, men are most often the designated principal applicants, even if both partners have similar professional backgrounds. Women are relegated therefore to the status of sponsored spouses. As the principal applicant's training and work experience anchors the family's case for immigration, it often follows that any investment required to obtain Canadian credentials, be it in terms of finances or time, is channelled towards men's careers. In essence, the program reinforces an outdated model of single—again, generally male—breadwinners and dependent spouses.
Under these circumstances, women are often launched on a spiral of downward mobility characterized by deskilling and a loss of social status. Once again, we lose out as a society when these individuals are unable to realize their full potential. I acknowledge that some of these gender disparities may be pre-existing. However, I still maintain that the framework of spousal sponsorship helps to naturalize and reinforce inequities.
Thirdly, I'd like us to consider the case of women as sponsors of family members and how in fact these regulations can operate to make them vulnerable in this capacity. We note that foreign-born women, particularly from non-European source countries, experience the most precipitous decline in professional and economic status as compared to other groups of newcomers. The threshold income required for family sponsorship has risen, thereby disproportionately excluding women from being joined by family members.
I'll share with you some of the research I've conducted with immigrant women who came to Canada under the auspices of the live-in caregiver program, the LCP, to illustrate this point. After completing their obligations under the program, former LCP workers generally find themselves in low-paying jobs regardless of prior training or education. For example, in our study over 40% of former live-in caregivers earned between $10,000 and $19,000 annually, and this was at a time when individual Canadians earned approximately $41,000 or more.
What does this relative impoverishment mean then for female immigrants, such as a single woman who wishes to bring her parents to join her in Canada? Is she able to meet the income threshold required for sponsorship? What does it mean if she cannot?
Social support including the informal, emotional, material, and instrumental support provided by family and friends is a well-documented determinant of health. Thus a presence of family and enhancement of social networks are vital to the well-being of newcomers to Canada and this sense of well-being is truly critical to the integration process. The loss of social support and social networks is even more evident when women are unable to be reunited with adult children. For example, former live-in caregivers who have children are often most anxious to be reunited with them, particularly as most if not all were separated from them for many years prior to moving to Canada.
The age at which a child is considered an independent adult and therefore ineligible for sponsorship is critical here and many have found themselves racing against the clock to earn sufficient funds to bring their children to Canada or to keep funding their post-secondary education to maintain their eligibility for sponsorship. Yet as we know, application processing can take years and funds can be tight as women try to keep their young adult children in school while coping with myriad other expenses. In a number of cases, a woman who has been apart from her children for more than a decade has then been compelled to tell her eldest child that he or she cannot join the family, after waiting patiently and eagerly for that day for many years.
The ensuing stress that these women face has long-term health effects and potential consequences for immigrant integration. Indeed, how does one feel part of a society that has made one choose between their children? I recall interviewing a women who had been granted political asylum in Canada following the 1973 coup in Chile.
Twenty-five years later she was still distraught that she and her husband had to leave their 19-year-old daughter behind in Argentina until they were able to successfully petition to have her join them. They were certainly grateful for the refuge, but her relationship with her daughter never healed. When I spoke to her daughter who was by then in her forties, she still wept from the pain of separation that she experienced as abandonment.
The idea that children over 18 are meant to be independent of their families is a western construct predicated on notions of individualism. However, in many cultures family members are interdependent, and adult children play a vital role in sustaining a household, both materially and in terms of other forms of support. The presence of family members may provide the kind of loving support that would in the long term be beneficial to the health, well-being, and long-term stability of an immigrant, her family, and the community at large—