Prime Minister Justin Trudeau,
Minister Marc Miller,
Two years ago, while the pandemic and lockdown were still with us, you, Mr. Prime Minister, asked the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship to explore “ways to regularize the status of undocumented workers who contribute to Canadian communities” and who played an essential role during the pandemic, sometimes at the cost of their lives.
Two years later, on the occasion of commemorating this International Migrants Day, our dismay at seeing the years pass without a regularization program coming to alleviate the hundreds of thousands of people who live every day in fear of being arrested and deported, our dismay, we say, is giving way to anger.
For in the first half of 2023, 7032 people were deported, almost double the number deported in 2022. And on December 14, Marc Miller, the new Minister of Immigration, indicated that he would be proposing a “broad and comprehensive” regularization program, but specified that for the time being this would concern certain sectors of activity such as construction and health, where “immigrants are indispensable”, and expressed his concern above all not to fuel the far-right rhetoric that criminalizes migrants.
Yet, in the face of the real difficulties Canadians face in finding housing and food due to inflation, real estate speculation and growing inequalities, your government has contributed in recent months to fuelling hate speech by turning “immigrants” into the scapegoats responsible for the housing crisis, thus contributing to the rise of xenophobic sentiment towards migrant people, the majority of whom are racialized, who are assessed solely in terms of their economic usefulness.
The announcement on November 1 of Canada’s immigration policy for the coming years also left in the shadows the fate of hundreds of thousands of people living in precarious conditions, because they are temporary foreign workers, refugees or asylum seekers, and are at risk of becoming undocumented.
A two-tier system
Over the past 15 years, Canada’s immigration policies, originally focused on welcoming and integrating citizens, have been reduced to policies for managing the flow of foreign labor. Indeed, if immigration is on the rise in Canada, it’s mainly thanks to the dizzying growth in the number of annual entries of people with temporary status: since 2008, it has exceeded the number of annual issuances of permanent residency.
In particular, the Temporary Foreign Worker Program has seen sustained growth since 2002: this program enables employers in all sectors to fill jobs abandoned by Canadians because of poor working conditions, by hiring migrants mainly from countries in the Global South. Yet their access to permanent residency, and therefore to effective citizenship rights, is actually limited: in Canada, according to Immigration Department figures, only 1 in 14 people managed to obtain it between 2015 and 2022, and in Quebec in particular, access to permanent residency is virtually impossible for those in low-skilled jobs.
What’s more, as holders of a closed permit that binds them to an employer who can directly influence the maintenance or renewal of their migratory status, these predominantly racialized people are labeled as second-class workers and exposed to abuse of all kinds, including psychological and sexual harassment and violence when it comes to women.
UN Special Rapporteur Tomoya Obokata pointed out last September that this “closed” permit opened the door to a form of modern slavery.
Yet, for the moment, the reform envisaged does not consist in abolishing this permit, which makes a worker captive to an employer, but in authorizing the transfer of the closed permit to employers in a region or sector, which will not prevent abuses.
We call for an end to this two-tier immigration policy. Immigration policy must once again be based on a long-term vision, and in the short term ensure the protection of all those who are already here, notably by rapidly implementing a truly inclusive regularization program and immediately halting deportations. It is also essential to abolish the closed permit in favor of an open permit and permanent status, as many community and labour organizations have been calling for for several years.
A citizen-based approach that respects human rights must prevail.
* Signatory organizations: Action populaire Rimouski-Neigette, Amnistie internationale Canada francophone, Association pour les droits des travailleuses. rs de maison et de ferme (DTMF-RHFW), Au bas de l’échelle (ABE), Centrale des syndicats démocratiques (CSD), Centrale des syndicats du Québec (CSQ), Centre des travailleurs et travailleuses immigrants (CTTI), Centre international de solidarité ouvrière (CISO), Centre justice et foi (CJF), CLEF Mitis-Neigette, Collectif Bienvenue – Welcome collective, Comité d’action des personnes sans statut (CAPSS), Comité logement Bas-Saint-Laurent (CLBSL), Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN), Conseil central du Montréal métropolitain – CSN (CCMM-CSN), Conseil régional FTQ Montréal métropolitain (CRFTQMM), Corporation de développement communautaire (CDC) Rimouski-Neigette, Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec (FTQ), Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec (FIQ), Hoodstock, Illusion Emploi de l’Estrie, Le Québec c’est nous aussi (LQCNA), Ligue des droits et libertés (LDL), Médecins du Monde Canada, Montreal Community Mission (MCM), Jesuit Refugee Service Canada (JRS), Solidarité populaire Estrie (SPE), Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes (TCRI)
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