Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) Minister Marc Miller confirmed his intention to “present a proposal to cabinet in the spring on allowing undocumented immigrants to regularize their status’”. It’s been two years since the Prime Minister asked the IRCC minister in his mandate letter to explore ways of regularizing the status of undocumented migrants, according to The Globe and Mail.
The Immigrant Workers Centre welcomes the intention to create a “broad and comprehensive” program to regularize the immigration status of hundreds of thousands of people. However, we remain anxious in the face of this announcement. Firstly, because we’ve already seen repeated deferrals of the implementation of the program over the past 24 months. But also because the Minister insinuates the regularization to be limited to certain sectors of activity based on the needs of the workforce. Indeed, undocumented migrants work in a diverse range of sectors, and are forced to change jobs frequently. Moreover, many of them are unable to work because of their state of health, to care for their families, or for other reasons.
The Immigrant Workers Centre is calling on the government to quickly implement a truly inclusive and comprehensive regularization program. We also call for an immediate halt to
deportations and detentions of migrants, whose numbers are unfortunately on the rise. In addition, we demand the abolition of the closed work permit, which traps hundreds of thousands of migrant workers in extreme vulnerability, one of the main reasons why many lose their immigration status.
Comments are closed.