The press conference held by the Immigrant Workers Centre in Montreal on January 23 2026 was not a brief protest action. It was a collective testimony to an immigration and labour system that produces precarity and then evades responsibility. At a time when the federal government and the Quebec government have since 2024 been racing to tighten restrictions and reduce the number of migrants migrant workers found themselves facing the direct consequences of these policies. Exploitation. Poverty. Loss of legal status. And long waits for justice that may never come.
The workers who are victims of the private recruitment and placement agency IRIS cannot have their story reduced to the name of one agency. They remain trapped in long and complex legal processes before the CNESST to recover more than one hundred thousand dollars in unpaid wages and illegal recruitment fees imposed by the agency and its owner. Years pass while workers live in constant instability without income and without protection.
The abuses suffered by the workers were not only financial. What was revealed goes beyond wage theft and exposes a systematic pattern of control and abuse. Total administrative control over their lives. Sending workers to unauthorized workplaces. Withholding documents. Deliberate misinformation about their legal status. Faulty immigration advice. Illegal fees. Practices that clearly fall within the characteristics of labour trafficking. The consequences were immediate and severe. Extreme financial precarity. Legal insecurity. And in some cases the complete loss of immigration status.
These facts raise a political question that cannot be ignored. How was a private agency allowed to hold such power over workers lives without effective oversight from the federal and provincial governments. How was this agency authorized to recruit temporary foreign workers without ensuring compliance with legally established working conditions. And how were workers left alone to face the consequences while the same system continues to operate without accountability.
Although the federal government introduced open work permits for workers in vulnerable situations more than a year ago this mechanism has proven ineffective. Procedures are slow. Files are prolonged. Permits expire before providing real protection. Today many of these permits have expired leaving workers once again in an unstable legal situation. As a result they were forced to submit applications for temporary resident permits simply to remain in the country and continue their cases in order to recover their wages.
The workers are demanding that the state fully assume its responsibility. It was the state that granted IRIS legal authority. It was the state that allowed workers to be bound by closed work permits giving employers and intermediaries near absolute power. Today these workers demand that their temporary resident permit applications be processed quickly and fairly so they can remain in Canada and continue their legal struggle without fear of deportation.
The demands are clear and leave no room for evasion. Effective and strict regulation of private labour market intermediaries. Real protection against abusive practices. The abolition of closed work permits that make exploitation structural rather than exceptional. And a comprehensive program to regularize the status of non status migrants who lose their legal status as a result of these abuses.
As one worker said during the press conference using a fictitious name out of fear of reprisals. We are victimized twice. Once by the IRIS agency and once by an immigration system that keeps us in permanent precarity. Another worker added that immigration authorities refuse to acknowledge that what they are experiencing is not an isolated incident but the natural outcome of a dysfunctional system.
What was revealed at this press conference is not a passing scandal but a mirror of an entire system. A system that builds the economy on the backs of workers without security and then punishes them when they demand their rights. The Immigrant Workers Centre affirms that this struggle will not stop. Because justice is not achieved through silence. And dignity cannot remain conditional on fear.
Comments are closed.