Migrant Workers Speak Out in Toronto
As part of the country-wide actions demanding that the Trudeau government keep its promise of regularizing status for all migrant workers, the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change organized a spirited action in Toronto on December 16. Migrant workers and their supporters gathered at the Christmas tree in Nathan Phillips Square to deliver a message to Prime Minister Trudeau and Immigration Minister Marc Miller. One by one migrant workers spoke about their situations and the consequences of their unjust undocumented or precarious status -- unable to change employers, unable to access health care, unable to return to their countries of origin even to mourn the death of a parent or to see their children.
Some
read from the letters that they had written to Trudeau and Miller
asking that the Liberal government keep its promise made two years ago
to regularize status for all migrant workers. Migrant Workers Alliance
for Change had gathered and prepared hundreds of such letters, each
telling a story
of discrimination and hardship imposed by an immigration policy that
allows the super-exploitation of migrant workers, refugees,
undocumented workers and international students and denies them
status and rights as equals with all Canadian workers.
Syed Hussan, Executive Director of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, criticized the government for its ongoing deportations, 39 per day, at a time when the government has promised, and reiterated its promise just days ago, to regularize everyone. He said "It is absurd and unfair to deport people today who may be regularized tomorrow." He pointed out that since the promise was made, over 21,000 people have been deported and repeated the demand for Status for All presented by all the speakers.
He explained the hypocrisy and irrationality of the current rules that migrants have to follow to achieve permanent resident status. For example, the work of most workers in health care and home care -- essential jobs -- cannot be counted towards permanent resident status. Hundreds of thousands are affected because there is no federal program that allows most of them to apply. International students are granted one-year work permits when they graduate and need to work in a higher class job for 365 days to become eligible to apply for permanent resident status. By then their one-year work permit has expired so they cannot apply and become undocumented. These work permits, he said, have been renewed three times but now the federal government says there will be no more renewals as of the end of this year so many more international students will become undocumented or have to leave the country.
With great courage all the speakers spoke of their own struggles and hardships and appealed for an end to the ongoing violation of their rights and the rights of all migrant workers, refugees and international students.
Following the speeches the demonstration moved to a busy downtown intersection where some of the hundreds of letters filled a mailbox. They pledged to keep up the fight until the goal of Status for All! is achieved.
This article was published in
Volume 53 Number 12 - December 2023
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2023/Articles/M5301215.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca