Migrant Workers Intensify Their Campaign for Status for All
More than 300 people participated in a Regularization Assembly organized online by the Migrant Rights Network on June 14. The meeting was to mobilize and concentrate actions to demand parliament adopt a Status for All! regularization program before it breaks for the summer. People facing deportation, undocumented workers, refugees, international students, migrant rights advocates and others participated in the informative and lively event.
In his introduction, Executive Director of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, Syed Hussan, noted that in December 2021, Prime Minister Trudeau pledged to support a regularization program for all undocumented workers, migrants and refugees. Since that time, however, there has been little action.
Hussan noted that any concession the migrant rights movement has achieved has not come as a result of government largesse, but because migrant workers have been an organized force, defending their rights with one united voice, within the fight for the rights of all.
He stated that in the last three years more than 100 actions have been organized. These have included rallies, visits to cabinet ministers' offices, petitions, phone calls and even a face-to-face meeting between Immigration Minister Sean Fraser and 150 undocumented people demanding that he act to protect their rights.
These actions to demand full status, dignity and equality for all have kept the issue of migrant rights on the national agenda, gaining public support and putting pressure on the Liberal government to make good on Trudeau's pledge. "We know that they are discussing this matter in cabinet. We are demanding that Prime Minister Trudeau act now to keep his promise," said Hussan.
The Assembly was organized as two round tables. In the first, four migrant rights advocates spoke about their experience in the struggle for migrant rights in this country. These included Jane, a refugee claimant threatened with deportation; Daniel De Leon, chair of Migrante Canada -- a national defence organization of the Filipino community in Canada -- whose deportation order has been stayed for the moment; Hardy Anne, a long-time activist for migrant rights in the Montreal area; and Claudia, a Chinese migrant worker.
An intermission followed this round table, during which Assembly participants were urged to call, text, or email the Prime Minister, the Minister of Immigration, the Minister of Public Safety and Security, and other cabinet ministers to demand status for all without exception.
The second round table addressed how migrant workers are routinely financially exploited and abused because of their temporary status or lack of status. Of particular interest was a call from OJ, a worker in Jamaica. OJ was part of a group of courageous Jamaican workers who wrote a letter to the Jamaican government calling on it to intervene to help them stop the brutal exploitation and abuse of workers from Jamaica and others being brought in through Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program.
OJ spoke of coming to Canada during the Covid pandemic and being shocked at the deplorable housing, food and treatment at the farm where he worked. He pointed out that migrant farm workers face brutal conditions and abuse akin to slavery and have little protection under the law. He and other Jamaican workers expected some action as a result of their letter to the Jamaican Minister of Labour, but little has changed.
However, OJ pointed out, the letter created more awareness in Canada and Jamaica about the plight of seasonal agricultural workers and brought to light the systemic problems that create the conditions migrant workers face in Canada. Assembly participants were informed that, as a result of his action, OJ has been punished by the Canadian government, which has deprived him of the possibility of working in Canada again.
A young worker, Divyansh Kamboj, reported being exploited at a gas station where he worked for more than two years and was paid less than $10 an hour over that period. Now, thanks to support from the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, Div said he is fighting to recover the more than $40,000 dollars he is owed by the gas station owner. Migrant workers are often isolated and afraid to fight, he said, but it is through joining with others and fighting collectively that it is possible to achieve justice and dignity.
The meeting also heard from a spokesperson for a group of fishery workers in New Brunswick who were deprived of their wages for three weeks last year because of a shortened lobster harvesting season. These workers, many of them women, fought back against their employer. By uniting, together they won their back pay and gained some concessions in their working conditions as well as a bonus, and contracts which guaranteed them work for the following season.
These victories all came as a result of organized resistance, a major theme running through the meeting.
Another speaker was Doris Gatawa, a live-in caregiver from the Philippines working in Vancouver, who is an active member of the Committee for Domestic Workers and Caregivers Rights (CDWCR). Gatawa pointed out that Canada's immigration policies affecting migrant workers have become more and more arbitrary, inhumane and racist over time. She noted that 100 years ago, when domestic workers were brought in from Britain and other northern European countries, they came as landed immigrants.
Today, when domestic workers come from the Philippines, Guatemala, Mexico, Indonesia and other countries, everything is done to keep their status temporary and to deprive them of the right to permanent residency in Canada, even after they have lived here for many years. This has to change, Gatawa pointed out, and it is through organizations like CDWCR that are fighting for the rights of domestic workers and caregivers that change will come.
The Regularization Assembly also heard from the frontlines, at the encampment of a group of international students from India, outside the Canadian Border Services Agency in Brampton. They had been holding an 18-day round-the-clock protest there to stop the deportation of some 100 students from the Punjab who have been victimized by an enrollment scam carried out by fraudulent "recruiters." They charged the students large amounts of money to be enrolled in Canadian colleges and universities, and provided them with bogus admission letters.
Lovepreet Singh, who was slated for deportation on June 12, addressed the meeting through a social media hook-up. He said it is not acceptable that he and his peers have been mistreated by these unscrupulous recruiters who fleeced them for tens of thousands of dollars, and then they have to face abuse again in Canada. It was announced to the Assembly that the federal government has put a hold on the deportation order and will investigate the situation.
The meeting ended on a high note with the Migrant Rights Network announcing plans to intensify actions over the coming days. They pledged to continue to organize and fight for the rights of the hundreds of thousands of undocumented workers, refugees and migrant workers who are victims of Canada's racist and arbitrary immigration and refugee policy. Assembly participants pledged to fight on beyond this session of parliament till status and justice for all is achieved.
This article was published in
Number 32 - June
26, 2023
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/WF2023/Articles/WO10322.HTM
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