International Women’s Day 2024

All Out for Permanent Residency for All Care Workers and Their Families Now!

Migrant care workers in Canada, the vast majority of which are women, take care of children, the sick and the elderly, while often forced to leave behind their own families for years. Many of them are trained health professionals and teachers, who, if they had permanent residence (PR) status, could be employed professionally in our health care and education institutions.

Without PR, they can be separated from their families for years, paid low wages and exposed to abuse, with difficult working and living conditions.

Many are unable to apply for permanent residency because they must complete a work requirement and meet additional language testing and educational accreditation criteria. Others who have managed to apply have been waiting years for a response, often forced to remain in precarious and dangerous work.

The federal Home Child Care Provider Pilot (HCCP) and the Home Support Worker Pilot (HSWP) programs were launched by the federal government in June 2019 for a five-year period. The yearly processing cap in each program is 2,750. Both programs are set to expire on June 17 of this year. These programs, as well as their forerunners, implemented by successive governments for decades, have exposed these workers to serious financial and psychological harm, with the promise of permanent residency and family reunification dangled before their eyes but remaining ever elusive.

Because of their long working hours and low pay, migrant care workers often cannot meet the difficult language requirements imposed on them for PR, even though they are able to converse fluently and are well integrated in their communities. Returning to school to meet the education accreditation requirements they need is also often not a possibility, due to the high international tuition fees they are forced to pay. The very serious government backlog in the processing of program and permanent residency applications they face, through no fault of their own, also puts them in danger of becoming undocumented and being deported.

The Migrant Rights Network (MRN), a cross-Canada alliance fighting in defence of the human rights of these workers, is calling upon the federal government to:

“(1) Create a new Interim Program for permanent residency for care workers currently in Canada without education accreditation and language requirements. Increase the dependent age limit in this Interim Program to allow families to reunite who were excluded through no fault of their own.

“(2) Issue open work permits within 30 days of application to all care workers who apply for permanent residency from inside Canada so that no one becomes undocumented.

“(3) End the backlog by removing the processing cap of 2,750, and process PR applications of all care workers in Canada immediately.

“(4) Immediately grant open work and study permits to family members of care worker applicants for permanent residency to reunite families.

“(5) Create a comprehensive regularization program to ensure permanent resident status for all care workers that have become undocumented.”

The permanent solution the MRN is putting forward to resolve the serious problems these care workers face is to replace the HCCP and HSWP pilots with a migrant care worker program that would allow these “working class women [and their families] to come to Canada with permanent resident status.”

On the occasion of International Women’s Day, CPC(M-L) encourages everyone to sign and disseminate the Migrant Rights Network’s online petition here in support of these essential workers and their right to dignified working and living conditions, including the right to live with their families, through permanent residency for themselves and their families.

All Out for Permanency Residency for All Care Workers and Their Families Now!

(Graphics: Migrant Rights Network)

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