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Migrant Rights Network

Updates

55 years. Enough is enough.

Today, March 31st, is the 55th anniversary of the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP). Today marks over half a century of injustice, indignities and exploitation of Black and Latinx people by Canada’s agri-food industry.

This brutality has always been met with organized opposition. The first recorded wildcat strike organized by migrant farm workers was in 1967, less than a year after the program was created. 

Today hundreds of farmworker members of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change are holding simultaneous meetings at 80+ farms to light candles of resistance and make plans to fight for Full and Permanent Immigration Status for All. 

You can support this massive show of worker power by sharing a photo of your own flame of resistance posting online and tagging us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook with #StatusforAll. Speak out today and pledge to support our upcoming four days of action in 2021. 

SAWP followed the creation of the Caribbean Domestic Workers scheme in 1955. These two programs laid the foundation for temporariness in the immigration system. Subsequent governments have only grown these programs.

Now, over 850,000 temporary study and work permits are issued in Canada each year. Most people on these programs are low-waged and racialized. We live and work here but are excluded from labour rights, healthcare, access to education and other social supports. We are separated from our families. Most of us can never get permanent residency and are forced to stay in Canada without any immigration status, and even fewer rights. 

Enough is enough. Today on the 55th anniversary of the SAWP program, we demand an end to temporariness. We demand an equal society and that means permanent immigration status for everyone. 

In 2021, we are taking actions for Status for All and we need you. Join us: 

  • May 9th (Mothers’ Day)
  • June 20th (Fathers Day)
  • July 18-25 (Non-Status March from Montreal to Ottawa) 
  • September 18th (Parliament returns)

As Hady Anne for Solidarity Across Borders in Montreal said this weekend announcing the March to Ottawa: “We are not here to talk about what is possible… We are here to talk about what human dignity and justice require, what we must do to stop the destruction of the world. From 18 July to 25 July, we will take the road to Ottawa to demand Status for All. Mr. Trudeau, we are tired of waiting. We’re coming.” 

Are you with us? Go to your social media today and light your flame of resistance. 

PS: Following the murders in Atlanta of 8 people including Asian women sex workers, our member Butterfly: Asian Migrant Sex Worker project has launched #8CallsforJustice. Please sign on as an organization or individual: https://www.butterflysw.org/8callsforjustice 

A year of closed borders

One year ago today, at 12:01am on March 18, 2020, Canada closed its borders. Today, they remain closed for many including refugees, migrant workers, families and international students. 

On March 16, 2020, as the COVID crisis was first hitting, we at the Migrant Rights Network called for healthcare, worker rights, income support, access to social services, and immigration status for migrant and undocumented people. 

12 months later, we look back and we look ahead. With you, we vow to keep organizing and fighting for full and permanent immigration status for all. 

(1) HEALTHCARE FOR ALL: As COVID-19 raged through 2020, migrants won policies in many provinces to ensure access to healthcare and COVID testing. But in many places these policies are not being implemented and migrants continue to be turned away or charged high fees for life-saving care. Today, we are calling on all provinces and the federal government to put in place concrete measures to ensure safe and dignified access without fear to COVID19 vaccinations.

(2) WORKER PROTECTIONS & INCOME SUPPORTS: As a result of our work, the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) was extended to migrants, a valid Social Insurance Number was made mandatory part way through 2020 to qualify for the Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB). Now with tax season approaching, many migrants are scared of a clawback they cannot afford. We demand a CERB/CRB amnesty. Without income support, migrant people either faced starvation and eviction, or were forced to work in dangerous and sometimes deadly conditions. Farmworkers, care workers, delivery workers, cleaners and other low-wage workers are called ‘essential’ even as we are excluded from essential rights and protections. But we take care of us: Migrants fundraised, set up mutual aid networks and stepped in when governments failed us. Migrants stood up against bad bosses, organized strikes and raised our voices. We will continue to organize for justice and equality.

(3) STATUS FOR ALL: Fundamentally, a fair society with equal rights for all requires that everyone have the same immigration status. This is why migrants organized over 30 rallies, protests and marches calling for Full & Permanent Immigration Status for All. In early 2020, the federal government announced a moratorium on deportations because of the pandemic. But the callous practice of deportation continues: by the end of 2020, Canada had deported more people in 2020 than in the previous 5 years. Just this week, a man who contracted COVID while in immigrartion detention was deported despite showing symptoms. Throughout, migrants organized in detention centers, and in Quebec, many secured their own release. Migrant student workers denounced government policies that punished them for the pandemic by letting their permits run out. They won new work permits, a one-time stopgap to the deportation of 52,000 people. But immigration rules continue to exclude low-waged working class people, particularly undocumented workers and those on employer controlled indentureship permits.

(4) SOCIAL SUPPORTS: While some federal, provincial and municipal supports went towards emergency food boxes, it was primarily donations from people like you that allowed migrant groups to feed communities without work. Poor and working class migrants were only able to ward off evictions, get healthcare, childcare or social supports when we united with our neighbors and co-workers to offer real solidarity in the face of deadly policies.

A year into this pandemic, let us re-commit to building a different future together. Talk to your neighbours, friends and co-workers. Raise your voice. Echo and amplify the demands of migrant and undocumented people. Let us build a just world for all of us. 

27,000 new immigrant invitations

27,000 migrants were invited to apply for permanent residency through the Express Entry system earlier this month. That’s a 440% increase from the previous round. Some of our members and friends can hope to qualify for PR now. Clearly, our calls for full and permanent immigration status are being heard.

But this is not a simple good news story. 

Canada’s Express Entry system assigns points for age, language, education, work experience and more. While the points required for this latest invitation are the lowest ever, migrants in these large numbers were invited to apply for permanent residency in the ‘Canadian Experience Class’ (CEC). To qualify for CEC, applicants must, among other requirements, have 12 months of high waged work in Canada in managerial or technical jobs. Migrants in low waged work are not allowed to apply.

Farm workers, care workers, those working in food processing, retail, delivery, warehouse, cleaning, construction, and workers in all those other jobs Canadians have come to call ‘essential’, are deemed “low-skilled” by the immigration system. 

Few avenues exist for them to get rights and permanent residence under current rules. The ‘pathways to status’ for low-waged farm workers and care workers require high language and education scores that effectively shut them out. 

Meanwhile, the government has increased detentions and deportations. 2020 saw the highest number of deportations since 2015. Undocumented migrants are supposed to be able to apply to stay through a ‘Humanitarian and Compassionate’ application. But those applications are being denied at record high rates right now. 

The truth is this: Canadian immigration policy has always discriminated based on race, class and disability. Poor and working class racialized migrants continue to be denied stability, security and equality because the immigration system keeps them temporary or undocumented. 

Clearly the government can easily grant people PR, but chooses to cherry-pick and discriminate instead. The federal government is scrambling to meet its immigration targets by granting status to some, while deporting and denying others. This is a divide and conquer strategy that pits “deserving” migrants against “undeserving” migrants. But permanent status is not a gift for the deserving – it is about equality. It is a means to access healthcare, education, labour protections, family reunification and other basic rights. And all of us deserve the same rights.

Full and permanent immigration status for ALL. We are all essential. Add your voice to ours, sign now!

Our Day, 2020 (International Migrants Day)

Today is International Migrants Day, 2020. 

For us migrants, 2020 has been a human rights catastrophe. We’ve been on the front line of the COVID crisis, doing the lowest paid and most dangerous jobs growing and delivering food, cleaning buildings, and taking care of children and the elderly. At the same time, many of us have been excluded from even basic healthcare and income support in a pandemic. We have grieved as our families around the world have suffered the impacts of the coronavirus. Impacts that worsen as countries like Canada hoard the vaccine, while those in the Global South go without. 

2020 is also the year of our courage. In the face of hunger and sickness, together with you, we raised our voices and our fists. This is the year that: 

Take Action by Joining Our Call for Status for All!

The Migrant Rights Network is Canada’s first and only cross-country alliance of racialized migrant-led organizations. In addition to our collective actions focused on federal changes, our nearly 50 member organizations in 10 provinces fought for access to healthcare, social assistance, and worker rights at provincial and municipal levels winning necessary changes. We raised hundreds of thousands dollars to distribute food and essential supplies to migrants struggling in times of COVID-19. 

We launched two years ago today. In our founding statement we wrote: “Immigration policies separate us. Government policies polarize and divide us. We are given different rights on the basis of the places of our birth, the colour of our skin, the accents we have, and the bodies we inhabit. We are denied labour protections, decent healthcare, the ability to change jobs, and to be with our families. We reject these categories of migrant, irregular, refugee, undocumented, citizen. We assert our humanity.”

We assert our collective humanity by rejecting the systems of temporary and undocumented migration through which 1 in 23 people in Canada are without basic rights because they don’t have permanent resident status. Status for All has been a call of many of our organizations for decades, but it is only in 2020 that we have consolidated ourselves into a single campaign with the support of over 400 organizations, and 22,000 people. We are not simply calling for immigration reform. Full and permanent immigration status for all is a call for fundamental transformation of our economic and social systems away from profit and exploitation and towards social liberation and care. It is a rejection of war, capitalist exploitation and climate policies that force migrants to leave our homes in the first place. 

Despite the myriad crises of 2020, we have succeeded not just in winning changes to laws and taking care of our communities, but many of our organizations have succeeded in deepening democratic leadership and mass participation of migrants in our work. Together, we are organizing our section of the working class. We are doing so in alliance with Indigenous, labour, climate and other movements. 

As we end 2020, we urge you to stay organized. Join actions and meetings at work and in your community to build organizations capable of meeting the coming moment. We cannot and will not return to the old normal. Let us make 2021 a year where we build the world we deserve to live in.

Together, we will win!

July 4 – Montreal

July 4 – Toronto

July 4 – Richmond

August 23 – Windsor

August 23 – Vancouver

August 23 – Toronto

August 23 – Sudbury

August 23 – Sherbrooke

August 23 – Regina

August 23 – Niagara

August 23 – Montreal

August 23 – Halifax

September 20 – Toronto

September 20 – St Johns

September 20 – Sudbury

September 20 – Vancouver

September 20 – St Catharines

September 20 – Montreal

September 20 – Halifax

September 20 – Hamilton

September 20 – Kelowna

September 20 – Vancouver

November 1 – Montreal

November 1 – Vancouver

November 1 – Toronto

November 1 – Sherbrooke

November 1 – Niagara

Second Wave, Same Crisis

We are eight months into a pandemic and yet it feels like we are back at the beginning. 

Yet again, there are COVID-19 outbreaks affecting migrant workers on farms. Yet again, migrant and undocumented people are losing jobs as regions shut down. And still no action to save lives and livelihoods. 

Any day now, the federal government will release its ‘fiscal update’, a sort of mini-budget which will outline the government’s plan to ensure a just recovery. We already know their priorities: all but the Green Party this week voted against an NDP motion to create a 1% tax on individual wealth over $20 million. 

It is crucial that decision makers hear from you that there can be no just recovery without full and permanent immigration status for all. Click here to call PM Trudeau’s office to tell them you expect migrant justice to be on the agenda.

But we must also share this same message with our neighbours and friends. A recent poll showed that 40% of respondents in Canada want to reduce permanent immigration numbers. We need to explain to our friends and families that migrants are an essential part of the fabric of communities, and reducing immigration means reducing rights for our friends and neighbours [click here to share on facebook, and twitter. Scroll below to download and share on instagram].

Tens of thousands have lost their jobs as the second wave of COVID-19 ravages migrant and racialized communities. Some that have fallen sick from COVID-19 report not being allowed to return to work even when they have recovered. 

Instead of supporting these essential members of our communities and taxing COVID-19 profiteers, federal laws deny migrants without a valid Social Insurance Number, particularly undocumented people, access to the Canada Recovery Benefit. 

Undocumented people and those awaiting their immigration permit renewals don’t have healthcare in most provinces and must pay up front. This includes students, workers and refugees numbering in the tens of thousands. Even COVID-19 testing and treatment is exorbitantly expensive.

Migrant farmworkers are again falling sick in new COVID-19 outbreaks, just as the season is ending, preventing workers from returning home. Sick workers are missing flights. Those stuck in Canada are without work, wages or income support, abandoned in unheated housing as winter sets in. 

Migrant care workers are either trapped in employers’ homes working longer hours without pay, or being laid off again in this second wave. Instead of supporting them, the federal government just shut down the home care worker path to permanent residency for 2020. 

Migrant students continue to pay high tuition fees but don’t have access to essential supports and services. Those that have graduated and are working in essential but low-waged jobs are not allowed to apply for permanent residency. Their permits are expiring but the federal government still hasn’t made them renewable, meaning thousands face deportation before year-end. 

Instead of supporting migrants and ensuring permanent immigration status for all, the federal government is devoting resources to detaining and deporting people during a global pandemic. This week, friends and supporters of long-term care home worker Mamadou Konaté rallied to stop his deportation. Ebrahim Toure was detained and released a second time and is facing deportation to Gambia just days after his baby is due, after immigration enforcement used false documents to get him a passport. His crime? Pirating DVDs.

If there is one thing this pandemic has revealed is that there can be no return to the way things were. And that means that the immigration system – and the racism and exploitation on which it is based and which it perpetuates – must be completely overhauled.  

Right now, PM Trudeau is working on a plan to recover from COVID-19. He needs to hear from you that this plan must include dollars behind full and permanent immigration status for all. Status for all is the only way to ensure equal access to rights and protections. Make the call. We don’t have a minute to lose. 

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