MIGRANT WATCH
Advocacy Groups Critical
of Changes in Canada’s Migrant Policy
The Citizenship and
Immigration Canada announced improvements in its Temporary Foreign Worker
program. But organizations of Filipino-Canadians and OFWs believe that the
new policy of requiring live-in caregivers to remain with one employer to
be eligible for a work permit for three years and three months is a
violation of their human rights.
BY SIKLAB CANADA
Posted by Bulatlat
Vancouver, B.C. -
National organizations of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) and Philippine
women in Canada are very critical of the recent announcement of the
Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) that there would be changes in
its foreign worker programs.
The CIC said the changes are “improvements to the Temporary Foreign Worker
program” and that these are meant to “address challenges that Canadian
employers face”.
“These changes are once again a slap in the face of thousands of migrant
workers in Canada especially Filipino live-in caregivers working under the
Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP),” said Glecy Duran, National
Vice-Chairperson for Western Canada of SIKLAB-Canada (Advance and Uphold
the Rights of Overseas Filipino Workers-Canada. Siklab is also a
Filipino word referring to a spark or blaze).
“These changes do not fundamentally alter the LCP in ways that would
uphold the human rights of these migrant workers,” asserted Duran.
CIC announced that live-in caregivers will be eligible for work permits
for up to three years and three months if they remain with the same
employer. This extension corresponds with changes to the Labour Market
Opinion’s validity for the same time period.
Live-in caregivers must complete a strict 24 months of live-in work within
a stringent three-year time limit.
“Many live-in caregivers do not remain working for the same employer over
this two to three year period for various legitimate reasons”, Duran said,
“For instance, some decide to leave their employers to look for better
working conditions with another employer if they suffer severe
exploitation and oppressive conditions while living in their original
employers’ homes.”
“The three year and three month work permit is useless to the live-in
caregiver who ends up changing employers. In fact, when a live-in
caregiver applies for a new work permit after changing employers, CIC’s
increasingly lengthy processing time, which may take up to three months,
severely impacts on the chances of a live-in caregiver being able to
complete the 24 months of work within the 3-year period, especially if she
ends up changing employers many times.”
“These changes are clearly in response to employers’ complaints about the
long processing time they had to wait in recruiting foreign workers”, said
Duran, “Yet the government chooses to blatantly ignore the plight of
live-in caregivers, the majority of whom are Filipino women”.
Since the early 1980s, nearly 100,000 Filipinos have lived and worked in
Canada as live-in caregivers through the LCP. Over the decades, advocacy
groups like SIKLAB-Canada and the National Alliance of Philippine Women in
Canada (NAPWC) have been critical of the government’s neglect of Filipino
live-in caregivers.
SIKLAB-Canada and NAPWC have maintained that the LCP is an anti-woman and
racist policy that sentences live-in caregivers to a lifetime of domestic
work, cleaning, and other service sector work, stealing their dignity and
stripping them of their previous work experience and education.
“Canada continues to increase its use of foreign workers to fill the
growing labour shortages, including live-in caregivers,” stresses Duran.
“Yet Canada continues to violate these foreign workers’ human rights and
discriminate against them, preferring to keep them as an invisible source
of cheap and docile labor.”
The national groups remain firm in their call to scrap the Live-in
Caregiver Program. “Canada touts itself as a protector of human rights
around the world, yet in their own backyard, thousands of women continue
to toil under the LCP with little protection or services,” asserts Duran.
“If Canada is really serious about its leading role as a champion of human
rights, then the government should recognize the vast contribution that
live-in caregivers have made to Canadian society by removing the live-in
requirement and grant permanent residency to these migrant workers, as
well as full accreditation and reciprocity to foreign trained
professionals,” Duran concluded. Posted by Bulatlat
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