“A status for all”: the protest songs mixed with the rattling of the rain this Sunday afternoon, at Place du Canada. Hundreds of people braved the bad weather to demand a federal regularization program including all of the 1.7 million migrants living in Canada with precarious status or without status, like Nina.
Arrived in Quebec from Colombia with her daughter, the woman, who prefers to keep her name silent for fear of reprisals, has been waiting for a status for more than five years. Housekeeping, construction, hotels: “I worked everywhere, but always under the table,” explains the single mother. I have no choice, I have to pay for my accommodation and feed my daughter. »
“It’s a lot of anxiety and fear. Every day is a challenge”, she continues, while returning to her native country is not an option. His daily life is that of some 500,000 undocumented people across Canada, deprived of basic services, such as access to health care or rights protections.
“When you don’t have status, you’re like a dead man living among the living. You contribute to several spheres of society, without being able to participate, ”argues for his part Mamadou Konaté, in the country since 2016.
Deemed ineligible for permanent residence because of his political activity in Côte d’Ivoire, he faces a deportation notice and may have to leave the country on September 30. Although he worked as a maintenance worker in a long-term care facility in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, he was excluded from the one-time “guardian angel” regularization program, since he was not working not directly with the elderly.
“You can never define the immigration program,” notes Mamadou, also co-spokesperson for the Immigrant Workers Center (CTI). It’s like a chameleon program: it can change at any time. It’s very stressful. »
“I accuse Prime Minister François Legault of carrying out an extremely restrictive regularization program that only affected a few people among the hundreds, even thousands of people who worked in the health care system, who risked their lives during the first wave of the COVID”, also denounces the solidarity deputy Andrés Fontecilla, who joined the demonstrators, alongside other members of his party.
Several migrants and member organizations of the Migrant Rights Network gathered in downtown Montreal, against a background of music, songs and hope. The protest took place as part of a pan-Canadian day of action to demand that the regularization of undocumented migrants be “complete, immediate and totally inclusive, without exclusion or discrimination”. Other rallies took place simultaneously across the country, including Ottawa, Miramichi and Fredericton.
The movement is supported by more than 480 civil society organizations, including the League of Rights and Freedoms, the Federation of Quebec Women, Doctors of the World and FRAPRU.
The situation of women
“If all people without status have extremely difficult living and working conditions, it’s even worse for women,” laments Susana Ponte Rivera, community worker at the Écho des femmes de la Petite Patrie. She reports that migrant and non-status women are often victims of psychological or sexual harassment at work and cannot file a complaint for fear of reprisals.
“It is a particularly precarious situation. If they encounter problems with their employer, for example, they cannot assert their rights or they are afraid to do so, under penalty of being deported”, adds Jasmin de Calzada, spokesperson for the Women’s Organization Quebec Philippines (PINAY).
A situation that Nina Gonzalez has become familiar with over the years. “Being in Canada without status immediately gives us the label of a criminal, when this is not the case,” she explains. It is a matter of system and bureaucracy. »
From 1960 to 2004, Canada had a number of regularization programs, the most important of which was the Status Rectification Program created by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau in the early 1970s. More exclusive regularizations have been launched during COVID-19, for asylum seekers working in the health sector.
More recently, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asked Immigration and Citizenship Minister Sean Fraser to explore ways to regularize the status of Canada’s undocumented workers in order to implement a new program.