The 34 signatory organizations strongly reaffirm their demand for a comprehensive and inclusive regularization program. They deplore the inaction of the federal government on this subject for two and a half years while it multiplies measures making the lives of migrants and immigrants more difficult, contributing to pushing several of them into the situation of without status. In addition, deportations have increased dramatically: combining the years 2022 and 2023, they reach 23,000; this is the highest level since 2012, when the Harper government deported 19,000 people.
We strongly criticize this contradictory approach.
The federal government has notably limited the entries of foreign students and their families, as well as those of asylum seekers (through the closure of Roxham Road and the reinstatement of visas for Mexicans and Mexicans), condemning them to take more dangerous paths. Today we are punishing the same people who were described as essential during the pandemic. They are criticized for constituting a burden on public services while they still contribute to ensuring the sustainability of these services and to maintaining at arm’s length a growing number of economic sectors facing labor shortages, by being often underpaid and abused.
This short-sighted strategy feeds anti-immigrant and anti-asylum seeker discourse instead of denouncing it for what it is: xenophobic or racist discourse that disregards the contribution, dignity and fundamental rights of migrants. and turn them into scapegoats.
This is why the signatory organizations emphasize this loud and clear.
No, migrants are not responsible for the housing crisis, neither in Canada nor in Quebec.
It is real estate speculation encouraged de facto by the absence or insufficiency, for many years, of public policies to support social and truly affordable housing that is in question. People without status are also victims of this crisis. The regularization of these people, who already live here, would not exert any additional pressure on the rental market.
No, people seeking asylum do not endanger a so-called “reception capacity”.
This notion has no scientific basis. The reception capacity depends on the willingness to welcome, which itself depends on a social project where housing and quality public services are accessible to the population and not in the process of privatization, where social justice rhymes with the fight against inequalities where migrant women can give birth in complete safety and without having to pay around $10,000, and where all children have access to early childhood education services.
No, temporary workers or asylum seekers are not responsible for the decline of French.
At issue: the fact of resorting to temporary programs instead of offering integration through permanent residence by providing the budgetary means for a real francization policy.
We reaffirm that we therefore demand:
1. The immediate implementation of a comprehensive and inclusive regularization program.
Its objective cannot be reduced to filling short-term labor shortages. The aim is to immediately put an end to the conditions of misery, harassment and overexploitation in which many undocumented people struggle. The program must ensure a decent life for these hundreds of thousands of people who are integrated into society and who aspire to contribute fully to it as citizens free to exercise their rights.
2. The immediate moratorium on deportations and detentions pending the regularization program.
People who find themselves without papers have lost their status most often because of the flaws in this two-tier immigration system, which perpetuates a colonialist and racist history.
3. The abolition of the “closed” work permit attached to a single employer, a source of loss of status.
This situation can also lead to modern slavery, according to the words of the special rapporteur of the United Nations (UN) in September 2023. Immigration policies must prioritize access to permanent residence.
These measures would trigger a real break with the two-speed immigration system which has become increasingly widespread in Canada since the second half of the 20th century.e century, and which particularly affects populations from countries of the Global South. They are most often confined to temporary and increasingly precarious statuses, which expose them to exploitation and abuse of all kinds.
Beyond these demands which drive the Quebec Campaign for the regularization of people without migratory status, it is another social project that we dream of, which reconnects with social justice and does not trample on the fundamental rights of human beings. , including migrants and immigrants, regardless of their migration status.
*Co-signed this letter: Action Réfugiés Montréal; Amnesty International French-speaking Canada; Association for the Rights of Domestic and Farm Workers (DTMF); Central of Democratic Unions (CSD); Centrale des syndicats du Québec (CSQ); Center for assistance and the fight against sexual assault (CALACS) in Eastern Bas-Saint-Laurent; Center for Immigrant Workers (CTTI); Mitis Women’s Center; Rimouski Women’s Center; KEY Mitis-Neigette; Clinic for Migrant Justice (CJM); Collective for a Quebec without poverty; Bas-Saint-Laurent Housing Committee (CLBSL); Confederation of National Trade Unions (CSN); Canadian Council for Refugees (CCR); Central Council of Gaspésie and Îles-de-la-Madeleine (CCGIM-CSN); Central Council of National Unions of the Laurentians (CCSNL); Central Council of National Unions of Estrie (CCSNE-CSN); Central Council of Metropolitan Montreal-CSN (CCMM-CSN); Quebec Federation of Workers (FTQ); Interprofessional Health Federation of Quebec (FIQ); Home of the world; Popular Action Front for Urban Redevelopment (FRAPRU); Resourcefulness ; Quebec is us too (LQCNA); League of Rights and Freedoms (LDL); Doctors of the World Canada; Migrant Quebec; PINAY (Organization of Filipino Women of Quebec); Support network for migrant agricultural workers in Quebec (RATTMAQ); Jesuit Refugee Service (SJF) Canada; Solidarity without borders (SSF); Consultation table of women’s groups of Bas-Saint-Laurent (TCGFBSL); Consultation table of organizations serving refugees and immigrants (TCRI).