Mourad Bouraoui sold his butcher shop in Tunisia and spent a year “in white”, as he says, doing the required procedures and waiting for his work permit. Arriving full of ambition last November, he was fired by the industrial butchery in Drummondville which had recruited him, due to lack of work. His last day of work was Tuesday, and he’s still “a little in shock.”
He does not blame his former bosses, who “lost a sales market” and therefore no longer had enough orders, according to him. It is rather the closed license that he vilifies. His limitations stuck him, he laments, “locked” into a single job for a single employer. “I don’t want to leave, I don’t want to return home, I have debts to pay,” explains this father of two young children.
“The government knows what happens with closed permits and it turns a blind eye,” Amin fumes. A mechanic in Morocco, he also sold all his possessions before leaving his country for a job with a three-year contract in a garage in the Saint-Jean-Baptiste district of Quebec. He asked that his name be withheld for fear of exposing himself to harm. “I am under hellish pressure,” he says, both financial and family.
“Legally, everything is clean, we have a contract. But we have not made people aware of the risks they will take,” he adds about closed permits.
Coming with his wife and two teenage daughters to Quebec, he had nevertheless planned their installation well, arriving a few weeks in advance to find his bearings, “to see how society works”.
In October they moved into an apartment rented by the owner of the garage. Then, from the first day of his contract, the 1er November 2023, he starts working. ” It’s the rush winter tires, so the pressure was very high,” he relates.
Amin expected to at least receive training or be paired with one of the other mechanics.
No matter, he gets to work. Once the busiest period is over, he asks if he can be better trained, to at least adapt to the cars here, mostly automatic, and the problems — like rust — which are often different of those encountered in Morocco. His boss replies: “You will adapt, you have enough experience. »
But at the beginning of December the owner of the garage criticized him for not being fast and autonomous enough at work. He kicks him out.
“At home, we work as a team and we ask someone else’s opinion if we have doubts. But it was taken badly,” he notes. Under the shock of the dismissal, with his savings already considerably reduced by all the expenses of the intercontinental move, he senses “the impasse coming”.
An illusory solution
He then tried to find a solution with consultants and immigration lawyers.
With his license closed, he cannot simply “cross the street” and give his name elsewhere. He must convince another employer to redo all the steps to guarantee him new stability. “It’s difficult with trust, because people ask me why I was kicked out,” he admits.
His wife is looking for a job, any job. She is a teacher, a profession in high demand in Quebec, but as she wears the Muslim headscarf, she is not allowed to practice. She goes around to daycare centers, daycare centers, stores, and applies for jobs posted on websites, but no one asks for her services.
With “shame” in his heart, he tries to “resist”, but the burdens are too heavy. To continue living here for even a few more weeks, he would have to sell the family apartment in Morocco.
While going to seek help at a food bank in Charlesbourg in January, Amin spoke with a manager from a community organization. The community mobilizes: community or charitable organizations and individuals raise enough money to pay the February rent, which he owes to the same boss who fired him.
“It was really a vice for him,” explains Maxime Huot Couture, coordinator of the Charlesbourg Community Solidarity initiative. He says he sees more and more difficult situations among precarious immigrants, although that is not part of his primary mission. “It must be emphasized that the community was affected and that it mobilized, but it is the system that pushes it to leave,” explains Mr. Huot Couture.
This case is dramatic and increasingly common, he notes. “The Canadian dream is alive and well and it starts with those who sell it abroad, both our governments and businesses. »
“I would like no one to make the mistake of leaving their country with a closed license,” says Amin when asked what he wants now. Unless there is a last minute change, he and his family will return to Morocco on Saturday.
As for Mourad Bouraoui, he is now wondering how he will be able to send money to his wife next week, since he is not entitled to employment insurance. He is already applying for jobs posted online, now looking instead to be a butcher in a supermarket.
“I’m open to moving, but I need to find it quickly,” he said. And above all an employer “ready to start from square one”, with all the procedures related to the work permit. He, who also has a university degree, has “a lot of difficulty” understanding how society can “want closed licenses”. ” It’s incomprehensible. I just want to work, but I can’t. For what ? »