LEBEL-SUR-QUÉVILLON – Perceived by some as “job thieves” ten years ago, immigrants are now welcomed as “job saviors” in Lebel-sur-Quévillon, in northern Quebec.
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Mayor Guy Lafrenière ensures that newcomers are not a threat to French in his city and he would like to be able to welcome more.
“They are well integrated, they are part of us, they are citizens of Lebel-sur-Quévillon, they are Quebecers, they are like everyone else and we live together very well together!” he, in a brief scrum with reporters after François Legault passed on Friday.
“Whether the person comes from Val D’Or, Tunisia or Africa, it’s the same person. It’s a human who arrives, insists Mayor Lafrenière. We have 26 nationalities in Lebel-sur-Quévillon”.
But immigrants have not always had the same welcome in this municipality of just over 2,000 souls.
In 2011, a first wave of twenty-two Tunisians arrived in the middle of winter. At the time, Guy Lafrenière was working at the mine.
“We needed manpower, (…) but twenty-two immigrants, we weren’t used to that, there were already four or five in all of Lebel-sur-Quévillon. At that time, there were people who, unfortunately, weren’t everyone, people who said ‘they’re job thieves’. We, in Lebel-sur-Quévillon, immigrants, we did not really know that, ”he recalls.
But things have changed and with the labor shortage, the city needs immigrants to fill the many vacancies.
“Astheure are job savers because if there were no immigration, our sawmill here in Comtois would be closed and the pulp and paper mill, I’m not sure it would be. open,” said the mayor.
In the past year, between 40 and 60 foreigners have come to settle in the area. Guy Lafrenière would like to welcome at least fifty more. And the immigrants who come, they stay.
“We have just had new housing for families, we have room to house people in Lebel-sur-Quévillon, there is no shortage of housing,” he says proudly.
And their integration into French is very quick, having no choice but to learn the language to make themselves understood and function. “No one speaks English,” said the mayor. Here, it’s all French.
Guy Lafrenière, however, deplores the long delays in family reunification. A newcomer can sometimes wait between two to three years before his relatives can come to join him, which sometimes proves to be difficult on a human level.
“I want more,” he adds. Me, what I would like is that the family can follow after six months or a year”.