“It’s not a life,” Samira tells me.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
For seven years, in this life that is not one, with a name that is not hers, Samira worked in a residence for seniors. For a salary “not even minimum”, at the height of the pandemic, this Algerian, who found herself without status in Canada after administrative setbacks, took risks to remain at the bedside of vulnerable elderly people. But that was not enough to qualify for the “guardian angel” regularization program implemented in December 2020.
The program provided a pathway to permanent residence for some asylum seekers in recognition of their outstanding contribution to society during the pandemic. But since she was no longer seeking asylum, Samira, like many other fallen angels, was not entitled to anything. No access road. No recognition. As if she didn’t exist. As if it were normal that she continues to be exploited, without any rights, without a social safety net, without health insurance, with the constant fear of being expelled from the country. “I was really shocked. »
“It’s not a life,” repeats Samira, who is an activist with Solidarity Across Borders.
This is not a life. And yet, it is his own and that of some 300,000 to 500,000 undocumented people in Canada who pin high hopes on the promise made 10 months ago by the Trudeau government to set up what would be the largest regularization program in the country for 50 years.
As Louise Arbour, former Special Representative for Migration of the Secretary General of the United Nations, has already pleaded, such a regularization exercise is essential and would be to our advantage.
“There is a perfect coincidence of our values and our interests,” she told me in November 2020 when, ironically, François Legault closed the door to the slightest expansion of the very restrictive program of “guardian angels”.
Regularization programs are common practice in many countries for mainly pragmatic reasons.
Why is this a good idea? “No immigration policy is built hoping that people will find themselves without status,” explains sociologist David Moffette, professor in the Department of Criminology at the University of Ottawa.
The exercise makes it possible to compensate for the perverse effects of the proliferation of temporary permits that do not offer a clear path to permanent residence and citizenship. It should be remembered that each year, more migrants enter Canada with temporary permits than with permanent permits. Result: when their permit expires, they become, due to the structural problems of the immigration system, undocumented. But that doesn’t make them criminals.
Beyond any humanitarian consideration, it only makes sense that thousands of people who live here and already contribute to society should come out of limbo from this parallel life. Regularization is beneficial to the economy if it enables them to access jobs in sectors where there is a shortage of labor and where their skills can be put to full use.
We are not talking about “illegal” here. We are talking about people who entered Canada one day in a completely legal way to study, to work, to go sightseeing, to apply for asylum and who, for all sorts of reasons—because they found a job or have lost it, because they are afraid to return to their country, because they have met someone… —, have not left the country on the scheduled date.
They are your colleagues, your neighbors, people you meet every day. They work in the construction sector, care, household services… They take care of your parents, build your houses, take care of your deliveries, do for a “not even minimum” wage what often no one else does not want to do.
Regularization is also the way forward from a social justice point of view. No society has an interest in having thousands of people without status living in a situation of great economic, social or legal precariousness, as if their life had less value than that of others, notes David Moffette. “We have everything to gain by giving them access to rights. In the same way that we have everything to gain by having social programs to ensure that people do not sleep on the streets or have enough to eat. »
While preparing this column, I had in front of me the book Migrations by Indian-American science journalist Sonia Shah. The essay, which will be published in French on October 18 by Écosociété, is an invitation to deconstruct the way we look at migration, which is too often seen as a threat or something abnormal.
Selected excerpt: “Life, the living, today as yesterday, moves. For centuries, we have denied the existence of the migratory instinct and demonized it to the point of making it a harbinger of horrors to come. We have constructed a narrative about our past, our bodies and the natural world where migration plays the role of anomaly. It is an illusion. And when it dissipates, the whole world is transformed. »
Migrations are not an anomaly. It’s just… life. As long as we accept it.
Towards a regularization program
On December 16, 2021, Federal Immigration Minister Sean Fraser received a mandate from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to “build on current pilot programs to continue exploring ways to regularize the status of undocumented workers who contribute to Canadian communities”. Work is ongoing and, most recently, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) consulted with academic experts and stakeholders such as the Canadian Council for Refugees and the Migrant Rights Network to determine the outlines of such a program. “IRCC will continue to explore new avenues to help more foreign nationals currently residing in Canada settle here permanently. This is an opportunity for us to draw on best practices and lessons from our past experiences to ensure we have the most inclusive and effective public policy possible. »
Source: Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada