(Montreal) About thirty organizations will mobilize on Sunday afternoon in four cities in Quebec to demand the regularization of undocumented people.
Posted at 1:53 p.m.
These rallies in Montreal, Quebec, Saguenay and Sherbrooke come a month after federal Immigration Minister Sean Fraser announced that the government was preparing a massive regularization program.
“What we are calling for is the establishment of a truly inclusive regularization program,” said Immigrant Workers Center spokesperson Cheolki Yoon in a telephone interview.
He said he feared a repeat of the guardian angel program, which allowed asylum seekers working in the health network to obtain permanent residence. But, according to Mr. Yoon, “there were several criteria such as the specific occupation” or the number of hours worked in a specific period that “reduced the scope” of the initiative.
“The application process was so complex that eligible people could not apply in a limited time, he added, it needs a simple and accessible process. »
Organizations send their requests to Ottawa, but also to Quebec, as immigration is a shared jurisdiction.
Parliament’s Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration estimates that ‘between 20,000 and 500,000 people’ have irregular status in the country, but these calculations are difficult to confirm as this is a hidden population .
Isolation and precariousness
Being without status is “a life in extreme precariousness”, lamented Mr. Yoon. In addition to “the daily fear of being deported”, we “do not have access to the various public services, to education programs, to public services”.
The spokesperson also explained that people in this situation “are reluctant to resort to public authorities” if they are victims of crime: “the police appear and these people hide themselves”.
“Many people in this situation are already at work, but under the table, in miserable conditions,” he said. According to him, a massive regularization of the statutes, “it will reduce the question of the scarcity of manpower”.
He said he understood the province’s desire to preserve the sustainability of the French language, but recalled that undocumented people are already on Quebec soil. “Generally, many people already speak a certain level of French, despite the fact that they do not have access to francization services,” he said, adding that learning the language would be easier. by having access to these services and by being less “isolated in society”.
The office of federal Immigration Minister Sean Fraser and that of provincial Immigration, Francisation and Integration Minister Christine Fréchette did not immediately respond to requests from The Canadian Press.