When I came to Canada as a graduate student some years ago, I was quite surprised to learn that the country’s immigration law has a special program that allows persons to apply for permanent residence in Canada on condition that they work for at least two years within three years of arrival as live-in caregivers in Canadian homes. Even more interestingly, I learned that some 80% of the live-in caregivers are from the Philippines, our country which has long been a source of domestic workers for countries like Hong Kong, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Italy and Israel, among others. Canada however, prides itself in claiming that the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP) is a “very generous” program that allows the caregivers to eventually obtain permanent resident status, a privilege that is not available for domestic workers in other countries. But is it really that generous and benevolent a program? In my opinion, not quite. First of all, it smacks of discrimination in that liv