Filipiniana column - JULY 2013
RHYME & REASON
RHYME & REASON
In the morning
of 15 July 2013, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced a major cabinet
shuffle in which Ajax-Pickering MP Chris Alexander was named the new Minister
of Citizenship and Immigration (C&I) while former C&I Minister Jason
Kenney is named Minister of the newly created Ministry of Employment and Social
Development (formerly Human Resources and Skills Development Canada). It is interesting to note that Minister
Kenney was moved to a department that is still closely related to the functions
of his former portfolio, particularly in matters relating to offers of
employment for temporary foreign workers and prospective immigrants to Canada. This could mean a continuing slew of
legislative and policy reforms consistent with those that he started in his
previous posting and which could significantly affect the socio-economic
landscape in this country.
It may be recalled that some four years
ago, a series of investigative reports about the abuse and exploitation of
live-in caregivers in the Toronto Star prompted a series of government
consultations, legislative and ministerial reforms which were all supposedly
meant to address these issues and promote fairness and justice for this
extremely vulnerable sector of Canadian society.
These legislative and administrative
reforms included measures that were meant to discourage and punish certain
exploitative acts of unscrupulous agencies, recruiters and employers. Measures were also introduced to reduce
hardships of live-in caregivers who are participants of the Live-in Caregiver
Program (LCP) through the amendment of certain requirements and faster
processing of work permits, including open work permits, which provide greater
freedom and flexibility for the caregivers to leave abusive employers and
choose other types of work.
While many LCP participants have benefited
from legal and policy reforms implemented in the past few years, still many are
suffering the hardships that arise from yet unresolved systemic flaws of the
LCP. These include prolonged family
separation, inadvertent loss of status, being overworked and underpaid or
worse, unjust refusals of permanent residence applications after many years of
toiling under the most exploitative working conditions.
First of all, the prolonged family
separation starts when LCP participants are deprived of the opportunity to
bring family members to Canada at the outset.
After completing the required two years of full time live-in caregiving
work, the caregiver applicants with no overseas dependents wait a few more
years to obtain the much-coveted permanent resident status. For applicants with spouses and/or dependent children,
the wait time could stretch to several years depending on visa office backlogs
and various issues that arise while assessing the admissibility of dependent
family members. Strict scrutiny of even
minor criminal records, medical issues, school records (for dependents based on
their being in continuous full time studies since age 22), uncooperative family
members who stubbornly refuse or negligently fail to comply with sometimes
repetitive visa office requirements, often lead to lengthy processing times
that could almost seem like eternity for those who have long been awaiting
permanent residency and reunification with their beloved family members. While enduring such onerous wait times, life
goes on for everyone involved, which may lead to strained marriages, adulterous
spouses, rebellious teenaged children who get embroiled with drugs and other
illegal activities, serious illnesses and other unfortunate sidelights to an
already complicated and tedious process for the principal caregiver
applicant. When one or more of these
happen, the long wait times may lead to a heartbreaking refusal of the
permanent residence application not just for the inadmissible family member,
but for everyone else. This is most
unfair to the principal caregiver applicant who toiled many years and
consequently established a productive life in Canada but is being refused
permanent residency for reasons which are mostly beyond her control.
Second, a widely prevalent yet still largely ignored reality is the
slavelike treatment of LCP participants which is an inevitable consequence of
the mandatory live-in requirement and the vulnerable immigration status
sanctioned by this inherently flawed immigration program. Canada’s immigration law provides that
participants of the LCP perform caregiving services for children, the elderly
or disabled. It is not legally defined
as a domestic worker program or worse, a license to conduct modern-day
slavery. However, despite this clear
legal provision limiting the function of caregivers to taking care of children,
the elderly or the disabled, a vast majority of employers require their live-in
caregivers to perform substantial household chores such as cleaning, cooking,
washing clothes and dishes, shoveling snow, washing vehicles, serving their
guests during lavish house parties or even staffing their businesses and
cleaning their relatives’ and friends’ houses, in addition to their caregiving
duties. The caregivers are often
required to work long hours with no overtime pay. They can also be deprived of private living
quarters, are forced to eat food they do not like, or refused proper breaks or
vacation and sick leaves. The tales of
excessive hardship and abuse of LCP workers still abound yet are seemingly
being swept under the rug.
A recent ruling of the BC Supreme Court convicting an employer of
trafficking a domestic worker into Canada may have helped to highlight that
this problem continues to exist despite recent efforts to protect this
vulnerable class of workers. Although the
domestic helper involved in the BC trafficking case was a not a participant of
the LCP (her employers brought her into Canada as a visitor), she was promised
permanent residency after working for two years in Canada, which was clearly
based on the well-known and much abused LCP condition. Although the facts of this particular case
did not occur within the specific context of the LCP, the very same
exploitative conditions were perpetrated based on the promise of prospective
permanent residence in Canada which made the LCP such an attractive option for
many.
Despite efforts in recent years to
implement reforms to the LCP and protect its caregiver participants, much
remains to be done in eradicating the problems spawned by this program. The ongoing hardships of caregivers and
similarly-situated temporary foreign workers are totally inconsistent with
claims of a just and humane Canada.
From the various consultations when he was
the highly visible Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, the new Minister of
Employment and Social Development must have already become quite familiar with
these ongoing tales of woe. Thus, we can
only hope that this recent cabinet leadership change will also lead to a much
better informed, effective and efficient coordination between these relevant
departments that will truly change many lives for the better.
The author is an immigration lawyer in
the GTA and may be reached at deanna@santoslaw.ca
Comments
Post a Comment