Landed Status Now! Respect and Dignity for Live-in Caregivers
Landed Status Now! Respect and Dignity for Live-in Caregivers
By Coalition for the Protection of Caregivers’ Rights
“We must ask whether it is acceptable for Canada to lower the standard of human rights for immigrant workers simply because they are being provided with an opportunity that is potentially beneficial to them.” (Shayna Buhler, Human Rights Tribune, Vol. 12, 2006)
Background
Filipinos in Canada are part of now more than ten million Filipinos scattered in some 182 countries all over the world. The Philippines is the third largest source of migrants into Canada, rivaling China and India which have populations over ten times larger than that of the Philippines.
Filipino migration abroad is a product of extreme poverty and unemployment in the Philippines. The present government under President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo continues to implement the policy of exporting labour initiated by the late dictator Marcos to stave off the worsening economic crisis in the country.
More than 2,000 Filipinos leave their country every day. Migrant Filipinos contribute a lot to the economy of the Philippines through government fees they have to pay as requisite to their deployment and their dollar remittances. Government rakes in millions daily in the processing of their passports, administrative fees in obtaining their certificates (birth, marriage, etc.), NBI (National Bureau of Investigation) clearance, medical clearances, POEA (Philippine Overseas Employment Agency), and many others. At the same time, migrant workers’ remittances shot up to a high of US$12.2 billion in 2005 from US$7.7 billion in 2001. The government recognizes this contribution and hails the migrant workers as “new economic heroes,” the country’s “greatest export” and “new global investors.”
York University professor Philip Kelly, in his study Filipinos in Canada: Economic Dimensions of Immigration and Settlement (2006), points out that each year, an estimated 10,000 Filipinos join the ranks of the 223,000 who have settled in Canada-43% in the Toronto area. He says that approximately 26,000 -many university educated-arrived under the auspices of either the FDM or the LCP since 1980.
There are over 3 million Filipino women who work overseas, two thirds of whom are employed as domestics, such that the Philippines provides approximately 90% of the world’s domestic workers. At the Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s Roundtable on the Live-In Caregiver Program in 2005, it was cited that about 2% of this number can be found in Canada. It was also pointed out that 91% of domestic care workers in Canada are from the Philippines and 95% of them are women.
Over the last fifteen years, a growing number of Filipino women have come to Canada through the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP). The LCP as implemented by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) brings in qualified temporary workers to provide in-home childcare, senior home support or disabled care.
Domestic work in Canada: A brief history
Canada has in fact been recruiting domestic workers or caregivers from other countries since the late 19th and early 20th centuries. First, the women from Europe – from Great Britain, then the Scandinavian countries, from Central or Eastern Europe including the Soviet Union – were brought in to work in the households and farms of the upper classes that colonized Canada.
The black Caribbean women followed in the 1920s as domestic household workers. This went on to the 1950s under the Caribbean domestic worker scheme, and on to the 70s with the women coming in as temporary workers without any right of permanently settling down in Canada. In 1973, under the Temporary Employment Authorization Program (TEAP) these women were considered as visitors only, their visas subject to renewal annually if they were to stay and work in Canada.
The long and hard struggles of these women and their advocates bore fruit in the Foreign Domestic Movement program (FDM) passed in 1979. The FDM gave these women the opportunity to become landed immigrants.
With the implementation of the FDM, there was a dramatic influx of Filipino domestic workers who either came directly from the Philippines or from other countries like Hong Kong and Greece where they had worked as domestic workers. In the period 1982-1990, the percentage of Filipinos who entered the FDM jumped from 24.5 to 60.2 percent.
The Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP) replaced the FDM in 1992. By 2004, 93% of those who entered Canada under the LCP were Filipinos mostly, women. Over the last fifteen years, a growing number of Filipino women have come to Canada through this program. As implemented by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), the LCP brings in qualified temporary workers to provide in-home childcare, senior home support or care for the disabled. Added requirements to enter the program include a 12th grade certificate or a second year college equivalent in the Philippines and a six-month month caregiver training.
Issues
The important requirement of the program is that the worker must live in the employer’s home. The LCP exists to fill in the shortage of Canadians or permanent residents who can do live-in care work.
However, after working 24 months as live-in caregiver within a three-year period, the caregiver can apply for permanent residence in Canada. Because of this, the program attracts migrant workers who have been working for a long period of time abroad to come to Canada and reunite with their families here.
To come to Canada, applicants to the LCP have to pay recruitment agencies an enormous amount equivalent to US$ 3,500.00 – 5,000.00. They have to sell properties or borrow money from financial institutions to produce this amount. Unfortunately in most cases, many of them arrive in Canada to find out they have no employer. The caregivers then have to confront the problem of how to pay the debts incurred during the process of their application. The Canadian government has no law that regulates the operations of these recruitment agencies. This condition makes applicants to the program vulnerable to exploitation by these agencies. This is also one reason why some caregivers are not able to fulfill the 24-month live-in requirement within the prescribed 3-year period.
Says a workshop participant – “I came here last February 24, 2004. As you can see, I am supposed to be landed by now since I’m way past the 3-year time frame for completing 24 months of live-in work. But I had problems with my papers. I wasn’t able to fulfill this requirement because when I arrived in Canada where I had neither friends nor relatives, the agency that I paid to place me here just said there was no work for me here. I was ‘released upon arrival’.”
While working under the program, caregivers are governed mainly by five (5) conditions: 1) They are not authorized to work in any occupation other than that as live-in caregiver; 2) They are not authorized to work for any employer and in any location other than stated in the contract; 3) They are subject to the mandatory live-in requirement; 4) They have temporary status; and 5) Unless authorized, they cannot attend any educational institution or take any academic, professional or vocational training courses.
Then and now, in workshops held in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, participants have pointed to the mandatory live-in requirement and the restriction to one employer as the foundation for the view that the LCP is a form of modern-day slavery. The caregiver is left vulnerable to various forms of exploitation – from long hours, to invasion of privacy and sexual harassment or abuse. More recently, a caregiver recounts – “In that house, I’m constantly monitored. There is a camera in every corner. So what can I do, my male employer sees me through the computer in his office. If I make a mistake, he’s there in an instant, berating me. And I dare not answer back, for fear that he might terminate my employment. …”
“I could not afford to lose my job because I have to support my family back home. I just have to endure the verbal tauntings and the humiliation because I have to complete the 24 months in 3 years time so I could apply for permanent resident status.”
Even changing employers requires once again going through the onerous process of visa reapplication. And with their temporary status, caregivers live in constant fear of deportation rendering them all the more vulnerable to threats from employers, agencies and even Canadian government bureaucrats.
In one case where a caregiver left one employer because she could not physically bear the hardships she encountered (i.e., looking after 6 children and working from 7am to 1am the following day), the employer gave her the runaround as she tried to get her record of employment (ROE) and unpaid wages. To aggravate this situation, she was passed around and thrown from Human Resources Canada to Revenue Canada to the Ministry of Labour and back as she followed up her papers.
But nowhere is the social impact of migration felt more intensely than in the caregiver’s pain of having to suffer from long periods of separation from spouses and children. In the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, Canada commits itself to family reunification. Still many caregivers do not see their families for more than a decade, considering that most of these caregivers already worked in other countries before coming to Canada.
“You see, it is not just the hardship from the housework, but the pain of being separated from your family, your loved ones. There is always your yearning to be with them. But you cannot be with them because you need to … you are forced to be here, even if only to be able to provide them a brighter future.”
For over 20 years now, well-meaning former domestic workers, community associations, faith-based groups, academics, as well as labour activists have persevered in lobbying and advocating for changes to the LCP.
More recently, community organizations and caregiver advocate groups, going beyond issues surrounding the murder of Filipino live-in caregiver Jocelyn Dulnuan last October, have raised and continue to raise their concerns regarding the safety and well-being of live-in caregivers whose workplaces are the homes of their employers. Parliamentarians have come forward to lend their support even as they push for bills aimed at key changes to the existing LCP. Together these groups have converged to advance a movement for fundamental change to the program.
Today the Coalition for the Protection of Caregivers’ Rights puts forward the following recommendations that call for fundamental changes to the program which can help caregivers achieve better working and living conditions, and other opportunities in Canada.
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