Stop the deportations!

Stop the deportations!

Canada through its Immigration Ministry has used U.S.-style enforcement tactics, such as using children as bait, arresting children in schools, and targeting community members in public places like on the street, in malls, and at subway stops. Community groups and organizations are standing up to fight against these attacks, to fight for access without fear to public services and benefits, and to fight for a national regularization program for the over 500,000 non-status immigrants living and working in this country.

We draw inspiration from the millions of undocumented, migrant and immigrant workers and supporters who rallied in the US last May 1 to protest anti-immigration legislation. More vigilance is necessary as yesterday (May 26), the US Senate passed the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act which toughens illegal immigration and border enforcement and creates a guest-worker program which supplies low-skilled foreign labour.

In Canada, there are currently almost half a million Filipinos, making them the fourth largest visible minority group. As migrant and immigrant workers in Canada we have been facing increasing exploitation and attacks under Canada’s neo-liberal agenda. The exploitation of overseas Filipino workers has only worsened as imperialist globalization spurs on the international buying and selling of cheaper and cheaper Third World labour.

Filipinos in Canada are part of the over 8 million Filipinos living and working outside the Philippines. With 10% of its people staying or working abroad, the Philippines has been described as one of the largest migrant nations in the world whose overseas workers annually remit around 13 billion US dollars to the Philippines – thus propping up an ailing economy. The anti-people economic policies of the present puppet Philippine government under President Macapagal Arroyo has led to increasing Filipino people’s resistance against US imperialism and its puppet regime. Arroyo in response pushes the Labour Export Policy (LEP) as an attempt to quell growing social unrest and the national liberation movement.

As a Canadian policy that seeks to fill a labour need with migrant labour, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) and Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC) jointly administer the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP). The LCP is an expression of the systematic commodification and exploitation of Filipino migrant labour by the Canadian state.

Canada’s plunder and exploitation of migrant workers only serves the interests of those who stand to benefit from privatization, the clawing back of social services, and the driving down of workers’ wages and rights. Instead of implementing a national childcare program that would benefit working class mothers and families, the Canadian government uses Filipino live-in caregivers as cheap labour for upper-class families. Instead of providing accessible and free public health care for all, the Canadian government uses Filipino nurses forced into domestic work to perform private nursing duties for upper-class elderly and affluent people who can pay for private care.

Filipino live-in caregivers are subject to arbitrary and unjust deportation for failure to complete the requirements of the LCP. In the majority of cases, the deportations are due to women’s inability to complete the required 24 months of live-in work within three years of entering Canada. The deportation of Filipino live-in caregivers should be viewed as a violation of their human rights as migrant workers. Canada still refuses to sign the UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families.

Despite this sorry record of violating the human rights of Filipino live-in caregivers and despite statements that Canada wishes to regularize undocumented immigrants, Canada continues to expand its temporary foreign workers program or movement. The expansion of Canada’s recruitment and exploitation of temporary migrant labour should also be seen in the context of bilateral and multilateral agreements under the World Trade Organization’s (WTO’s) General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), Mode 4 (which seeks to enhance the temporary movement of workers around the world) and in the context of Canada’s need to compete for and maintain sources of cheap, docile labour.

Without recognizing their contributions to the Canadian economy, migrant and undocumented workers are subject to racial discrimination and kept at bottom and low wage jobs, criminalized and even deported. We are often blamed for the socio-economic crisis that the monopoly capitalism inflicts on the Canadian people.

Therefore, as overseas Filipino migrant and immigrant workers in Canada, we must stand in solidarity with other migrant, immigrant, and undocumented workers, as well as Canadian workers and all oppressed people in a common struggle. We urge all progressive trade unions, organizations and individuals to stand in solidarity with the issues and struggles of migrant, immigrant and undocumented workers.

Stop the unjust deportation of Filipino live-in caregivers!

SIKLAB-Canada
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