‘Medical inadmissibility’ used to discriminate vs caregivers, TFWs

‘Medical inadmissibility’ used to discriminate vs caregivers, TFWs

PANEL, from left: Layer Faye Faraday, moderator Kristina Torres, caregiver Josarie Danieles and GABRIELA Ontario’s Mithi Esguerra

Caregivers and advocates reiterate call for Permanent Residency Upon Arrival for TFWs

By Pet G. Cleto

In a press conference held last September 11, organizations presented cases of “medical inadmissibility” stressing that the cases were one more issue in the already precarious situation of caregivers. Caregivers and organizations once more made their main call that government grant Permanent Residency Upon Arrival as a solution to the vulnerability to abuses of caregivers and other foreign temporary workers.

The press conference was held at the Caregivers’ Action Centre (CAC), a week before the scheduled report on September 19 of the parliamentary standing committee which reviewed the Temporary Foreign Workers’ Program (TFWP). Speaking at the panel were caregiver Josarie Danieles from the centre; GABRIELA Ontario chairperson Mithi Esguerra, and lawyer Faye Faraday. Attending were other members of the main campaign organizer, Migrant Workers’ Alliance of Canada, (MWAC), an Ontario coalition of migrant workers’ organizations and advocacy organizations.

CAC’s Josarie Danieles, caregiver, whose daughter Precious had been diagnosed with mental retardation, was denied permanent residency because Precious was deemed “medically inadmissible.” By current immigration laws, such a judgment of a family member at the same stroke disqualifies the main applicant – the caregiver or other temporary worker – and the rest of her family, from permanent residency. By current immigration laws, such a judgment of a family member at the same stroke disqualifies the main applicant – the caregiver or other temporary worker – and the rest of her family, from permanent residency.

Josarie Danieles

The “medical inadmissibility” issue is a recent occurrence, remarked lawyer Faye Faraday, in an immigration system that “has existed for only 15 years.” She described it as “a system based on allowing only professionals to avail of immediate permanent residency, and puts migrant workers like caregivers into conditions of uncertainty.”

“This creates social instability,”said Faraday, who has seen over the decades how the system affects the workers. She pointed out that the instability is caused by a system that seems “to tell people that it’s okay to discriminate against foreign temporary workers.” For this reason, the lawyer said she looks forward into a rebuilding of the system.

GABRIELA Ontario’s Esguerra spoke about two members of the organization who had such cases, and remarked that “the rejections because of medical inadmissibility exacerbate the already prolonged family separation that the caregivers suffer.” Pointing out that in GABRIELA’s research in partnership with York University and Ryerson University, two-thirds (67%) of the respondents were mothers, Esguerra remarked that mothers who had made decisions to come to Canada as caregivers did so precisely because they looked forward to the fulfillment of the Live-in Caregivers’ Program’s (LCP) promised “family reunification.”

Instead, they find that the frequent conditions of exploitation and abuse they experience is “compounded by the obstacles they encounter in the immigration system,” Esguerra said.

“They work hard in order to provide for their families, contribute to the Canadian economy and society, and yet their rights and welfare – as well as the rights and welfare of their families – are disregarded, ” said Esguerra. “This points to the larger problem of migrants: that migrants are treated as mere commodities in a system of global trade, not as human beings.”

“That’s obvious in the way sending governments like the Philippines see them only as a source of revenue. As for receiving governments, they reject them, though they’ve made their contributions to society, at the point they’re seen as a potential burden to the economy.”