The Survival Jobs and Desperate Measures of Undocumented Workers
The Survival Jobs and Desperate Measures of Undocumented Workers
By Javier Ortega-Araiza
From survival jobs to staged marriages, New Canadian Media’s Javier Ortega-Araiza delves into the experiences of three highly educated professionals as they try to find a way to stay in Canada.
August 19, 2021
Six days a week, before the sun sets, Samuel rides his bicycle for 30 kilometres, the distance that separates his basement apartment in the Toronto neighborhood of Roncesvalles to the No Frills grocery store in Mississauga, where he works the night shift as a janitor.
This was not the type of job he had dreamed of after earning a civil engineering degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education in Mexico. But jobs there are scarce, he says, and they don’t pay well.
“They expect me to intern for six months, without pay, and then, if they decide to give me a full-time job, they would pay me something like $500 (or) $600 a month. It is ridiculous, considering how much tuition costs,” says Samuel.
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