Canadian organizations are hoping to capitalize on the momentum of the immigrant rights movement that has swept the U.S. in recent months to raise the profile of the plight of undocumented workers in Canada. On May 27, rallies similar to those held in the U.S. all spring were held in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa and Fredericton to protest an apparent recent rise in illegal worker deportations. Activists also seek to press the new Conservative government to give legal recognition to the country's non-status labour force.
Since taking power in January, the Conservative government has taken a hard line on illegal immigration, stepping up efforts to deport transgressors. Immigrant rights activists say that as a result, the Canada Border Services Agency has become much stricter with its application of the law.
"Examples have been going to schools and using children as bait to get to their parents, going to malls and asking people for identification…These are tactics that we had never heard of before, but in the last three or four months we're hearing more and more that the CBSA are using these tactics to get to undocumented people and to deport people," says Sonja Nerad, Community Health Program Manager with Access Alliance.
Craig Fortier, an organizer with No One Is Illegal Toronto, calls these methods "U.S.-style enforcement" giving rise to a "climate of fear" in non-status communities where people are afraid to leave their homes to get vital medical care or are keeping their children back from school.
"The decision to remove someone from Canada is not taken lightly. The CBSA has an obligation to remove any person that has been issued a removal order… as soon as possible," says CBSA spokesperson Cara Prest.
Despite some parallels with the U.S. situation, Liberal Member of Parliament Mario Silva, Associate Critic for Canadian Heritage, thinks that in terms of magnitude, there's little comparison between the two countries. Canadian estimates for non-status workers are anywhere between one quarter to half a million people, compared to approximately 11 million in the U.S. "So it's a totally different scale," says Silva, who attended the May 27 march near his Toronto riding.
Another difference is that Canada does not have an issue of porous borders as is the case between the U.S. and Mexico. Many undocumented workers in Canada arrive legally, as visitors, temporary workers or students, and then overstay their visas.
Many of the illegal labourers in Canada are here for years, enrolling their children in schools and becoming part of mainstream society.
"Most of these people are really well integrated, they have families, they really contribute to society. So Canada needs them," says Silva.
This is particularly true of the construction industry, says Silva, which is a primary beneficiary of non-status labour. Canada is currently experiencing a construction boom and there is a serious shortage of skilled workers to fill the need.
"The average age of construction workers now is 50 years old, and we're going to have a huge crisis in another 10 years," notes Silva.
In British Columbia alone, 20,000 additional construction workers will be needed over the next three years to prepare for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. There's a huge labour crunch in Ontario, and in Winnipeg they are scrambling for factory workers. Help wanted signs are ubiquitous in Alberta, where immigrant workers are also in high demand to work in the oil sands. The Liberal government was planning to increase immigration targets by roughly 40,000 people per year – a plan which the Conservatives have now scrapped – to meet shortfalls in the labour market.
"I think it's a contraction – many are these industries are crying out about labour shortages," says Deena Ladd, Workers Action Centre Coordinator. Ladd says that, similar to the situation in the U.S., most non-status workers are doing jobs considered undesirable by many Canadians, such as construction, cleaning, delivery, kitchen work, care-giving etc.
One way the shortages could be solved, Ladd argues, is by regularizing non-status labourers. "These workers are all surviving – they're working, they aren't accessing benefits. They are making huge contributions to the economy and aren't being recognised for it."
In an interview with CTV News, Immigration Minister Monte Solberg defended the government's stance against recognizing non-status immigrants.
"We have an obligation to the hundreds of thousands of people waiting to get into this country to make sure we don't reward those who don't play by the rules," he said.
But supporters of regularization—granting legal recognition to people already working in Canada—argue that the queue-jumping argument doesn't make sense because there is no queue for working class jobs.
"There is no queue for working people in this country. There is definitely a queue for professionals and people who have the money to buy their way into Canada, but there's no queue for working people. You can't get into Canada using the points system," says Fortier.
Canada's point system for determining immigrant eligibility strongly favours high levels of education, strong language abilities and experience in certain highly-skilled categories of employment. Low scores in any two of those categories guarantees exclusion through normal channels. The point system has been criticized for creating an immigrant population packed with engineers and other professionals, while failing to attract enough of the trades people and labourers who are so sorely needed.
But while the Conservative are taking a tough stance on non-status immigrant, the government has also taken measures to make it easier for some newcomers to work. For example, new regulations allow foreign students to take off-campus jobs, immigration landing fees have been cut in half, and steps have been taken to streamline the citizenship process.
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