The Immigrant Workers Centre is calling on immigrants to walk of the job Dec. 18 to protest increasingly restrictive immigration policies.
After coming to Quebec from Côte d’Ivoire to join her husband in June 2023, Christelle found herself trapped in an abusive marriage. She left that marriage, but now finds herself in a state of precariousness, unable to work until the federal government processes her visa request.
Without status, Christelle can’t access financial support and is dependent on financial aid from the Immigrant Workers Centre, a Montreal organization advocating for immigrant rights.
Christelle asked The Gazette not to publish her last name, citing her precarious situation.
“I’m finding myself in a situation I have never experienced and then to hear that I’m the one taking advantage of services (I don’t have access to) or I’m the reason there’s no housing, it’s totally shocking,” she told The Gazette.
Christelle, who sits on the Immigrant Workers Centre women’s committee, appeared with other representatives of the organization Tuesday, calling on immigrant workers across Quebec to walk of their jobs Dec. 18 in protest against what they say are unfair changes to immigration policy.
Migrante Québec, which represents Filipino immigrants in Quebec, has endorsed the strike and the Immigrant Workers Centre says it is working to secure support from similar organizations.
Christelle and other advocates say they are tired of seeing immigrants scapegoated for a slew of issues they shouldn’t be blamed for.
This year “we’ve seen an aggressive shift against the temporary migrant in Canada, whether student, refugee, temporary worker, with numerous migration restrictions from one day to the next that are creating greater precariousness for migrant workers,” Immigrant Workers Centre organizer Hector Salamanca told reporters.
Raising the bar for the visa program is unfair to people who are already in Canada and had expected to be eligible for the program, Salamanca said.
“This is one restrictive measure among others,” said Viviana Medina, another organizer for the centre.
She criticized federal and provincial politicians for casting immigrants as “enemies” in the face of economic pressures.
Governments treat immigrants like numbers, Salamanca said, instead of as “people with pasts and futures.”
“The real enemy is not the migrant worker, but the capitalist system that relentlessly extracts profits all around the world,” Medina said.
She said the strike will include all immigrants, including temporary immigrants, asylum seekers, international students and people without status. She also invited non-immigrants to join the strike.
The strike has numerous demands, calling, among other things, for a program that will give status to immigrants without it, an end to new restrictions being applied to immigrants already here, an abolition of work permits tied to a single employer and a moratorium on migrant deportations and detentions until its demands are fulfilled.
Alongside the Immigrant Workers Centre, two organizations working with asylum seekers told The Gazette in separate interviews that they’ve seen a recent shift into harsher rhetoric toward their clients.
“It’s a little bit heartbreaking,” said Alina Murad, advocacy and media co-ordinator at the Refugee Centre, a Montreal organization providing services to asylum seekers.
“Canada really has adopted anti-immigrant rhetoric,” especially in messages from politicians and in the media, she said.
“I don’t think that this has been fuelled by public opinion,” Murad said. “People are hurting and are misplacing their emotions.”
The anti-migrant messaging “doesn’t make anything easier,” for her centre’s clients, she said. “Being an asylum seeker is already a very arduous thing.”
“You can ask for asylum once in your life,” in Canada, she said. “It’s important and it’s serious and it’s stressful for people.”
“Think about people who are in this process and then telling them, ‘You need to go.’ It adds so much stress.”
At Tuesday’s news conference, Christelle told reporters that temporary immigrants, including those without status, should be seen as valuable members of society.
“We live every day in fear and with the feeling of being invisible, even though we actively contribute to society, participate in its economy and enrich its diversity. Conditions for people without status have become unacceptable.”