As immigration increases in Durham Region, some labour activists and temporary foreign workers are calling for equal rights, including more workplace protections and access to services available to Canadians.
A Mexican woman living in Whitby is one of the 2.5 million people with no status in the country, according to Migrant Workers Alliance for Change (MWAC).
The woman, who is not being named out of fear of retribution, used to run a successful accounting firm in Monterrey, Mexico. Here she operates her own—cash-only—cleaning business.
While she works more than 50 hours a week, visiting an average of three houses per day across the GTA, she doesn’t have access to healthcare or banking, so she has to be extra cautious.
Her work permit is another constant worry.
“Every day I worry, hoping for a positive answer but knowing deportation is always possible,” she said, noting she is on a tourist visa. In the eight months since she applied for her work permit, the employer who initially sponsored her to get it decided not to use her services anymore.
In 2021, the last Census year, immigrants made up 28 per cent of the total population of Durham Region, with just over 10 per cent arriving in the previous five years, surpassing provincial growth rates, according to a study by Durham Local Immigration Partnership (DLIP) and funded by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).
The report, “A Look at Durham: Trends in Immigration and Citizenship,” noted half of Durham’s immigrants were economic migrants.
Of these, half were skilled workers, one-third Canadian Experience Class (CEC) beneficiaries, and one-sixth from the Provincial Nominee Program (PNP).
This increasing number of temporary residents isn’t just particular to Durham, said Syed Hussan, executive director of MWAC, co-organizer of a recent rally in Toronto.
“We have seen a very recent shift from a system where most people have permanent resident status to a system where more and more people are temporary and therefore exploitable,” said Hussan. “That’s why status for all is about building an equal society where everyone has the same rights, everyone has the same responsibilities.”
At the rally in Toronto, 10,000 people marched from Yonge and Dundas to Queen’s Park as part of the “Draw the Line” rally, a coordinated national protest across more than 50 Canadian cities.
Organized by a broad coalition of climate, social and economic justice organizations, the rally focused on several issues, including Bill C-2, which focuses on border security, and Bill C-5, which has been criticized for failing to respect Indigenous rights.
As explained by Sonia, a Colombian woman at the rally, Bill C-2 “will indiscriminately affect immigrants.”
“So much wage theft and so many other issues, is because we have no status,” she said in Spanish.
In April 2024, Mary Fowler, president of Durham Region Labour Council (DRLC), sent a letter to then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, demanding the federal government “ensure regularization and permanent resident status for all undocumented and migrant workers.”
The DRLC was one of 300 organizations endorsing the rally, along with Climate Justice Durham.
Migrant struggles: delayed applications, scapegoating and precarity
Hussan said delays, such as the one the Mexican woman in Whitby faces, are not accidental.
“The humanitarian, compassionate application process,” he noted, “has a [up to] 600-month delay, that’s 50 years for your application to be processed. That’s a policy choice. There’s no way an application takes 50 years to process.”
JD, a woman from the Philippines in attendance at the rally, doesn’t understand why, if Canada “has enough for everybody.” She said migrants face barriers, precarious conditions and limited protections.
She also criticized the scapegoating of foreign workers by Canadians, saying immigrants pay taxes, contribute to the country, and are “the backbone” of the Canadian economy.
“They’re not bringing it down, they’re actually helping out,” she said, emphasizing the important role these workers played during the pandemic. “It’s the rich who are getting rich because of the temporary foreign workers.”
Bill C-5 has already received royal assent and is set to become law, while Bill C-2 is undergoing its second reading in the House of Commons.