Coming out of the shadow to call on Ottawa on its promise to regularize undocumented migrants

Monieya Jess has to constantly watch over her shoulder to make sure she’s not on the radar of immigration enforcement authorities.

On Wednesday, the Jamaican woman overcame her fear and spoke at a rally in Toronto, pleading with the Trudeau government for a long called-for regularization plan to give permanent status to the tens of thousands of non-status residents like her who live in the shadows in Canada.

“I am afraid, but I’m not afraid,” said the 35-year-old, who left her job as a migrant farm worker after suffering from work-related pain and lost her legal status in Canada in 2021.

 

“I’m fighting for something that I know is right. This rally means a lot not just for me, but for a million more of us.”

 

With Parliament breaking soon for the summer and a federal election looming, advocates held the rally outside Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland’s office in Toronto to push the government to “get regularization over the finish line.”

 

In a mandate letter in December 2021, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asked then immigration minister Sean Fraser to further explore ways of “regularizing status for undocumented workers who are contributing to Canadian communities.”

 

The government was very close to finalizing the plan last fall after extensive consultations with the legal and migrant communities, as well as advocacy groups and employers, the Star has reported. But the wait for such a plan has continued. Marc Miller replaced Fraser at the helm of the immigration department in July.

 

“There’s a large group of people in Canada that are Canadian by any other name that just don’t have the documentation that we need to address in a mature fashion,” Miller told a news conference in December, explaining his intent to bring a regularization proposal for the cabinet’s consideration this spring.

 

“There is resistance within the system. I would not say to that there is unanimity in Parliament as to how to approach. There’s a number of competing policies that we have to be quite wide-eyed about in how we approach this, notably in the context of the winds that have turned against immigration.”

 

Rally organizer Syed Hussan said 40,000 people and more than 500 organizations have signed on to a call for regularization for undocumented migrants and permanent immigration status for all migrants. Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow and her counterpart in Montreal, Valérie Plante, have written letters to Trudeau to support regularization.

 

“This is the moment we’ve been waiting for a long time,” said Hussan. “It was promised in the spring. It’s time to get it done.”

 

He said undocumented residents came to Canada legally, only to later lose status because of issues with student visas, temporary work permits or asylum claims. Their lack of status makes them easy targets of bad employers and others who try to take advantage of their vulnerability, he added.

 

“They’ve done all the right things and followed all the steps they can, but there’s no pathway for permanent residence,” said Hussan. “Folks have been living here for years. They are not new arrivals. They are living here, working here. They’re taking care of communities. They are feeding their families, they’re building homes, but they don’t get any of the rights.”

 

Jess, who lost status after her work permit renewal was refused, said she earns a flat rate of $1,000 in cash a month as a caregiver and spends $750 to rent a room in a rooming house, while trying to support her two kids, 15 and six, who are in the care of their grandmother in Jamaica.

 

“It’s stressful because sometimes they call upon you and you have nothing,” she said. “For the longest time, I haven’t been able to send anything for them.”

 

 

 

This article was first reported by The Star