SIKLAB-Canada
National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada
Press Release

Advocacy group critical of changes to foreign worker program

March 12, 2007

Vancouver, B.C. - National organizations of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) and Philippine women in Canada are very critical of Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s (CIC) recent announcement to changes to its foreign worker programs.

In particular, CIC has declared these changes as “improvements to the Temporary Foreign Worker program” citing that they would “address challenges that Canadian employers face”.

“These changes are once again a slap in the face of thousands of migrant workers in Canada, in particular to Filipino live-in caregivers working under the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP),” Glecy Duran, National Vice-Chairperson for Western Canada of SIKLAB-Canada (whose name in Tagalog means ‘Flameburst’ and whose acronym stands for Advance and Uphold the Rights of Overseas Filipino Workers).

“These changes do not fundamentally alter the LCP in ways that would uphold the human rights of these migrant workers,” asserts Duran.

CIC announced that live-in caregivers will be eligible for work permits for up to 3 years and 3 months if they remain with the same employer. This extension corresponds with changes to the Labour Market Opinion’s validity for the same time period.

Live-in caregivers must complete a strict 24 months of live-in work within a stringent three-year time limit.

“Many live-in caregivers do not remain working for the same employer over this two to three year period for various legitimate reasons”, points out Duran. “For instance, due to the severe exploitation they face working under oppressive conditions living in their employers’ homes, they decide to leave their employers and look for better working conditions with another employer.”

“The three year and three month work permit is useless to the live-in caregiver who ends up changing employers. In fact, when a live-in caregiver then goes to apply for a new work permit when they are changing employers, CIC’s increasingly lengthy processing timeframes of up to three months, severely impacts the chances of a live-in caregiver being able to complete the 24 months of work within the 3-year period, especially if she ends up changing employers many times.”

“These changes are clearly in response to employers’ complaints about the long processing timeframes they face in recruiting foreign workers”, points out Duran. “Yet the government chooses to blatantly ignore the plight of live-in caregivers, the majority of whom are Filipino women”.

Since the early 1980s, nearly 100,000 Filipinos have come to live and work in Canada as live-in caregivers through the LCP. Over the decades, advocacy groups like SIKLAB-Canada and the National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada (NAPWC) have been critical of the government’s neglect of Filipino live-in caregivers.

SIKLAB-Canada and NAPWC have maintained that the LCP is an anti-woman and racist policy that sentences live-in caregivers to a lifetime of domestic, cleaning, and other service sector work, stealing their dignity and stripping them of previous experience and education.

“Canada continues to increase its use of foreign workers to fill the growing labour shortages, including live-in caregivers,” stresses Duran. “Yet Canada continues to violate these foreign workers’ human rights and discriminate against them, preferring to keep them as an invisible source of cheap and docile labour.”

The national groups remain firm in their call to scrap the Live-in Caregiver Program. “Canada touts itself as a protector of human rights around the world, yet in their own backyard, thousands of women continue to toil under the LCP with little protection or services,” asserts Duran.

“If Canada is really serious about its leading role as a champion of human rights, then the government would recognize the vast contribution that live-in caregivers have made to Canadian society and proceed to remove the live-in requirement and grant permanent residency to these migrant workers, as well as full accreditation and reciprocity to foreign trained professionals.”

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For more information, please contact:
VANCOUVER: Glecy Duran, SIKLAB-Canada, Vice-Chairperson for Western Canada at: #604-215-1103 or e-mail: siklab@kalayaancentre.net

TORONTO: Yolyn Valenzuela, SIKLAB Vice-Chairperson (Eastern Canada) or: Joy Sioson of Philippine Women Centre of Ontario at: 416-878-8772 or e-mail: siklab_ontario@yahoo.ca

 MONTREAL: Roderick Carreon, SIKLAB Chairperson at: 514-344-2709 or Joanne Vasquez of Philippine Women Centre of Quebec at: 514-659-4300