SIKLAB (Advance and Uphold the Rights of Overseas Filipino Workers) – Canada, Filipino-Canadian Youth Alliance – Canada, National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada, Filipino Nurses Support Group – BC and Quebec
Press Statement

Filipinos in Canada to Brion: Stop selling Filipino Workers!

29 January 2008

As national organizations of Filipino migrant workers, nurses, youth and women, we rally to protest today the visit of Philippine Department of Labor and Employment Secretary Arturo Brion to Vancouver.

According to reports, Secretary Brion signed a Memorandum of Understanding with BC Minister of Economic Development Colin Hansen this morning to
help reduce the shortage of skilled workers in
British Columbia and “help strengthen relations between B.C. employers and Philippine recruiters, providing more effective access to foreign workers.”

We condemn the continuing selling-off our people. From the 1960s when Filipino professionals were recruited to work in Canada to the 1980s when women began arriving under the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP), we have become a major source of cheap labour for developed countries like Canada. Nearly 100,000 women have come to Canada under the LCP and its predecessor the Foreign Domestic Movement (FDM). Under the program women suffer low or no wages, poor working conditions and all kinds of abuse. Academic as well as grassroots research has documented the long term impacts particularly on the children of live-in caregiversbecause of family separation and reunification.

This agreement is another part of the expansion of Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Programs. With CIC’s  new Canadian Experience Class, we expect more temporary foreign workers to enter Canada with little or no guaranteed protection from the Philippine or Canadian governments.

This agreement yet again exposes the Philippine governments blatant reliance of the remittances of Overseas Filipino Workers to prop up the moribund economy and to quell growing social unrest. Instead of traveling abroad to sell off more of our people, Secretary Brion and Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo should be creating jobs and alleviating the poverty which grips the majority of our people in the Philippines.

The continuing economic and political crisis in our homeland is what forced us to migrate to Canada. This crisis and our forced migration is not something to be proud of as Filipino government officials like Brion
and Philippines Ambassador to Canada Jose Brillantes tell us.

What we are proud of is our communities’ continuing
struggle against our exploitation and oppression as
migrant workers, youth, women and immigrants in Canada and the Filipino people’s continuing struggle for national democracy and freedom.

End forced migration
from the Philippines!
No to the commodification of labour migration!
Scrap the racist and anti-woman Live-in Caregiver Program!
Stop the expansion of the Temporary Foreign Workers Program!

--