National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada
March 8, 2009
Statement

Filipino women in Canada: continue the struggle to scrap the LCP and for our genuine freedom!

On this year’s International Women’s Day, the National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada continues to call for the scrapping of the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP) and sends warm and militant greetings of solidarity to all working women around the globe who are struggling for equality, justice and genuine development.

We remember and pay homage to the 20,000 immigrant women garment workers in the United States, who took to the streets in 1908 to struggle for better working conditions. Their struggles inspired socialist women to call for the first International Women’s Day. We also honor the struggles of women around the world who have devoted and offered their lives to the struggle for national and social liberation and for genuine equality for women and against all forms of exploitation and oppression.

As the global economic crisis worsens, women around the world and in Canada are the hardest hit. In Canada with already 100,000 people recently joining the ranks of the unemployed, the ever-dwindling social safety net through cutbacks to government spending on housing, welfare, education and welfare have long been impacting women. The government’s neo-liberal policies of liberalization, deregulation and privatization over the last decade have pushed women into low-paying flexible, part-time or casual jobs in order to make ends meet.

Because of imperialist globalization and the chronic economic crisis in the Philippines, many Filipino women make the heart-breaking choice to leave their families behind and migrate abroad for their family’s survival to work in the most dirty, difficult and dangerous jobs around the world. Since the early 1980’s, nearly 100,000 Filipino women have come to Canada to work as live-in caregivers under Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s Live-in Caregiver Program and its predecessor the Foreign Domestic Movement.

After 17 years of the LCP, our women and community have faced the negative short-term and long-term impacts of this racist and anti-woman program. Their labour liberates one class of women from domestic work leaving working class women with little to no childcare options. Filipino women under the LCP from all forms of abuse under slave-like conditions, and are sentenced to a lifetime of de-skilling. Even after the LCP, many families continue to feel the impacts of the program through continued economic, social and political marginalization in Canadian society.

As the “ilaw ng tahanan” many Filipino women in Canada are expected to meet the impossible demands of being the main or sole-breadwinners in the family while carrying the responsibility for domestic and reproductive labour. The trauma of family separation, migration and reunification often results in family breakdown for which women are often blamed or stigmatized.

After two decades of organizing Filipino women and the community and calling for the scrapping the LCP, some groups in the Filipino community have begun to call for mere reforms to the program arguing that scrapping the program will mean women can no longer migrate to Canada. This is a backward call in which women who are suffering at the forefront of attacks are being offered mere band-aid solutions. Filipino women should have the same rights as other immigrants to migrate to Canada with their families with permanent residency and the right to choose their employment. They should not come to Canada as modern-day slaves.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has recently announced plans to hold a “consultation” about the LCP. While we welcome dialogue about the program, we forewarn the Minister that similar previous “consultations” did not result in any significant changes to the program and to the lives of Filipino women.

Rather the situation of Filipino women in Canada, particularly live-in caregivers is worsening. Our provincial chapters are receiving reports of more and more Filipino women being trafficked into Canada by unregulated agencies and then deported “airport-to-airport.” Canadian Border Service Agents at the airports are checking the women’s work permits upon arrival and calling their employers and agencies to investigate the legitimacy of their employment. After paying thousands of dollars to unscrupulous agencies, those with employment deemed questionable are put on airplanes back to the Philippines or their country of origin without ever leaving the airport of being allowed to make a phone call.

More and more women are falling out of status, unable to complete the strict requirements of the LCP. As unemployment and the global economic crisis worsens, we can expect more women to not complete the LCP and either run the risk of joining the ranks of the undocumented or be deported back to the Philippines.

Unreasonable bureaucratic and other hurdles are resulting in delayed permanent residency and family reunification for some women. One woman who was the victim of violence has been in Canada ten years now on a temporary permit and is still waiting to reunite with her family. A single mother, she is still relegated to cleaning and domestic work as she has been unable to ugrade or accredit her skills.

Last December, the Philippines was declared the top source country to Canada for temporary migrant workers and immigrants combined, surpassing China. We are now the top source for migrant and immigrants filling Canada’s cheap labour needs as immigrant communities before us.

And while Canada continues to tout itself as a model for human rights internationally, immigrant communities alongside the historic resistance of the indigenous people of Canada are gaining support for their condemnation of Canada’s rosy human rights record.

We fear the worsening crisis will also heighten racism and sexism. As Filipino women we must combat the fear mongering of the right-wing amongst the people against immigrants and migrants and people of colour. International Women’s Day is an opportunity for women to unite in their calls to end exploitative labour programs such as the LCP.  The economic crisis should be an opportunity to pit ourselves against each other but to understand and connect our common struggles against the system that exploits and oppresses us.

Like the women workers before us, now more than ever women must become more politicized to understand their situations! Now more than ever women must get out of their houses, look beyond the welfare of their individual families, take to the streets and fight for our collective rights and welfare and for our genuine emancipation!

Scrap the racist and anti-woman Live-in Caregiver Program!
Heighten our unity and strengthen our resistance as women!
Long live international solidarity!

Philippine Women Centre of Ontario (PWC-ON) Member of the National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada (NAPWC) Telephone: 416-878-8772