National Statement
For immediate release
January 4, 2011

Toronto, ON – Progressive Filipino Canadians refuse to be deceived by the Conservative government’s latest attempt to mask the abuse, violence and exploitation perpetrated against live-in caregivers, of whom 81% are Filipino women that are under Canada’s Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP). The issuing of 10,000 open work permits to live-in caregivers, recently announced by Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, is yet another tactic to appease the growing awareness and dissatisfaction of the widespread exploitation, human rights abuses and violation of women’s rights occurring under a program that is based on the modern-day slavery of women.

Irrespective of Jason Kenney’s recent ploy, members of the Congress of Progressive Filipino Canadians (CPFC) have not wavered in their longstanding and resolute position to scrap the LCP, asserting that the program itself creates the conditions for the systemic violence, exploitation and abuse faced by Filipino women in Canada. Since its inception in the 1980s, more than 100,000 Filipino Canadian women have come into Canada through the program, a situation which has created the Filipino Canadian community’s economic, social, political and cultural marginalization in Canadian society. And for over two decades, the progressive Filipino Canadian community has been steadfast on calling for its abolition while recognizing in the immediate term that all live-in caregivers be granted permanent residency status upon arrival to Canada.

Despite the fact that the issuing of open work permits has always been a normal process for those who have completed the 24-month mandatory live-in requirement of the program, this so-called “unprecedented move,” that expedited the release of open work permits, is relentlessly pushed and packaged as a solution to unchain live-in caregivers from the bondage of poverty and slavery. Given the thousands of open work permit application backlogs that have piled up over the years, this is purely a desperate effort to salvage Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) from its bureaucratic failures in processing the papers of live-in caregivers on time – failures which have intensified the abusive, exploitive work conditions and created long months of restrictions for live-in caregivers to access the healthcare system in Canada.

“We have nothing to be thankful for with this so-called change. Not only do we contribute taxes to the Canadian economy, Canada, through CIC, amasses millions of dollars from open work permit applications alone as each one of us has to pay a $150 fee. We deserve this open work permit as we have paid and completed our work obligations,” says Grace Tan, a live-in caregiver and a SIKLAB member.

Exposing the contradiction behind Kenney’s claim that this “will help caregivers…while they wait for their permanent resident applications to be processed,” it is imperative to recall that last month, the Conservative government has declared plans to slash approvals of over 7,000 permanent residency applications made through the LCP in the upcoming years ahead. As such, it is most pressing to critically understand that the issuing of open work permits alone does not guarantee that live-in caregivers will be granted permanent residency in Canada, nor does it answer the issue of long years of family separation and reunification of live-in caregivers from the families they have left behind back in their countries of origin.

Exemplified through the Conservative government’s all-out attack on racialised and im/migrant communities through its massive neoliberal changes and reforms on immigration – from its plan to reduce the quotas for live-in caregivers to become permanent residents by 50%; decreasing skilled worker visas by 20%; reducing quotas for spouses and children by 4,000 per year; reducing the number of refugee applicants granted permanent residence by 25%; and imposing an indefinite moratorium on the permanent sponsorship of parents and grandparents, the current move of issuing open work permits, rather than assuring the granting of permanent residency, may possibly lead to dire consequences, such as prolonging live-in caregivers’ temporary and vulnerable status, or worse, downright denying them permanent residency and deporting them from the country for which they have worked hard for to settle in the hopes of eventually building a home.

With Canada’s crippling health care system, childcare crisis and a rapidly aging population, the demand for labour is not declining but soaring to its highest peak. As part of the Conservative government’s neoliberal concerted efforts of massive cutbacks and austerity measures, a 30% increase of workers have been funnelled in through the Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP) within the past few years, in which the majority comes from the Philippines. Recruited for their labour yet disposed of when no longer needed, it is a hypocrisy that while immense profits are amassed from temporary foreign workers, Canada instead locks them into state of permanent impermanence, with minimal or no chance of acquiring permanent residency.

We, at the CPFC, reiterate our stance that the oppression and exploitation of workers under temporary migration programs such as the LCP and TFWP are not the answers to Canada’s economic, healthcare and childcare needs. Instead, they merely provide low-wage and privatized solution that pits foreign and Canadian workers against each other – as it is being used to drive down the wages of all working class Canadians, while simultaneously implementing the wide-scale contractualization of labour in Canadian society. This situation leaves all workers to an unsecured and unstable existence.

“The issuing of open work permits is rendered meaningless in the face of the Conservative government’s efforts to keep labour temporary. Eradicating the cyclical pattern of temporary labour migration is the only way to break our temporariness in Canada, says Cecilia Diocson, Executive Director of the National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada.” As we continue to build the path for genuine settlement and integration, members of the CPFC will continue to demand for genuine immigration programs for all racialised, working class and im/migrant communities who call Canada home.

Scrap the racist and anti-woman Live-in Caregiver Program!
Stop the expansion of the Temporary Foreign Workers Program!
Advance the movement for genuine settlement and integration!
Permanence through genuine immigration programs now!
Expose and oppose Canada’s neoliberal agenda of globalization!

-30-

Organizations under the CPFC:
National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada (NAPWC)
SIKLAB Canada (Advance and Uphold the Struggle of Filipino Canadian Workers)
Ugnayan ng Kabataang Pilipino sa Canada/Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance – National
Sinag Bayan Arts Collective – National
Philippines-Canada Task Force on Human Rights (PCTFHR)

For more information:
Joy C. Sioson
(416) 519-2553
pwc-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org