May 12, 2021
Statement
Magkaisa Centre
The Philippine Women Centre of Ontario and its sister organizations, the Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance of Ontario and SIKLAB-ON, condemn the Canadian government’s order to deport Carlo Escario back to the Philippines as yet another example of the Canadian Immigration system’s unacceptable treatment of workers under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP).
Mr. Escario arrived in Canada in 2007 through the Live-in Caregiver Program and has been working since 2014 as a hemodialysis assistant at Toronto General Hospital, and like tens of thousands of healthcare and essential workers with similar immigration histories, have been risking their lives and wellbeing in the frontlines since the beginning of the pandemic. But because Mr. Escario has not included his marital and family status with his now estranged wife and daughter in his permanent residency application, Citizenship and Immigration Canada is now cruelly and unjustly criminalizing Mr. Escario of “misrepresentation”.
As a frontline healthcare worker tending to COVID-19 positive patients, Mr. Escario is unfairly and arbitrarily deemed a criminal on a turn of a dime due to very invasive and restrictive immigration policies and procedures. The pandemic has made it more clear how shameful and extremely exploitative these “revolving door” immigration and labour policies are under the TFWP, but for decades we at the Philippine Women Centre of Ontario and our sister organizations have witnessed and struggled against this system that induces a cycle of precarity, temporariness and desperation for our community and other working class communities of colour while profiting and benefitting from our vital and essential contributions.
In solidarity, we demand the Canadian government to stop the deportation order on Carlo Escario, end the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, and call for a genuine immigration system now!
#KeepCarloInCanada
The Magkaisa Centre:
Philippine Women Centre of Ontario
Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance – Ontario
SIKLAB-Ontario
Images provided by Karla Villanueva Danan (@kmvdanan)