According to
Marina Jiménez
in
the Globe and Mail October 27, Ottawa has ruled
out amnesty for the estimated 200,000 undocumented
workers toiling
in Canada's
underground economy, saying it would not be fair to
those who have
applied
legally and are waiting in line. Yet
some fair response for undocumented workers in
Canada
is called for and an amnesty
is about the simplest and most well tested response
around.
Jiminez
notes that a big
population in Toronto
is involved: “many of whom are keeping the
construction sector afloat.
Another
20,000 work as house cleaners and cooks in the GTA,
while a recent
report
estimated the total of illegal workers in Canada
at 200,000 to
500,000.” She
cites a recent report which found that undocumented
workers in the GTA
"pay taxes, create jobs and wealth," but are often
forced to work for
less than the minimum wage and "live in fear of
being deported."
So
there you have it. These
workers are clearly needed by the economy especially
in construction
and in
home care. They pay taxes. They are paid low wages.
They lack secure
safeguards
the rest of us take for granted – disability
protection and health care
in
particular. They live in constant fear of arbitrary
deportation. At the
same
time large scale deportation is unlikely because it
is costly,
unpleasant and
sometimes difficult.
The
“waiting in line” concept is
pure nonsense. It misses the reality of a Canada
with a constant flux
of
visitors and of large numbers of temporary workers
on visas or
temporary
permits with work authorization. Formal immigration
is no longer where
the
action is. Ad hoc programs for groups of employers
abound allowing this
or that
group of expert workers to come with their families
and work in Canada
on
temporary basis.
The
Machiavellian convenience for
employers and the government of tolerating a large
pool of fearful
disposable
low paid workers is not in question. The justice and
ethics of doing
this are
very much in question. Let’s face it,
we
are manipulating and using people from other
countries to do menial
work at
wages Canadians would not do the work for under
conditions that
Canadians would
not do the work for. The exploited are willing to do
it because they
are part
of an unequal world in which their home country may
offer little
security from
violence or little work opportunity.
An
“amnesty” may not be the most
perfectly logical solution. After all, these people
have committed no
crime
other than meeting a workforce need at their own
cost without an
elaborate
government organized program. Rather amnesty is the
simplest most cost
effective response to our obligation, as the
privileged in an unjust
world, to
respond humanely to a population we have found it
convenient to allow
to be
exploited. Amnesty has been tried and tested
periodically by a large
number of
other rich developed countries in Europe.
They
find it appropriate to regularize their undocumented
population very so
often
so that the people can more fully participate in the
country which has
become,
in fact, their home. If other countries can do this,
why not Canada?
