On June 22, a group of protestors rallied at Kaneff Park in Brampton, Ontario. The group was mostly international students and immigrant workers demanding better treatment. Naujawan Support Network (NSN), an organization of international students and immigrant workers resisting exploitation and abuse, was handing out flyers with a heading that read “Good enough to work. Good enough to stay.” Other organizations, such as the International Sikh Student Organization (ISSA), and the Filipino International Student Network (FISN), were in attendance. Together, they are trying to provide a voice for international students and immigrant labourers in Ontario.
This demonstration comes months after the Canadian government announced that it would limit the amount of student permits, claiming it would help Canada deal with the housing crisis. It also comes one week after a similar demonstration took place in PEI. According to NSN, 70,000 international student graduates are at risk of being deported in all of Canada.
These organizations, together with the international students and immigrant workers they represent, are asking for your help and support.
There are four main issues faced by international students: wage theft, high cost of living, Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) exploitation, and a bureaucratic system that does not make sense.
International students vulnerable to wage theft
NSN, ISSA, and FISN have all seen their members being exploited by employers through wage theft, the failure to pay wages owed to employees. International students are only allowed to work 20 hours each week (increasing to 24 hours, beginning in September 2024). This adds up to two eight-hour shifts and, if you’re lucky, a short four hour shift. This means that in order to survive in Ontario, the average international student must work past their legal limit.
Jaspreet Singh, founder of the ISSA, explains, “Sixteen hours per week is not enough money, and taking more shifts means breaking the law. That’s when employment agencies push students to work under-the-table for cash. When those hours are not getting reported, that’s when they become vulnerable to wage-theft.”
Employers withhold payment from these international student workers knowing they are are afraid of being caught working under-the-table. These workers are still protected by the labour code despite working more than the hour limits. However, the pervasiveness of wage-theft makes the route to enforce these rights ineffective and long due to a backlog of cases. Instead, international students are pressuring employers to pay through public protests, picket lines, and support from the community.
Facing a cost of living crisis
Alongside the rest of Canada, international students have to bear the cost of living crisis. Since 2020, jobs are hard to come by. According to Jaspreet Singh, the rise in the cost of living and the economic crisis has exhausted the life savings of many international students’ families, meaning that they have become desperate and vulnerable.
Javier Jardeleza, a member of FISN, points out that international students and immigrant workers are not covered by OHIP. If they are enrolled full-time in a Canadian designated learning institution, they are covered by private healthcare with limited benefits.
Another problem facing international students is immigration consultants, who take advantage of students in order to get paid commissions for students they send to Canada. These immigration consultants sell Canada as a solution to every problem facing young people (e.g. cheap living, free healthcare, affordable housing, and lots of opportunities), explains Jardeleza. Instead, these students arrive in Canada and find out they were sold a lie. Some of these consultants even enroll students in institutions that are not recognized by the Canadian government.
Threat of deportation leading to exploitation
Now, many of these students and immigrant workers are at risk of being deported. Many Post-Graduate Work Permits are going to expire by the end of 2025, and these workers are running out of options. Some will apply for asylum status, but their requests will get rejected because they do not fit the requirements. Most will try to find an LMIA document.
The LMIA is like a closed work-permit; it allows a worker to stay in Canada for their tenure under a single contractor. It is meant to allow employers in Canada to hire talented workers who might not be available to them locally. In practice, this document has opened up a black market that allows for more exploitation of already vulnerable immigrants.
The LMIA is being sold to immigrants as a way to avoid deportation. If an employer manages to convince the government that they need a foreign worker, they can contact an immigration consultant and find a foreigner to sell the LMIA to. The cost of these documents in the black market vary from $5,000 to $40,000 or more, depending on the case.
Some students, who have lived here for four years as students and some more as workers, see no viable paths outside of the LMIA. The best case scenario is that a worker is already working under-the-table for an employer, they get an LMIA, and they can now work full-time and legally for the same employer. However, there is not much incentive for an employer to go along with this if they can find someone to sell the LMIA to for more money. In order to compete, workers must agree to other exploitative conditions, such as a wage below the legal minimum.
The bureaucratic system within Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) is also an obstacle to status for these workers.
Mehakdeep Singh, a member of NSN, came to Canada in 2018. Since then, he graduated from trade school as a heating, refrigeration, and air conditioning technician. He searched for jobs in Peterborough and Brampton, but the jobs required too much experience and often offered under-the-table pay rather than legitimate wages.
Mehakdeep had to stop searching for jobs in his field and instead work as a security guard supervisor. He applied for the Ontario Immigration Nominee Program (OINP) pathway to permanent residency, but there was a glitch in the system that prevented his case from being processed for five months. After he completed one year’s experience, he applied for the Canadian Experience Class, but this program did not have a draw between September 2021 and May 2024. When the latest draw came around, Mehakdeep was not chosen.
Now, Mehakdeep has moved to North Bay to work as a baker, and is now targeting a different program — the Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot program. However, he completed his required amount of experience to qualify in April, and he has not heard back from the IRCC since. There is a chance that this program has been abandoned without notice, just like so many other programs in the past.
The problems faced by international students and immigrant workers is also causing a mental health crisis in diaspora communities. Some people are getting suicidal thoughts because of the upcoming expiration date of their work permits. One funeral home in Brampton is sending an average of four to five bodies suspected of suicide back to India every month.
Perfect scapegoats
Aversion to foreigners and immigrants is nothing new. Currently, this widespread phenomenon is being utilized by the Canadian government to divert attention from the real causes of the housing crisis—speculation and deregulation. Like Jardeleza says, “With or without international students, there is a housing crisis in Canada.”
Despite this, Minister of Immigration, Marc Miller, states that the policy of cutting the amount of study permits is supposed to target “private institutions” who are taking advantage of international students. However, the policy he is talking about targets those same international students. Jaspreet Singh states:
“For every crisis Canada has, over the last couple of months, people have been blaming immigrants, specifically international students,” says Jaspreet Singh. “The average Canadian now thinks all their problems are because of international students or immigrants, which is not true. These people are here because Canada needs them. Canada invited them. Doesn’t matter if you’re Canadian, international student, refugee, or immigrant—everyone is going through bad times.”
Placing a cap on the international student population is like putting a bandaid on a bullet wound. It will not solve the problem—it might not even alleviate it—and only serves to divert attention from the real causes of the issues facing workers.
How this affects the community
Immigrants are not invaders, they are very often a necessity for a country to achieve its goals. Canada’s population is aging; the elderly population is expected to grow by 68 percent in the next 20 years. This means that the younger population is going to have to pay for pension funds through their taxes and hard work.
In addition, this April, Prime Minister Trudeau and Housing Minister Sean Fraser stated a goal of building 3.9 million new homes by 2031. Without immigrant workers, this would be an impossible endeavor.
Jaspreet Singh states:
“Who is going to build those homes? We do not have enough people in the skilled trades who can contribute to the massive construction that Canada needs,” says Jaspreet Singh. “We need people in healthcare. We need people in every sector. We need young people to work and pay for the pensions of the older generations. Canada needs young people.”
The sudden exit of the 70,000 immigrant workers facing deportation would hurt the Canadian economy. They are, in large part, skilled workers who have already been trained in their field.
“Their sudden exit from the economy will hurt Canada very badly. Where are we going to get a replacement for those people?” asks Jaspreet Singh. “Next year, we’re going to need more hands because Canada is trying to expand its healthcare program and build new homes. These people were brought in because Canada needs them. Thinking long-term, these people should stay.”
Jardeleza echoes these sentiments, “From time immemorial, Canada has relied so much on immigrants. They are becoming anti-migrant, but it should be the other way around. Pro-migrant policies should be taking place.”
Migrants’ demands
The international student groups all have at least one demand in common: extending the Post-Graduate Work Permits that are expiring in 2024 and 2025. Backlogs, bureaucracy, and landlords have created this crisis — not immigrants. Punishing the immigrant population by putting them at risk of deportation is unjust.
The organizations are also demanding consistent pathways to permanent residence. The current pathways are sporadically being changed or abandoned, making it extremely difficult for an international student or new graduates to follow their instructions. Immigrants need fair and transparent permanent residency pathways.
Their other, and for some, most pressing, concern is stopping LMIA exploitation. LMIA exploitation is quickly becoming one of the main causes of wage theft. The amount of fraud committed through this program could easily be prevented by the government through the implementation of more progressive measures.
In effect, these organizations are just asking Canada to simplify its systems for its own benefit.
“There are a lot of pilot programs that give people [permanent residency] status as soon as they arrive in Canada. Why does Canada need to set up a pilot program for people who are outside of Canada when there are a lot of caregivers here inside Canada waiting for their PR status for years?” says Jardeleza.
Some NSN members suspect that the hesitance from the government to provide consistent PR pathways and better treatment for immigrants is purposeful. “Status is a big barrier for every immigrant. Once you have residence, you don’t want to work under-the-table. You don’t want to work on cash. You will start asking for overtime and vacation pay. Nobody wants to work for eight or ten dollars an hour. They need more and more immigrants for cheap labour,” explains Bikramjit Singh, another member of NSN.
“The Canadian capitalist system is based on this exploitation — the exploitation of immigrants,” he adds. Bikramjit Singh is an immigrant worker who has spent a long time applying to different PR programs and failing to get adequate responses from the IRCC.
NSN, FISN, and ISSA are all asking for your support in changing the government’s policies by following their movements on social media and showing up to protests and actions.
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