Regularize All Undocumented People and Ensure Permanent Resident Status for All Migrants
May 27, 2024
Rt. Hon. Justin Trudeau
Prime Minister of Canada
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A2
justin.trudeau@parl.qc.ca
Hon. Marc Miller
Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6
Marc.Miller@parl.gv.ca, Minister@cic.gc.ca
Dear Prime Minster Trudeau and Minister Miller
Dear Premier Eby and Minister Elmore,
Re: Regularize All Undocumented People and Ensure Permanent Resident Status for All Migrants
The South Asian Legal Clinic of British Columbia (SALCBC) is a not-for-profit legal clinic that was established in 2019. SALCBC’s objective is to improve access to justice for South Asian people in British Columbia, including those who face barriers in accessing legal services and navigating the justice system. SALCBC is the first ethno-linguistic in British Columbia, where we practice with cultural humility and provide legal advice, brief services and/or legal representation in various areas of the law including immigration and employment. SALCBC has worked with many migrants in British Columbia on issues of workplace abuse, precarious or no immigration status, sexual exploitation and housing. In addition to our legal advice clinic, SALCBC’s mandate also includes public legal education to advance systemic change that improves outcomes low-income and racialized communities across Canada and legal advocacy and law reform projects.
We support the call from the Migrant Rights Network, supported by organizations across Canada, that Prime Minister Trudeau and other cabinet members support and enact immediately an inclusive regularization program, that would include families with children who have precarious status.
In December 2021 PM Trudeau made a mandate letter commitment asking the Immigration Minister to create a "regularization program" for undocumented migrants.
That promise has been repeated many times, and most recently the Minister promised to bring a proposal to Cabinet in the Spring of 2024. The migrant care worker program is expiring on June 17, and unless it is replaced thousands of migrant women will become undocumented.
We are working with people that have no status or precarious immigration status that keeps many stuck in an exploitative system and also restricts and limits access to medical care, education support and other support services.
As mentioned in the letter from the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario (SALCO) to you on May 7, 2024:
Undocumented people and migrants are mostly racialized, low-waged people, often women. Ensuring rights and access for them is part of implementing anti-racist policy and gender equality. As Canada embarks on its North American Tripartite Agreement for Equity and Racial Justice, it must take action to support migrants by:
Immediately create a comprehensive and inclusive regularization program that allows all undocumented people to apply for permanent resident status immediately with no caps, no restrictions by industry of work or geography, and no two-step immigration which only gives temporary work permits;
Create an interim program for migrant caregivers in Canada to apply for permanent resident status without educational accreditation and language test score requirements; and
End migrant exploitation by ending tied work permits and hours of work limits for international students; and ensure permanent resident status for all working class people in Canada today.
We support the above noted calls to action from SALCO.
We endorse and urge you to adopt the Migrant Rights Network proposals on regularization.
Regards,
Meena Dhillon
Managing Lawyer
