Committee to draft city policy
Community agencies say Edmonton is experiencing a large wave of undocumented migrants as changes by the federal government to the temporary foreign worker program hit hard, a city council committee was told Monday.
The new four-year cap for temporary foreign work permits means new permits are being denied, even for families who have worked in Canada for more than a decade, said Marco Luciano with Migrante Alberta.
Children who were born in Edmonton are now being denied access to schools, said Luciano, and parents are afraid to access Edmonton libraries and request subsidized transit passes while they work under the counter, put in new residency applications and hope something might change to allow them to legally find jobs.
“It’s easy to say, ‘You finished your work permit, why don’t you just go back home.’ A lot of these migrants came here because there’s just no opportunity back home. They go hungry when they stay home,” said Luciano, who was lobbying for the city to grant access for undocumented migrants to city services without risk of deportation.
The federal Conservative government implemented the fouryear term limit on temporary foreign workers in 2015. Now community agency officials estimate there are between 10,000 and 25,000 people in Edmonton with no immigration status or uncertain status. Most of those are temporary foreign workers who have lapsed permits, according to the community agencies who made presentations to council’s community services committee.
Others are human trafficking victims, who sometimes come on student visas. When they work, their uncertain immigration status is one of the tools traffickers use to take advantage of them, coercing them into sex work and other jobs.
Most people with an uncertain immigration status are afraid to access any government services or talk with police, always afraid the person behind the counter will report them to the Canadian Border Services Agency.
The committee voted Monday to create a draft Access Without Fear policy, which will likely come back in the new year for final approval by council. Similar policies across Canada prevent city staff from asking for or sharing information on immigration status, and ensure basic services can be accessed by those with few documents.
“We don’t share this information anyway,” said Mayor Don Iveson, stressing that people caught up in immigration issues are not criminals. If they are, the police will deal with that separate issue.
“If they fall farther and further into the poverty trap, it’s going to be harder to dig them out later,” said Coun. Ben Henderson.
Canadians have to recognize what happened here — the country asked these people to come, let them build a life here, then changed the rules on them, said Jason Foster, an Athabasca University professor who has been studying the issue.
“We said, ‘Nope, we changed our minds. You have to leave.’ Even though many of them had built lives, had children,” he said.
Organizations have also been lobbying for the federal government to grant amnesty, and the province to allow education and emergency health access without deportation. For the city to act, it would make life a little easier while the federal question is sorted out, said Foster.
“The goal needs to be about how do you prevent isolation, which is what traps people in poverty.”
In the United States, many similar “sanctuary cities” prevent their local police from sharing information or assisting federal immigration enforcement, often because they believe it helps police gain trust in certain communities.
Edmonton’s policy will not include the police because the Edmonton Police Commission, not city council, sets police policy.
Black Lives Matter advocate Bahir Mohamed argued street carding is a key issue for immigrants with uncertain status. They’re afraid their information will be recorded and lead to their deportation, when they have not done anything wrong.
Police say they work regularly with the Canadian Border Services Agency but don’t proactively seek out people with lapsed visas.