International Law

Exploited foreign workers

By immlawyer

Temporary Foreign workers face more than issues that all other, (permanent) immigrants to Canada come across. Given their limited rights at employment mobility and a lack of proficiency in Canadian due process, they constitute a vulnerable group of people.

Toronto Star article here: "Exploited Workers Canada's Slave Trade"

Excerpt:

It was 5:30 in the morning when Edwin Canilang realized he had been bought and sold.

Crowded in the back of a van heading north of Toronto with four other Filipino men last summer, the skilled welder faced another unpaid day on a cleanup detail at a bottling plant.

He thought of his wife, who had just given birth to their third child back home in San Carlos, a five-hour drive north of Manila.

He thought of the promises that lured him to Canada ? $23 an hour, plus overtime, food and lodging, to help build two icebreakers for the Canadian Arctic.

He thought of his first week in Canada, eight men in the basement of a Toronto house sleeping four to a bed, their passports taken from them. Then they were trucked north to their new home ? a filthy, abandoned farmhouse in the middle of nowhere.

...

At least 800 workers are trafficked into Canada yearly and another 1,000 or more pass through Canada and into the United States, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

...

Full post as published by Canadian Immigration Blawg on September 13, 2008 (boomark / email).