Episode #188: Permission to Exploit #10: From Temporary Status to Permanent Belonging
In the tenth and final episode of Permission to Exploit, we wrap up this podcast series by focusing on the essential life-changing shift for migrant workers moving from a temporary status to a situation of permanent belonging. We talk about stability, healing, contribution, long-term plans, and why permanent status matters.
We are joined by Karen, who experienced labour abuse in Ontario, and by Marisa Berry Méndez, Responsable des campagnes, Amnistie internationale Canada francophone.
Permission to Exploit is a special series of the FCJ Refugee Centre’s Borderless Voices podcast, that combines lived experienced specialists and professional specialists’ insights to examine Canada’s closed work permit system, and the reforms needed to make it safer.
Hosted by Diana Caipa, Anti-Human Trafficking – Migrant Case Coordinator at FCJ Refugee Centre; and Jacob Basseches, Anti-Human Trafficking – Migrant Case Worker at FCJ Refugee Centre.
Episode Transcript
Welcome to a brand new episode of the ‘Borderless Voices’ podcast, presented by the FCJ Refugee Centre.
‘Permission to Exploit’: The System Behind the Exploitation of Temporary Foreign Workers
When your immigration status as a temporary foreign worker depends on your employer, the power shifts. ‘Permission to Exploit’ is a podcast that combines expert insights with lived experiences and the perspectives of professional specialists to examine Canada’s closed work permit system and the reforms needed to make it safer.
Episode 10, From Temporary Status to Permanent Belonging, Stability, Healing, Contribution, Long-Term Plans, and Why Permanent Status Matters.
In this final episode of ‘Permission to Exploit,’ we look beyond survival and ask what real belonging should mean for migrant workers in Canada.
Temporary status affects far more than employment. It shapes people’s ability to plan their future, support their families, and live with stability and dignity.
This episode reflects on why permanent status matters not only as immigration policy, but as a matter of justice.
My name is Jacob Basseches, and I’m an Anti-Human Trafficking Migrant Case worker at FCJ Refugee Centre.
Today, we are here with Karen, who experienced labour abuses right here in Ontario.
Jacob: Hi, Karen.
Karen: Hi.
J: Would you like to introduce yourself to our listeners?
K: Sure. My name is Karen, and thank you very much for having me here.
J: Well, thank you for being here. Karen, when you first came to Canada, what did you imagine your future here could look like?
K: Well, I thought so many positive things. Of course, that in every decision, there is a risk and consequences, good or bad. When I first came to Canada… I imagined building a really good future for my family, especially for my kids, because they’re still small. Having stability, for sure, because I knew for a fact that I was going to have support for my family. And growing professionally, I was hopefully… But I didn’t know how… I mean, I did… I knew that it was going to be challenging, but not because it will be with a temporary status. And especially when it comes with a closed war permit, people very often take advantage of it.
J: Yeah. So when you came here, it was your plan then, it sounds like, was to support your family back home, work in Canada for some time. And what was your plan from there? Was it to return to your country of origin or to try and start a life here in Canada?
K: I always wanted to live in Canada. I fell in love with Canada in 2015. I always knew that I wanted to live in Canada. So I always planned to have my family here and live in Canada.
J: How has living with temporary status affected your ability to plan your life, things like housing, family, education, or long-term work?
K: It’s very unsustainable. It’s very complicated, I would say. Temporary status makes it hard to plan long-term goals. For sure, housing is a challenge because we don’t have records, we don’t have credit score, we don’t have credit cards. Education is not that hard, but also getting experience is something that we have to do it from scratch, because our experience back home doesn’t count at all and for sure that in so many cases. We cannot do the same thing that we usually do back home because here is another story it’s like another new page. And we feel very uncertain. I feel uncertain because everything depends on your job. And, in some cases, immigration status, a situation, especially when you are looking for a qualified job, which is my husband’s case.
J: So, if you don’t mind sharing, what you or your husband did back home or what you studied and what you’ve been doing here?
K: We, for both of us, we always had an office job back home, paperwork and all of that, administrations and customer relations. And my husband’s side has been engineering, information technology, and all of that. So here in Canada, it seems like all the experience is gone. It’s in blank now. So they believe that they might… They don’t say especially or specifically to us but it seems like the Canadian experience is the only one that counts the most
J: So, if he was an engineer or an information technology back home, what has he been working at in Canada?
K: He has been trying to do his best, for sure. He went to work at the first time in a meat company, like a meat butcher. And then we switch, I mean, he switched over to getting a job as a construction trade, construction helper here in this province. So we have had many challenges, and specifically my husband, like I said, his experience, he is not able to get a job in his field for the fact that he needs to have Canadian experience in information technology. And also, when they look at the work permit, they usually see the expiration date. And it seems like they care so much about the time that he’s going to be spending in that job here in Canada. They might say that it’s not a good thing for the company that he’s going to be there working only for one year, I would say, or two years, because they might need someone that is going to spend more time in the company.
J: Got it. So it’s not only difficult to find work in his field, but also work that would be more complicated or more permanent, I guess would be the word.
K: For sure. And also, I’m sorry to interrupt you, just adding one more thing, is the language barrier. You know, it’s difficult to say that… Of course, when you decide to migrate to another country, for sure, the language is going to be the big challenge, I would say. But, in some cases, it’s complicated, especially when you’re getting older, and you don’t retain as much information on your brain. And, in some other cases, in my mother tongue, I can show you that I’m a very intelligent, smart and clever woman. But in English, it’s a whole different thing, because it doesn’t matter the knowledge and experience that you have. It’s how you can show to other people, how can you express your ideas in a whole different language, which is English in my case.
J: Well, it sounds like you’ve been able to learn and retain the English pretty well. If you had permanent status today, what are the first things in your life that would change?
K: Having a permanent status?
J: Yeah.
K: For sure, I would definitely invest more in my education, because here in Canada the people that get education is much appreciated. And I woould definitely make long-term plans for me and my family, without fear. It would give me totally freedom and the security that we’re not coming back to our home country in a blink of an eye, I would say.
J: Yeah, it sounds like that feeling of temporariness makes things difficult. If I could ask you, what contributions do migrant workers like yourself and your husband make to Canada that maybe everyday Canadians wouldn’t normally see or recognize?
K: For sure, the experience and the skills that we offer in the workplace. It’s not only about money that we contribute in Canada, because we pay taxes like any other Canadian citizens. But I would say that in some cases it’s the experience that we develop, the skills that we develop here in Canada, for example, in caregiving and cleaning, food services, meat-butchered or many other roles that I see that are very important in Canada and for the companies, the Canadian companies, and most of them are very undervalued.
J: Yeah. Well, the program wouldn’t exist if the workers weren’t needed. That much we know to be true. If you could speak directly to decision makers in Canada, what would you want them to understand about the lives of migrant workers?
K: I wpuld tell them that migrant workers are not temporary in their contributions, that we help support the economy, communities. We also provide service. We are very flexible people because even though this is not what we have done back home, like I said, relating to the experience, we are open to get any training or any coaching or any other ability to develop that job in specific. And we, I mean, me particularly, I don’t like to say no when it comes to job, to new skills, to do a better job. And we need fair opportunities, for sure, and pathways to permanent residency, so we can fully contribute and feel secure here in this beautiful country.
J: So well said. Very well put. Thank you, Karen.
K: Thank you very much.
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Jacob Basseches: We’re here today with Marisa from Amnesty International. Hi, Marisa.
Marisa Berry Méndez: Hello.
J: Before we begin, how would you like us to introduce you to our listeners in one or two sentences?
M: I guess, in a nutshell, I’m a campaigner for migrant rights and for human rights more broadly. I’ve been in this kind of work for more than 15 years. And I’m from Toronto, but I live in Jojage, or Montreal, and I work with the Francophone section of Amnesty International Canada.
J: Great. Thank you so much. All right. Jumping into the questions. From a human rights perspective, what does belonging mean for migrant workers who have come to Canada to live and to work?
M: So I found this an interesting question. I honestly don’t know if there is a human rights perspective on the concept of belonging, you know, if we’re talking about international human rights law there could be, but I’m not sure. And certainly, of course, migrant workers would be able to say what it means to them. But I thought maybe what I could say is that, when we talk about removing discrimination from immigration policy, I guess what we’re really talking about, if we manage to do that, is kind of defending a right to belong.
J: Maybe another way to look at that is how does belonging… What’s the relationship here between belonging, citizenship, temporary status, all of these status questions, and specifically when it comes to temporary foreign workers.
M: And I guess that’s exactly… It is that the temporary foreign worker program in particular, the majority of it, that targets workers coming in to fill low skilled positions, again, low skilled between quotation marks, prevents them from ever being able to belong, no matter how many years they’ve been coming, no matter whether they’ve learned the language, no matter whether they’ve built some kind of community here. They’re prevented from being able to belong by the temporary status and by their exclusion from permanent immigration programs.
J: Many migrant workers spend years contributing to the Canadian economy and Canadian communities and industry, yet remain temporary. Why is that gap between contribution and status such an important issue, particularly from a human rights perspective?
M: I think it’s a really huge human rights issue, because ultimately it’s an issue of discrimination. Discrimination along the lines of, you know, intersecting lines of essentially race and class, where people, racialized people from countries in the global south, are sort of targetedly recruited, if targetedly is a word, it may not be, to participate in the temporary foreign worker program and to just remain, you know, temporary. To be really sort of treated as disposable, as units of production, as units of labour, and not to be considered for the project of immigration that [for] Canada, even in its national discourse and narrative, it’s a project of nation building. So I find it really relevant to look at the history. And in the class action based out of Ontario that was recently certified, around workers in the seasonal agricultural workers program, they document so well some of the discussions that were happening in Parliament in the 1960s when that program, the agricultural program, was introduced, and how the idea of a closed work permit was discussed in Parliament. And even, I think it was the Minister of Immigration at the time, of manpower, economics and manpower, whatever it was called, said that, no, we couldn’t possibly bring workers from Europe with the notion that we would constrain them or confine them to a single employer with this kind of work permit, even if they would eventually become permanent, because that would be tantamount to slavery, at the same time as this program that would be controlling Black workers with the closed work permit was being introduced. And so just the contradiction of that and how it wasn’t seen as contradictory then And how ultimately, in practice, it still isn’t seen as contradictory because we’re still doing it.
J: How would having permanent status or even having open work status change the balance of power between workers and employers?
M: I think, you know, permanent status comes with real access to the full spectrum of rights, whether it’s the right of labour mobility, also access to justice without fear. You know, being able to submit a complaint to the various institutions that are intended to protect people’s rights without fear of being repatriated. And also, I mean, I know we’ll talk about this later, but well, maybe it doesn’t really speak to the balance of power, so I won’t. But yeah, just, you know, the fundamental right to vote with your feet. If you’re being mistreated, you can leave and you can also file a complaint and you can also seek recourse, but you can leave. And that most fundamental of rights is something that temporary workers are being deprived of because of their temporary status and their closed work permit.
J: Beyond workplace protections, how would permanent status affect people’s lives in terms of stability, family life, and long-term well-being?
M: Right. So, I mean, this is another one that, you know, long-term well-being… I feel like the workers that you talk to will be able to speak much better to that. But what is clear is that, you know, precarious status and a closed work permit, where you’re always at risk of being dismissed and repatriated, and precarious status where you’re at risk of the same thing, they’re tantamount to… They’re equal to instability and uncertainty. It’s difficult for people to plan. They don’t know where they’re going to be next year, in a couple of years. And I think one of the key things around stability and long-term wellbeing is family life, as you mentioned. And it’s incredible that we have a program that for the majority of workers in that program, it depends on family separation. And people are selected in some cases because they have family back home who it’s expected that they will return to. This is a violation of the right to family unity. And it has such a huge impact on people’s mental health. And I think so often we talk about the conversation focuses on labour rights and rightly so, because there are so many violations of people’s right to work, but the right to family unity gets a little bit sidelined. And I think that, even in the best of cases, where, let’s say, people are coming and they’re working for a decent employer who takes their well-being, generally speaking, seriously, who doesn’t abuse them, the baseline, I think that in so many cases, the baseline of mental health is not great, because people are separated from their families and communities, and because people aren’t seeing their kids grow up. I find that one of the most devastating things that is like an inherent criteria in the program, that people are being separated from their kids and their partners. So at least it’s clear that permanent status would have a huge impact on people’s long term well-being, because of that family unity, and because of the taking away that piece around uncertainty. And I guess workplace protections obviously would have a positive impact on mental health outcomes.
J: So what might an immigration system, or a foreign worker system that was properly grounded in human rights and workers’ dignity, what would that actually look like in practice?
M: This is a question I guess I’ll answer from a personal perspective, because Amnesty hasn’t exactly projected into, done this kind of analysis, creative work of imagining. But I think it would be composed of a system that puts the emphasis on permanent immigration, understanding that many people would like to have the opportunity to immigrate rather than to be going back and forth in a way that can be disruptive to their lives. So that immigration system would not be discriminatory and would recognize the value of people for their contributions, you know, economic contributions of all sorts, essential work, skilled work, whatever it is, everybody is involved. It’s making an important contribution. And then also would just see people as people who are helping to strengthen the fabric of society. It certainly wouldn’t rely on the separation of families. So I think, again, we’d be talking about an immigration program that doesn’t discriminate. And I think that a temporary migration program could well exist alongside, because it could well be that there are people who are interested in that opportunity, who have an opportunity, but really want to stay back home and that kind of thing. But I think that that program would be a heck of a lot smaller because it wouldn’t be people’s only option. And, and any temporary labour migration program would include the right to travel with your family, would not require people to be separate, and would of course have an open work permit where migrant workers have the same right to labour mobility as non-migrant workers.
J: If Canada were to want to move from a system of temporary foreign labour toward one of true inclusion, and one, even if we’re still doing temporary labour, that’s ethically sound, what changes would be the most critical?
M: I think, and I hope… I may have some blind spots here, because I haven’t put enough thought into it, and because I’m like a broken record, always repeating the pieces around the open work permit and family unity… I think that those are the two… Because if people… First of all, there needs to be the options. So, if people are in a temporary labour system [is because] they’re choosing to be part of that system, but they don’t have to be separated from their families if they would rather travel with their families. So their partner would be able to also, of course, have the opportunity to work here, and that work permits wouldn’t be limited at all and they would be open.
J: When you think about the future, what would justice for migrant workers in Canada look like?
M: I think it would be a future where migrant workers are valued, where they’re treated like humans, where their access to services, their access to justice, their access to decent work is facilitated and protected. And where they are welcome to apply just like anybody else to be to be permanent immigrants, and to settle with their families here. And contribute… Sorry, I’m like translating from French in my mind for some reason… And being able to fully integrate
and fully belong into Canadian society, if that’s what they would choose to do.
J: Now, to a theoretical person that might be listening to this and saying, well, that all sounds nice in concept, but, in practical terms, I don’t know if I’d like how that would look like, or how that would end up. What would you say to someone coming to you with that point of view?
M: I mean, I think first I’d want to, I’d be curious to know why it didn’t sound good. You know, a lot of people have, I guess, economic concerns where they think, and I’ve seen this, opinion pieces in the papers in the past year or two, where they think that we need to only welcome high skilled workers as permanent immigrants. And certainly that’s just echoing what the policy has been for the last several decades. I would really question that, because it’s clear that we have all different kinds of work that needs to get done to sustain our society, and people are doing that work. And we need them and we depend on them. But the current context is one in which the people doing that work are having their rights violated, very often because of the structural elements that make them vulnerable to that abuse, whether it’s precarious status in a closed work permit in the temporary foreign worker program, whether it’s no status, you know, people who have lost their status and who are vulnerable to all kinds of abuses, whether it’s, even, newcomers with a different kind of conditional status, like refugee claimants who are also vulnerable to abuse for a variety of reasons, including issues around enforcement, issues around fear to complain and that kind of thing. So, yeah, I would really question around economic arguments. I would really question this sort of ssumption that people with high skill in education levels are the only ones that are valuable to our economy, let alone society. And then, if they had other concerns, I would love to address them as well. I don’t know what those other concerns would be… But that’s the one, the economic piece is what we hear most, I think.
J: Great.
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Moving beyond survival means more than protection from abuse. It means stability, dignity, and the opportunity to truly belong.
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All the ‘Borderless Voices’ episodes »