PV staff
In its year-end message last month, titled “Reflecting on 2024, Towards a Defiant 2025,” the Migrant Rights Network began by noting that 2024 had been “a year of an escalating war on migrants.”
Despite assurances well into the spring by Immigration Minister Marc Miller, that the government would make good on Justin Trudeau’s December 2021 promise to ensure permanent resident status for migrant workers, students and undocumented people, the network notes that the precise opposite occurred: “Throughout the year, the federal government adopted one Conservative-style immigration policy after another, stripping rights from millions. By fall, migrant scapegoating for the housing crisis – sparked in 2023 – reached a crescendo. Over the next two years, 2.3 million permits are set to expire, forcing our friends, neighbours and family members to either leave or become undocumented.”
The government’s policy moves have been sweeping, and they affect a broad range of migrants. Among the changes introduced in 2024:
Deep reductions in opportunities for permanent residency for migrants who are already living and working in Canada. This change, which especially affects low-wage migrants and even includes accepted refugees, increases the likelihood that migrants will become undocumented and face arrest, detention and deportation.
The government also abruptly closed or changed provincial programs which provided low-waged migrant workers with a way to apply for permanent residency, and delayed its much-promised regularization of undocumented people.
International students and graduated students were hit with the government’s halt to renewals of their expiring post graduate work permits (PGWPs). By the end of 2025, more than 200,000 PGWPs are set to expire. This will leave many people stranded in Canada, facing the choice of being uprooted and becoming undocumented.
Furthermore, spouses of undergraduate and college students can no longer receive work permits, with spouses and children of graduate students in programs shorter than 16 months also being barred from being in Canada.
Ottawa capped study permits for undergraduate and college programs. Even international students already in Canada will be barred from renewing their permits once the cap is reached. On top of this, the government has limited international students to 24 off-campus work hours per week, which forces many into undocumented work and increases their risk of wage theft other abuses by employers.
Many temporary foreign workers will face family separation, as Ottawa cut family work permits so that only spouses of workers in managerial jobs will be eligible. This, along with the cancellation of a promised expansion of work permits for family members of low-wage workers, disproportionately affects women.
Permits for much low-wage work have been shortened to one year, with migrants now forced to pay high fees for annual renewals. In addition, visitors to Canada can no longer transition to temporary work permits without leaving the country – many people used this option to maintain their status and income during long government delays in processing applications.
According to reports, refugees now face increased visa rejections and border refusals. At the same time, Ottawa removed 14,000 places from the humanitarian component of immigration – this means fewer places for people fleeing persecution, violence, starvation and death.
The Migrant Rights Network says that, rather than keeping their promises to implement progressive reform, the federal Liberals have been enacting Conservative-like immigration policies in the hopes that it will help them in the polls. “Elites in government and media have been spreading right-wing rhetoric and anti-immigrant sentiment. Instead of combating it, the federal Liberals are accepting it. Provincial governments responsible for jobs, housing, healthcare and education are turning to further scapegoating to distract from their own failures – this underinvestment will continue no matter what immigration levels are. This strategy of slashing immigration will fail electorally for the Liberals, and abuse and violence against migrants will increase.”
Increased calls from right wing to deport undocumented people
The network also notes that, as Donald Trump returns to power in the White House later this month, Ottawa has allocated $1.3 billion to increase border policing and create a “border strike force.”
Trump’s election has amplified right-wing voices in Canada calling for immigration restrictions and deportation of undocumented migrants. The increase in xenophobic and scapegoating discourse, including in the mainstream corporate media, is having an effect on public opinion – a poll released in December suggested that opposition to immigration has increased and that half of the people in Canada support mass deportation of “illegal immigrants.”
Despite these challenges, the Migrant Rights Network is preparing for the fight and calls on migrant rights advocates and allies to “remain defiant in 2015.”
“We will continue to organize and mobilize in 2025. We will resist all political parties trafficking in xenophobia. We will do mass public education and organize to counter anti-immigrant rhetoric that seeks to distract working class people from holding the wealthy and powerful accountable.”
Specifically, the network calls on people to oppose racism and division; to reject the unprincipled politics of the Liberals and the racism of the Conservatives, before, during, and after the federal elections; to refuse to accept predetermined electoral outcomes; and to commit to ending wars, genocides, climate collapse and capitalist extraction that force people to migrate.
With files and photo from migrantrights.ca
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