#temporary foreign workers

A major construction union is calling for a suspension of Canada’s temporary foreign worker program, citing the case of an Indonesian man who says he was exploited. Ariefs, who Global News is not identifying because he fears retaliation for speaking out, came to Canada after seeing a job with Concord Wall Painting advertised in a YouTube ad. He was hired to work on major public building expansions, including the Lions Gate and Royal Columbian hospitals.

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Trump decries foreign labor as his winery seeks cheaper overseas workers

To really understand the legacy of racism and exploitation in the U.S. Agricultural industry, we need to go back to the Fair Labor Standards Act, which became law nearly a century ago, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was president.

This law fundamentally changed working conditions in the U.S., it gave us a minimum wage, a 40-hour work week, overtime pay –you know, the good stuff.

But these benefits didn’t apply to farmworkers, who at the time in the South were overwhelmingly Black.

In fact, you can draw a straight line from slavery, to the Fair Labor Standards Act, to the conditions we continue to see in agriculture today. Nearly a century later, farmworkers across the U.S., mostly Latino immigrants now, are still denied even the most basic federal protections, such as water breaks or access to shade in extreme heat. For many families, the effects of these racist exclusions are real, they’re tangible.

At the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles last year, President Joe Biden outlined his plan to reduce the number of migrants seeking asylum at the Southern border. His administration, Biden said, would help “American farmers bring in seasonal agricultural workers from Northern Central American countries under the H-2A visa program.”

What does that mean for a program that’s already plagued with wage theft and abuse?

Since Biden took office in January of 2021, he’s turned “safe and orderly migration” into a kind of mantra. He says it all the time. And just in February of that year, 2021, the White House assembled working groups to discuss the H-2A program. The idea is to divert asylum seekers from the Southern border and into this program. Here’s Biden talking about the plan last summer:

President Biden: “And on this jobs front, our Department of Agriculture is launching a pilot program to help American farmers bring in seasonal agricultural workers from Northern Central America countries under the H-2A visa program. To improve conditions for all workers.”

Here’s the main issue with that. The Biden Administration wants to offer this temporary worker program to migrants who are seeking asylum at our Southern border. A program that is riddled with abuse and trafficking is being offered to people who are fleeing violence and trafficking. 


“They’re only gonna be able to stay in the United States for 6, 7, 8 months outta the year. What happens during those other months of the year? Uh, they have to go back to their home country and they’re gonna be going back to a country that they fled.


Maybe because they were being persecuted, somebody in their family was murdered, you know, you’re gonna send them back to that situation and you’re gonna send them back to that situation with dollars in their pockets, which I think is just gonna make them targets for extortion.”

—Latino USA, Head Down

• Part 1, https://play.stitcher.com/episode/302009156

A United Nations official on Wednesday denounced Canada's temporary foreign worker program as a "breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery." Tomoya Obokata, UN special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, made the comments in Ottawa after spending 14 days in Canada. "I am disturbed by the fact that many migrant workers are exploited and abused in this country," he said. "Agricultural and low-wage streams of the temporary foreign workers program constitute a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery." Obokata's comments echo those of Jamaican migrant workers who, in an open letter to their country's ministry of labour last month, described their working conditions in Ontario as "systematic slavery."

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A Montreal-based workers' rights group has filed an application for a class-action lawsuit in Quebec Superior Court Thursday to ban closed work permits, which bind foreign workers to a specific employer. The permit goes against the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, says the Association for the Rights of Household and Farm Workers (DTMF). The DTMF is calling for this type of work permit to be recognized as unconstitutional, since it places workers in a vulnerable position while they are dependent on their employer and more likely to be mistreated.

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Temporary foreign workers are reporting paying recruiters and employers thousands of dollars to obtain a permit to work in Canada — only to end up with nothing.

CBC Radio-Canada spoke with multiple experts who say some employers and immigration consultants in B.C. often take advantage of workers from abroad.

Pawan, a young woman from India, says she was asked to pay $30,000 in an attempt to obtain a temporary foreign workers [TFW] permit in Canada but instead was charged exorbitant fees by a TFW recruiter and her eventual employer without ever obtaining one.

During the process, Pawan, 25, says she faced broken promises, threats and illegal requests for thousands of dollars in processing fees when she accepted a job offer on Vancouver Island that was supposed to help her get the work permit.

Now, out of a job and without a permit, she's warning others about a system that leaves temporary foreign workers open to abuse at the hands of recruiters and employers.

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The federal department charged with inspecting farms that hire temporary foreign workers failed to keep tabs on how well employers were protecting their staff during the pandemic, Canada's auditor general reported today.

Auditor General Karen Hogan said inspectors working for Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) did not properly enforce new pandemic regulations designed to protect workers from COVID-19 — frequently skipping checks on whether employers offered drinking water, cleaning products, separate accommodations for infected workers and dedicated quarantine spaces for workers who were supposed to self-isolate for 14 days upon arrival in Canada.

Foreign farm workers — who come to Canada on a seasonal basis to fill labour shortages in the agricultural sector — are uniquely vulnerable to COVID-19 because they often live in tight quarters in shared employer-provided accommodations.

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