B.C. advocates for migrants happy Ottawa wants to keep families united, but wonder where they will live

One of the big issues will be where they will live as migrant workers often end up on farm dorms

Vancouver organizations that help migrant workers say they are encouraged by Ottawa’s plan to issue work permits to family members of temporary foreign workers, but they have questions about how that will work.

“This is obviously a good thing, but it’s tempered by the reason that this is such a big deal because our system has been set up for so long to tear these families apart,” said Jonathon Braun, a staff lawyer at Migrant Workers Centre of B.C., a non-profit that offers legal advocacy.

Braun said many people are coming to Canada because they want to support their families back home. He has clients who haven’t seen their children for years, especially during the pandemic.

“I think it’s such a heartbreaking reality that people who want to give their children a better future are having to leave them and be separated from them.”

Ottawa said last week that as employers, especially in the tourism industry, are finding it hard to hire the workers they need, Canada will extend work permits to family members of temporary foreign workers.

Before this, spouses were only eligible for a work permit if the main applicant was working in a high-skill occupation.

The announcement said “this temporary measure aims to improve the emotional well-being, physical health and financial stability of workers by keeping families together. As a result, it is expected that the worker will better integrate into their overall work environment and community.”

Beginning in 2023, there will be a temporary two-year period where Canada will expand its issuing of work permits to spouses and working-age children of temporary foreign workers in three phases.

The government estimates that family members of 200,000 foreign workers could start working in Canada.

Braun said that the first phase will let family members of workers who are in what is known as “the high-wage stream” of two workers’ programs to apply for a work permit.

Some of these programs already allow some workers to bring spouses and family members to Canada, so this will allow these people to work and have benefits such as a medical service plan, said Hugo Vazquez, senior manager of the migrant workers program at MOSAIC, a social services group that helps immigrants and refugees settle in Canada.

Many more people however, fall into the two later phases, which would let family members of workers in “the low-wage stream” of the temporary foreign worker program and agricultural workers.

This stream includes workers with jobs that pay under the median hourly wage.

The plans for these two phases, however, are still to be determined and it’s not clear yet what they will exactly allow, said Braun.

For now, the government’s announcement said there will be consultation “with agricultural partners and stakeholders to assess operational feasibility for expanding the measure to family members of agricultural workers.”

Vazquez used to visit many of the farms when he worked for the Mexican Consulate in Vancouver.

Most of the housing provided by employers to agricultural workers is divided into quarters for male and female workers with two or four people in a room, he said.

He estimates that of the approximately 360 farms he visited over five years, there were only four cases where a worker’s entire family was sponsored to live with them.

“There are many factors to weigh in with (the last) phase,” he said. “Where will people live? What will be in place for that?”

Braun said he is pleased to see that the work permits will be open ones that allow for individuals to change jobs.

“The permits are not tied to one employer, which in the past has been a situation that can be ripe for abuse and exploitation. It gives them mobility.”

jlee-young@postmedia.com