Let’s Grant ‘Dreamers’ Their Wish to Become Permanent Residents of Canada

One of the first actions by the new American president, Joe Biden, will be to realize the long-held aspirations of “dreamers.”

A bill to be tabled in Congress will create legal pathways to permanency for people who came to the U.S. as children without legal status.

Unlike the former administration — which took incremental steps through executive orders to create the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals because former president Barack Obama was hamstrung in Congress — the incoming president is not ambivalent. Dreamers can become Americans if the law is passed. This will be no easy feat in a deeply divided Congress, but it does give hope to dreamers emerging from the turbulent Trump years.

Canada, too, has its dreamers. They include asylum-seekers, those on temporary work permits, and the undocumented. Many aspire to become permanent residents of Canada, but they face many challenges. However, just as the U.S. election resulted in change, the current COVID environment may provide us with an opportunity to put some sacred cows out to pasture.

Asylum-seekers wait for hearings, decisions, appeals, and more decisions — a process that can two years. In the meantime, they work, mostly in the service economy. Their children go to school and they pay taxes. But it’s a situation fraught with uncertainty, both for the claimants and for Canada.

Canadians have always been uncertain about asylum-seekers who make a claim upon crossing our border, as opposed to waiting in camps for permission. We often call them “queue jumpers,” thus revealing our notions of fairness.

Recently, however, and as a direct result of the pandemic, public opinion is more favourable to claimants, according to an Environics survey. Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino recently announced a new program to allow claimants working in health care — possibly putting their own lives in danger — to apply for permanent residence.

Then there are the many temporary foreign workers doing work that Canadians simply don’t want to. They’re providing personal support to the elderly, or are toiling in the fields of Ontario, B.C., Quebec, and the Maritimes — seeding, fertilizing, tilling, sorting, and packing fruits and vegetables. Their chances of permanence is slim, and their outlooks bleak.

Bleaker still is the fate of the undocumented, who likely over-stayed their work permits. We don’t know exactly how many there are (for good reason), but some experts estimate around 500,000. Most are in urban centres and many work in construction. They mostly work under the table, so they don’t pay taxes and aren’t protected by the labour laws of the province where they live.

Canada has set ambitious new immigration targets for the next three years. If successful, we will bring in about 411,000 permanent residents this year — against the backdrop of the pandemic, travel bans, and the trend to work from home. Together, these forces will have an unexpected effect on global immigration. But it’s fair to say that the government can’t meet its targets without helping those who are already here.

It’s time for the Canadian government to change, too, and bring the dreams of these people home.

Read the op-ed on the iPolitics website