With Mexican music blasting and people dancing, the party atmosphere at a downtown Montreal protest Wednesday belied the serious concern among many of the participants.
“We are here manifesting to demand our rights,” protester Mohamed Amine told Global News.
They are former employees of an international catering company, Newrest. Wednesday outside the Québec office of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), on St-Jacques Street was the last day of their three-day protest. According to them, an agreement with IRCC to accelerate their application for temporary residence permits, was cancelled.
“About a week and a half ago in a meeting with IRCC, they changed their minds and decided to put in place a different procedure,” explained Ryan Faulkner of the Immigrant Workers’ Centre (IWC), which is helping the workers.
He claims the new procedure still hasn’t been outlined and worries that unless the former workers are protected quickly, the consequences could be serious, including deportation.
“Their status is in a legal limbo at the moment,” he said, “so this incredible uncertainty is extraordinarily stressful.”
The workers allege the agency which recruited them communicated part of the process for getting a work permit was to work on probation for a few months while the permit application was processed.
“(The workers) have been here with the promise of a work permit that they still don’t have after almost two years,” protest organizer Andrea Chavez noted.
The workers claim many of them were recruited from overseas, and that others already in Canada on tourist visas were also allegedly recruited.
Authorization is being sought for a class-action lawsuit against both the recruiter and the employer, but former employee German Rodriquez stresses they need help from the government in the meantime.
“(The IRCC) already gave work permits, open work permits, because this is an unusual thing,” he pointed out.
So they are hoping the the government will go ahead and fast track work permits for 93 others.
“We need the work permits now,” insisted Chavez . “We cannot wait. They cannot wait more. They have families they have kids.”
IRCC refuses to comment, citing privacy laws, and Newrest says it did not knowingly hire people who don’t have a work permit. The agency that allegedly recruited the workers did not respond to a request for comment by deadline, but has previously denied the allegations.
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