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 Editorials | Issues | August 2007 
Canada-Mexico Guestworkers Program Under Fire
 Frontera NorteSur
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 |  | Mexican consulates in Canada are negligent in upholding the rights of their citizens, functioning instead like 'a giant immigrant smuggling operation' in recruiting and contracting guestworkers.
- Camerino Marquez Madrid, PRD |  | |
For some rural Mexicans, working in Canada is a viable alternative to the low pay of Mexico's northern borderlands, or the dangerous crossing into the United States. Similar to the old Bracero Program between the United States and Mexico, Mexican farmworkers sign temporary contracts to work legally in Canadian agriculture. According to a Mexican congressional report, an estimated 15,000 Mexicans labor as agricultural guestworkers for up to eight months a stint in Canada. Now, the attractiveness of the Canadian option might be fading too.
Amid growing reports of abuse, a group of Mexican legislators is demanding that President Felipe Calderon raise the issue of working conditions when he talks with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper as part of the North American Leaders' Summit in Canada this month.
"We know that in October 2006, while he was president-elect, President Calderon expressed his disposition to expand the guestworker program for Canada to the service and construction sectors," said Edmundo Ramirez Martinez, a representative for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in the lower house of the Mexican Congress. "Before (President Calderon) does this, he should analyze how our countrymen our treated."
Recently touring Ontario, Quebec and other parts of Canada, a group of Mexican legislators encountered complaints related to the working and living conditions of guestworkers.
Federal Congressman Camerino Marquez Madrid, of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), charged that isolated workers lack access to the Canadian health system, worker's compensation and interpreters. He said workers were subject to firings without proper recourse. Legislators also found that sending remittances from Canada was both difficult and costly.
Congressman Ramirez contended that Mexican consulates in Canada are negligent in upholding the rights of their citizens, functioning instead like "a giant immigrant smuggling operation" in recruiting and contracting guestworkers.
Reminiscent of the old Bracero Program, reports indicate that the official Canada-Mexico program serves as a cover for deceitful labor contractors and extra-legal relationships. Last June, for instance, a group of indigenous Mexicans from the municipality of Tlapa, Guerrero, agreed to work in Canada without a contract.
In the run-up to the tri-national Canadian summit, the PRI and PRD representatives in the lower house of the Mexican Congress urged President Calderon to discuss the treatment of guestworkers with his Canadian counterpart.
Sources: El Universal/Notimex, August 12, 2007. El Sur/Agencia Reforma, July 2, 2007.
Frontera NorteSur (FNS)
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico
FNS can be found at http://frontera.nmsu.edu/) |
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