Filipino
Women in Canada:
Their Struggles and Resistance
Cecilia
Diocson, Philippine Women Centre of B.C.
presented at Asian Connections Conference
November
2000
Page 2 of 3
Filipinos
in Canada
Filipino
migrants and immigrants are relatively newcomers to Canada who
started coming during 1960s. A good number of these Filipinos
were professionals who worked in the United States and, after
the expiration of their work permits, migrated to Canada instead
of returning to the Philippines. As befits its capitalist economy
that opens and shuts its immigration doors in accordance with
its supply and demand for skilled labor, Canada opened its doors
to Filipinos to fill its growing industries and expanding economy
during that period.
Since
then, the Filipino community continues to grow especially in the
1980s when Filipino women began entering as domestic workers initially,
under the Foreign Domestic Workers Movement (FDM) and subsequently,
under the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP). During the last couple
of years, the Philippines consistently ranks among the top five
sources for immigrants to Canada. Today, there are over 250,000
Filipino migrants and immigrants in Canada. These Filipinos are
in their prime productive years – mostly between 25 to 48 years
old; their training and education subsidized by the Philippines
but utilized by Canada; and they are mostly women (65%).
Filipinos
are among the most highly educated of immigrant groups in Canada,
yet their incomes are lower than that of other immigrant groups
and those born in Canada. There is extreme degree of occupational
segregation: domestic work and childcare for women; cleaning and
janitorial services for men. They thus, remain marginalized in
Canadian society, primarily segregated as cheap labor in service-sector
jobs. Filipino women who work as domestic workers must have at
least a two-year college education to qualify to come in Canada.
The
Philippine Women Centre and its work
among women doing domestic work
Together
with six women, who included some domestic workers, we formed
the PWC in 1989 to collectively address the root causes of our
oppression as women and of our migration to other countries as
cheap labor. As a grassroots-based non-profit society some of
our main objectives are:
- To
promote awareness by Philippine women of their common interests,
issues and problems as women of color and as migrant workers
- To
help foster feminist values – emphasizing them from the perspective
of Philippine women and
- To
encourage inter-cultural understanding with women from other
communities
An
essential foundation of our work at the PWC is the understanding
that Filipino migrant women are part of the massive forced migration
of Filipinos to the industrialized countries of the North. This
forced migration which was institutionalized through the Labor
Export Program by the Philippine government constitutes one aspect
of our presence in Canada and other advanced capitalist countries.
The
other aspect is the need for cheap but educated and relatively
skilled labor that advanced capitalist countries like Canada cannot
produced on their own. This makes migration a commodity that is
sold and bought in the international capitalist market. Canada
and other wealthy countries offer themselves as attractive destinations
for potential migrants and immigrants while poor underdeveloped
countries, like the Philippines, offer their people as "internationally
shared human resource." This flow of skilled Filipino immigrant
women corresponds perfectly with Canada’s need for cheap labor
to service its growing economy and to fill in those low-paying
jobs that Canadian citizens would not normally accept.
Filipino
domestic workers come to Canada under the Live-in-Caregiver Progoram
(LCP). They enter under a temporary working visa and have to work
and live in their employers’ house for at least two years before
they are given the opportunity to apply for a landed or immigrant
status. It is this two-year "live in" requirement that
makes them vulnerable to various forms of exploitation and oppression.
And if they fail to complete this 24-month requirement within
three years, they are arbitrarily deported. The case of Leticia
Cables is a classic example of this deportation. The latest information
we received at the Centre is that there are over ten Filipino
domestic workers who had been slated for deportation. This includes
Melcah Salvador in Montreal and Acier Gomez here in Vancouver.
Their only fault is their failure to complete the stringent requirements
of the LCP as imposed by Immigration Canada. In the meantime,
the presence of foreign domestic workers, has become an argument
in the non-implementation of a national day care program that
would have benefited many working women who cannot afford a domestic
worker.
This
is the context of our work at the Philippine Women Centre.
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