When the Canadian
dream dies
The Mexican Experience in
Canada
Toronto Star
Thousands of poor foreigners come to Canada for temporary work every
year, but many soon become so disillusioned by their wages and living
conditions that they turn around and head home
Nov. 4, 2006. 01:00 AM
KYLE G. BROWN
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
CALGARY: Two gangly men in their early 20s walk Calgary's suburban
streets carrying large plastic bags. Luis shakes a Coke can empty before
chucking it in, then looks for another.
It's not what he and his cousin Pedro planned to do when they left
Saltillo, a city of 600,000 in northeastern Mexico. They were told they
would be able to send plenty of money home to their families.
But after the remittances, they have so little left that they eat the
most basic and cheapest of food. The money they make from empty cans and
bottles supplements their salary from roofing, and often makes the
difference between sending home a little money, or nothing at all.
They are among the roughly 95,000 foreign workers who arrive every year
to fill labour shortages in Canada, many of them trying to escape
grinding poverty at home. About 10,000 of them are in Alberta. (Because
the workers interviewed for this story fear they could lose their jobs
for speaking out, all the names have been changed.)
Back in Saltillo, meat is a twice-a-week luxury at most for Luis, Pedro
and the extended families they lived with. Here, three thousand
kilometres north, life has turned out to be every bit as harsh. They
share a five-bedroom house with as many as 15 other men at any given
time.
"The living conditions are really bad," Pedro says.
"We pretty well all arrive at the
same time at dinner time. We make a line for the oven to cook our meals.
We make a line for the shower. So, the first four or five guys get hot
water, the others get cold."
Around the corner, another group of Mexicans who work in an Alberta
factory devote their weekends to can collecting, too.
Pablo pushes a shopping cart full of the day's takings while Estevan
scours the roadside for more.
Unlike the duplex where Luis and Pedro live, the five-bedroom house
Pablo and Estevan share with eight other men is surprisingly clean. But
the house is full of old, mismatched furniture, and as fall turns to
winter, the cracked living room window has not been repaired.
The phone rings. Benito, the only one in the house who speaks English,
gestures frantically that he's not home. Estevan duly takes a message.
It's one of two girls who keep calling.
Although they live cheek by jowl, they are in good spirits.
"You should see us on payday though," Alvaro says.
Every second Friday, they stare at their cheques, vexed at the vast
difference between the gross salary at the top of the stub and the net
pay below. Taxes, employment insurance and pension contributions are
deducted from their $942 bi-weekly pay. Then, the men pay another $250
for rent, leaving them with a net pay of about $450. After groceries, a
small sum is sent home to Mexico.
This is the second time Alvaro, 28, was recruited as a temporary worker
by Mexi-Can Labour Force, a recruiting agency for foreign workers. Last
year, he complained to Mexi-Can officials about the low pay and
uncomfortable quarters. After being told it would be better this year,
Alvaro feels he has been deceived.
Lyle Tomie, director of Canadian operations for Mexi-Can, says his
recruiters would not mislead anyone.
"We're big believers in under-promising, and over-delivering," he says.
"We show them what they will be making, the taxes, deductions,
everything."
And yet, three separate Calgary households of Mexican workers visited by
the Star are angry. In all three, there are more bodies than bedrooms.
In Luis's and Pedro's house, dry streaks of liquid line the walls, the
floors are dirty and sticky. Dry, dark brown soot cakes the top of the
stove. Dirty dishes are scattered throughout the house. Six large
garbage bags of bottles and cans sit in the hallway ? presumably waiting
to be cashed in.
"From the first night I arrived in Calgary, I realized it was a mistake
to come," Pedro says.
But the frequent turnover of people in the house
makes it difficult to keep it clean.
Mexi-Can finds accommodation for the workers and negotiates with
property managers on their behalf. Tomie says that while his company
would never put workers in substandard accommodation, he is sometimes
disappointed with the way property managers maintain the houses.
Some companies for whom Mexi-Can recruits workers own the properties
that they rent out to their employees. In one, each of the 10 tenants
pays $500 in rent, producing a total of $5,000 every month for a
five-bedroom house.
Some can't make ends meet. Miguel, 42, feels that by sending so little
money home to Mexico, he is letting his family down. He has three
children in Mexico, including a 6-year-old daughter who has a lung
infection.
"Right now, I'm in a desperate situation because I came with the hope of
getting my family out of trouble. My daughter needs an operation and I'm
not in a position to send money to help them. And that's the whole
reason why I came here."
Says Alvaro: "In Saltillo, I don't have to gather bottles. I live a
better life there, a more comfortable life, with my family."
Former immigration officer Peter Veress also recruits workers for
Alberta companies. He says he is frustrated with employers and agencies
who "play fast and loose with the rules."
Nowhere are the effects more acute than in housing.
"The accommodation costs are huge," Veress says. "So, you can easily see
workers now paying a big chunk of their salaries toward accommodation,
even though the regulations say that the employer cannot charge the
workers more than 30 per cent of their wages in accommodations. But
we're seeing some slippage in that, which then begs the question why
they're here in the first place."
Although some workers return home, the Mexicans here say there are no
jobs in their hometown. People come from miles around to visit Mexi-Can's
office in Saltillo, searching for work in Canada.
"It's very busy in our Saltillo office," Tomie says. "It's non-stop
because we hire for so many types of jobs."
Recruiting truck drivers, factory workers, customer service people and
more, Mexi-Can expects to bring 1,000 workers to Canada from Mexico next
year, more than double the 400 workers it brought this year.
For every worker who returns to Mexico disenchanted, many queue up to
take his place. Many of the low-skilled workers come not as immigrants,
but through temporary foreign worker programs. They fill labour gaps at
Canadian companies, but are not allowed to bring their families or
settle here permanently.
According to Service Canada, a federal government department, employers
from the Alberta region (which includes the Northwest Territories and
Nunavut) applied for 20,000 positions to be filled by foreign workers in
the fiscal year ended March 31. By the end of the current fiscal year,
that figure is expected to double.
This unprecedented demand for foreign labour has spawned a thriving
recruiting industry, which is tapping deeper into a seemingly
inexhaustible supply of labour in Mexico.
However disillusioned foreign workers may be when they get here, they
can do nothing about the countless "help-wanted" signs throughout
Alberta's cities. Having come to Canada on work permits, they are bound
to the company that hired them. Once their contract is terminated, their
work permit and, therefore, their right to stay in Canada ends. They
must go back to Mexico to apply for a new permit, which can take months.
Seeing friends making better money with cash-in-hand work, some
temporary foreign workers have decided to join them, and earn $9 an hour
on their days off.
However, the overall balance sheet is far from bleak. Thousands of
people from all over the developing world do well in Canada's temporary
foreign workers programs. Tomie says his company is giving people
opportunities they would not have in their home countries.
Veress's company, Vermax, has recruited 200 workers for more than a
dozen Canadian companies. Pleased with the arrangement, the workers,
mainly from Mexico and Chile, will return to work for the same
employers. Some are moving up in the business, and will be able to
settle in Canada with their families.
Says Veress: "We put it all on paper, and translate it for the worker,
so they understand exactly what they're coming to do, what their
deductions are going to be ? all those issues that are so important. We
try to get it as close as we can so that there are no surprises for
anybody."
Back at the five-bedroom house, the men sit around, recounting their
surprise on the day they signed the contracts to work in Canada.
"They wouldn't let us read the papers. They just put them in front of us
and said, `Sign here, here, and here,'" Benito says. "They said, `Hurry
up guys, we don't have much time.'"
Benito says English, not Spanish, copies of the contracts were on the
table.
"I can't see how this could have happened," says Tomie of Mexi-Can. The
company provides contracts in both languages and he says he has
personally monitored the office in Saltillo.
"We don't want anybody signing anything they don't understand."
The workers make another worrying allegation: They say Mexi-Can staff
took their passports at the welcome breakfast the day after they arrived
in Canada. Despite requests for their return, two months later, they say
they still do not have their passports.
"That is absolutely false," Tomie says. "They can have their passports
back any time they want."
Benito says the workers couldn't leave the country if they wanted to.
"We do not have a copy of the papers we signed. We don't have our
passports."
Tomie says he is distressed by the allegations, and will speak to his
consultants about relations with the workers.
Some of the workers' complaints would be better directed at their
employers, not Mexi-Can. But recruiters are typically the point of
contact and are often a source of support while here. But much of the
men's grief has more to do with expectations that were raised in Mexico
and dashed, over time, in Canada.
Many will go back home for good if nothing changes. Luis and Pedro
already have, and Miguel is thinking about his daughter. Alvaro says if
he comes back to Canada a third time, he will want to do it on his own.
"I'd like to come again, but by myself, and see if I can find a job. We
see there are job opportunities in Canada, and the opportunity to grow
as a worker."
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