Portugal and Canada collaborate to resolve situations of undocumented workers | Immigration
The Secretary of State for the Portuguese Community said this Friday in Canada that both governments will collaborate more to “try to resolve the situation of undocumented civil construction workers.”
“We were debating a pilot project that exists in Toronto, in partnership with the Canadian Labor Congress aimed at undocumented civil construction workers in which there are 500 vacancies to legalize the situation of undocumented people,” he told the Lusa Berta Nunes agency.
The Secretary of State for the Portuguese Communities is on an official visit to Canada, from Tuesday to Friday, where she has scheduled several meetings with Portuguese leaders, Portuguese-Canadian politicians, visiting several Portuguese consular posts and passing through Winnipeg, Ottawa, Kingston and Toronto .
After having been in Winnipeg (Manitoba), this Thursday the government official met in Ottawa with the Portuguese-Canadian federal deputies Alexandra Mendes and Peter Fonseca, and with Catherine Scott, the associate deputy deputy minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship from Canada.
“We decided to exchange information and work more together so that this pilot is a success and that it can then be extended to other provinces, hoping that this will solve the situation of undocumented workers, which is no longer the problem it was, but continues to be”, said Berta Nunes.
A new pilot program aimed at undocumented construction workers went into effect on July 30, 2021, ending January 2, 2023, once 500 applications for permanent residency are received at the immigration ministry.
“This program has been somewhat affected by the pandemic, but so far, only 129 places have been filled. It is a program that is not only aimed at the Portuguese community, but at other communities”, he added.
This immigration program replaced another one that came into force in early January 2020, requiring, among several criteria, that construction workers legally entered Canada, with temporary residence, or that they have resided in the country for at least five years in a row from the date of order.
According to Berta Nunes, the Canadian Government “didverted that there were some cases for the legalization of workers, namely with the requirements in relation to the language, there is no proof of the adjustments and in relation to the way they entered the country”.
In this sense, Ottawa adjusted to the pilot program with the aim of becoming successful and with more workers a “definitely their undocumented situation”.
“This is a pilot program aimed at civil construction. It is important for the Portuguese, as civil construction is one of the areas that the Portuguese worked the most when they started their immigration”, he stressed.
The Secretary of State for Communities will this Friday at 18:00 (22:00 in Lisbon) to inaugurate the art exhibition of the Luso-Canadian Charity Society expressions, at the Consulate General of Portugal in Toronto, scheduled for 19:30 (23:30 in Lisbon) a joint press conference with the AEP Foundation on the Global Diaspora Network.
Data from the Canadian census of 2016 reveal that there were 483,610 Portuguese and Portuguese descendants in Canada, that is, 1.4% of the population in the country. The majority were in Ontario (69%), Quebec (14%) and British Columbia (8%).