Protesters picket PM's office in Montreal, demand status for undocumented migrants

Protesters in favour of regularization for undocumented migrants held a nation-wide demonstration Sunday as groups visited prime minister and cabinet offices across the country demanding status for all.

“In the next week, [or] in the next month, cabinet ministers will be faced with a decision on criteria for a regularization program for undocumented migrants in Canada,” said Mary Foster, a member of migrant advocacy group Solidarity Across Borders.

Montreal protesters demonstrated at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office and marched to others occupied by high-ranking members.

Protesters called on Ottawa to swiftly implement an inclusive regularization program for undocumented migrants -- a long-standing demand that advocates say appears closer than ever to becoming a reality based on recent moves by the federal Liberal government

A mandate letter from December 2021 asked Trudeau's immigration and citizenship minister to “build on existing pilot programs to further explore ways of regularizing status for undocumented workers who are contributing to Canadian communities.”

The expectation is that a new program would grant permanent residency to hundreds of thousands of people living in Canada who are considered non-status, and Montreal protesters hope there won't be a limit on how many people can be regularized. 

“Being non-status gives you a wall of limitation between you and everything else that is around you,” said protest organizer Aboubacar Kane.

But not everyone is on board. Immigration lawyer Neil Drabkin, a former advisor to the Harper and Mulroney governments, says that if a program was implemented according to protesters’ demands, it would undermine Canada’s current immigration system.

“I believe it is patently unfair to provide a permanent residence status to those who have been in this country illegally, in many cases, for years and years,” he said.

“What were effectively doing is putting these people to the front of the cue by saying ‘you’ve been here for a number of years without status and now we’re going to reward you’.”

Others say Canada ought to up its immigration intake, and that the other option is continuing to wade through an ongoing worker shortage.

“We have businesses closing because they cannot get labour, they cannot find people to work,” he said. “We have people here already who deserve to be part of Canada."