Let’s choose solidarity this International Migrants Day
December 18, International Migrants Day, is often marked with statements of appreciation and calls to “celebrate diversity.”
And yet, across Canada and around the world, political decisions are being made that actively undermine migrant workers’ rights. In Canada, the continued reliance on temporary and precarious migration pathways, closed and employer-tied work permits, limited access to permanent status, inadequate enforcement of labour protections and sudden policy shifts that leave workers vulnerable to deportation – has created conditions ripe for exploitation.
Rather than addressing these systemic failures, public discourse increasingly scapegoats migrant workers for housing shortages and economic insecurity they did not create. Indeed, their labour sustains entire sectors of our economy.
Against this reality, International Migrants Day must be a moment of truth-telling.
Across Canada and globally, migrant workers are supporting our food systems, care sectors, construction sites and service industries. Yet many do so under conditions shaped by precarity, debt and fear. Their labour is essential but their livelihoods are treated as temporary. Their contributions are welcomed, but they are not.This contradiction sits at the heart of Canada’s migration system.
Many migrant workers arrive through programs that tie their legal status to a single employer. This structure concentrates power in the hands of employers and recruiters, limiting workers’ ability to speak out against abuse, leave unsafe jobs or advocate for fair treatment. As a result, migrant labour systems often produce ongoing precarity, including exposure to recruitment fees, inadequate housing, wage theft, family separation and the persistent risk of deportation.
International Migrants Day must name this reality plainly. A system that depends on migrant labour while withholding permanent status, meaningful protection and avenues for participation cannot be described as just.
This day of recognition is inseparable from broader patterns of global injustice that shape who migrates and under what conditions. Climate disruption, economic exploitation and unsustainable global debt continue to displace people and erode livelihoods. Canada’s migrant worker programs are embedded in this global context: they draw labour from communities already made vulnerable by extractive economic and climate systems, while offering only temporary, precarious status in return. When wealthier countries benefit from these global systems and then channel displaced people into migration pathways that restrict rights, limit mobility and deny permanence, injustice is not only reproduced – it is structurally maintained across borders.
International Migrants Day invites us to imagine a different moral and economic framework. One rooted in liberation rather than control. In welcome rather than exclusion. In pathways to permanent residency, regularization of undocumented people and an end to systems that profit from indebted migration.
Faith and social conscience call us to more than sympathy. They call us to take action.
On this International Migrants Day, we are invited to stand alongside migrant communities not only in words but in action- demands for dignity, status, safety, for the right to belong. Draconian laws like Bill C-12 do not pass because people agree with them. They pass when those most affected are isolated and when the rest of us are made to feel unnecessarily powerless. Migrants are our neighbours, coworkers, caregivers, students and family members. History shows that when communities organize, mobilize and refuse to look the other way, unjust laws can be stopped.
While Bill C-12 recently passed Third Reading in the House of Common, it still needs to pass in the Senate.
We encourage you to urge senators to Vote No on Bill C-12. Visit the Migrant Rights Network’s campaign page to send your letter now.
Migrant justice is not a niche issue. It sits at the heart of how Canada’s economy, laws and communities function. We can continue to rely on migration policies that depend on precarity, or we can choose to reform them. International Migrants Day calls on Canada to move beyond temporary, employer-tied programs and toward policies that guarantee permanent status, strong labour protections and the right to belong. This is not a symbolic choice – it is a political one and it demands action.
By Leah Shifferaw, Migrant Justice Team Lead
