HermieGarcia.net

NOTEBOOK: Something fishy in LCP ‘changes’

January 4, 2010

By Hermie Garcia

The Philippine Reporter

First things first. Our sincere wishes to all our readers, friends, fans and foes, advertisers and competitors, long lost colleagues and relatives — Happy New Year of happiness, wellness, prosperity, peace with justice, forgiveness with remorse and reconciliation. If that’s not a mouthful, I don’t know what is.

Now back to this business of commentary.

We attempted to do a yearender this issue but the task was so daunting during a holiday season of combined socializing and inertia. So we came up with a selection of photos with accompanying significant events. We’re not saying these are the most significant events of the year in Toronto for the community. We were limited by the availability of the photos. We confess, there were some important events we did not cover in our paper but what we came up with is not bad. Next time, we’ll do a better job with enough editorial planning for a yearender.

And we’re talking only of a yearender. Overall, our editorial and news coverage has become stronger in the past year. Our coverage of the hot caregiver issues have particularly been consistent and comprehensive.

The years before 2009 we covered a lot about the issues of the Jeffrey Reodica case, the community center controversies, deprofessionalization or access to professions and of course the song and dance festivals, the concerts and the arts. But this past year, the caregiver isssues were at front and center. And justifiably so because the caregivers issues and campaigns occupied a lot of space and airtime in the mainstream media too.

To those who are taking seriously these issues, I suggest you scrutinize the recently announced changes in the Live-In Caregiver Program. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said during the Dec. 12 by-invitation-only press conference that the specific changes would be available in a website and interested parties may make comments within 30 days for further input into the proposed changes.

See Dyan Ruiz’s article “Let your voice be heard on LCP” of this issue for details on how to give your comments.

In the meantime, a few important “fine prints” were unearthed by our analytical reporter. And these have the makings of becoming contentious issues in the ensuing debates and discussions on whether the newly announced LCP changes are worth celebrating.

One is the much talked about removal of the second medical examination required of caregivers applying for permanent resident status. The late Juana Tejada became the symbol of this campaign in the past year because she was a victim of this unfair requirement. She campaigned hard despite her debilitating illness. She was granted the status, with a few others who were similarly sick with cancer.

But back to the “fine print”. It turned out that even as the second medical exam was “removed,” it was replaced by a “medical reassessment” which sounds like a new name for a second medical.

A more stringent requirement has emerged from this issue. It turns out, Canadian authorities will be determine if an LCP applicant will cost Canada’s health system about $5,000 a year for five years (total of $25,000) in which case the applicant will be rejected at the outset and can never set foot in Canada as an exploited caregiver.

But is a caregiver’s services not worth $25,000 to the Canadian government? If you count the unpaid overtime, the unspecified work routinely performed on a daily basis, the undefined work hours, the sometimes unlivable conditions (some are made to sleep in the laundry room), the unused unemployment insurance payments, the long years of separation from children and family, all these and more — Canada owes more than maybe four times this amount in five years of suffering endured by these caregivers. That is, not including the deskilling of mostly nurses, physiotherapists and other professionals who work as caregivers in Canada. This alone consigns them indefinitely to low-paying jobs after they graduate from the LCP if they do.

Even Jason Kenney admits that the work of these caregivers under live-in conditions, is not palatable enough to be taken in by most Canadians. He’s right. How many Canadians are willing to be semi-slaves tied to their employers’ homes 24 hours a day, five or six days a week?

But I digress. Let’s go back to the loopholes. Another item unearthed by reporter Dyan Ruiz: “the LCP workers’ 3900 hours ‘may not be in respect of more than one employer or household at a time’.”
Does this mean if a caregiver worked for two employers in 22 months, only her hours worked for one of those two will be counted towards the 3900 hours total?

If it doesn’t mean that, what else could it mean? If this is the case, the announced changes make the LCP even more exploitative to the caregivers. Why? Because under the old system, all the months (excluding overtime, of course) worked under whatever number of employers within three years are counted. Under the new system, only the hours worked under one employer or household, within 22 months, will be counted.

There may be more loopholes and fine prints that may escape our attention at this time. My point is, let’s be vigilant. We have clever people on the other side of the negotiation table, although it’s hardly a negotiation that’s going on now. (We were “consulted” a few months ago. Most of those consulted by Kenney in his office in Toronto pushed for permanent resident status for caregivers. The position papers of many caregiver advocate groups and the caregivers themselves wanted landed status, removal of the live-in requirement and the employer-specific feature of the LCP. Kenney came back empty-handcd on these basic demands. Instead he verbally expounded on his own version of changes which are now, in their written form, look like tricky provisions of a complicated document.)

Now is the time for the advocates, the caregivers and the community and its allies to discuss and debate these announced “changes”. There’s very little time before the 30 days run out from Dec. 19.
My thinking is this. As long as the three basic features of the LCP are untouched, no basic change will happen in the lives of the caregivers. These are the roots of their exploitation and some of these are already being identified by public officials in Canada. The Auditor General has mentioned the live-in requirement is fundamental to the employer’s inclination to abuse. MP Don Davies and MLA Mable Elmore are urging for permanent resident status for caregivers. The Parliamentary Standing Committee tasked to study this issue on temporary foreign workers has recommended a conditional landed immigrant status for caregivers. So why is the Conservative government hell-bent on resisting these changes?

I wouldn’t know the exact answer to that. Ask Kenney and his advisers or the employers lobby groups that continue to effectively hide in the bushes.

April 2, 2009
(The Philippine Reporter, April 1-15, 2009, http://philippinereporter.com)

The recent Toronto Star series of articles about unscrupulous recruiting agencies preying on Filipino caregivers has triggered a public outcry that sent politicians and public officials singing a chorus on protecting these vulnerable foreign workers and vowing to go after these greedy recruiters.

A private member’s bill has been filed in the Ontario Parliament that intends to curb this practice by setting up a registry of agencies, banning the charging of fees on caregivers and penalizing those in violation of this bill.

Hearing the stories of the caregivers on how they were milked thousands of dollars for often non-existent jobs has provoked public anger. Those responsible deserve to be charged with fraud and brought to justice. Victimizing foreign workers who have already spent a fortune for government fees and who are willing to be separated from their families just so they could support their siblings, parents and spouses, is like sucking the blood of these poor people. There’s no doubt about it, these predators need to be exposed and made to answer for their crimes.

But I am a bit uncomfortable with how this is turning out to be. These unscrupulous recruiters need to be punished for sure but to me they are like vultures feeding on the miseries of the caregivers. They bring the caregivers here for a scandalous fee, which is absolutely wrong. But what we forget is the already unjust and outrageous terms and conditions under which caregivers and all foreign temporary workers find themselves in are what allow the unscrupulous recuiters to extract their huge fees.

These caregivers and other temporary workers come from poor and lower middle class families in poor countries like the Philippines. They couldn’t find decent jobs there because of both the unwillingness and inability of the government leadership to provide decent employment. As the country reels from crisis after crisis amid everyday reports of scandals and mind-boggling corruption in high places, people lose hope and in desperation go overseas where life looks better.

The government of the sending country is interested mainly or solely in the billions of dollars these overseas workers remit home, in the case of the Philipppines, about U.S.$18 billion a year. These desperate people are pushed to work overseas as cheap labor without the necessary protection. In Canada, for instance, caregivers under the Live-in Caregiver Program are like indentured slaves tied to their employers who know that they are desperate to escape from poverty in their home country and many wouldn’t mind being exploited working 12 hours or more without overtime pay doing chores not specified in their contracts. Besides, the carrot at the end of the 36 months, after they have worked live-in for 24 months - eligibility to apply for permanent residence status - is too attractive to resist.
That is not available in most other countries.

The stories of abusive working conditions, physical, verbal and sexual abuse, cheating on salaries and tax deductions are too common to be ignored. That’s why, it’s revolting when some consular staff used to say that these are nothing compared to what OFWs experience in the Middle East. That may be true but it doesn’t mean it’s acceptable.

So you have desperate poor people who would grab the first chance of working abroad and would accept any terms of employment rather than have their family go hungry.

The receiving country, Canada, knows these are desperate people so it imposes working conditions it wouldn’t normally impose on its citizens and immigrants who have rights and privileges that couldn’t be taken away easily. These caregivers are treated like second-class workers and in practice indentured slaves who are “willing” anyway to bear their miserable conditions since their life here is much better than where they came from. Besides, again, there is that light at the end of the dark tunnel, permanent residency and being able to sponsor their family, which is becoming illusory now, judging by the numerous cases of deportation or “removal”.

Now comes the public outcry to crucify the unscrupulous recruiters who are like vultures feeding on the miseries of the desperate caregivers. Those who caused these miseries in the first place escape the blame and join the chorus to go after the heads of the vultures.

To me, it’s like the classic comparison to rounding up some drug pushers on the streets while letting the drug lords and their protectors in law enforcement do business.

So what is the solution to this seemingly complex problem? Since the root of the problem is the unjust impositions on the caregivers, then remove these chains that tie them to modern slavery. Let them come to Canada with permanent resident status so there is no carrot that is dangled to them as a prize for accepting slavery. Remove the live-in requirement so they are not treated like they are owned by their employers who can make them work on demand 24 hours a day. Let their workplace, their employers’ home, be subject to labor standards and their work conditions and wages be like those of Canadian workers. Not only treat them like ordinary Canadian workers are treated. Treat them like human beings with dignity who deserve respect. After all, they make life comfortable to countless families who have kids, elderly and ill persons in Canada.

The Philippine government should stop sending them as desperate cheap labor bound by onerous work conditions but as workers with rights and benefits accorded to regular workers in modern society and who while still Filipino citizens should be fully protected by their government wherever they are in the world. If and when this happens, no recruiting business will be able to extract blood from caregivers with impunity.

I didn’t intend to write a column for this issue. In the last few days, however, I came across two items circulating on the Internet that I thought would be a compelling study in stark contrast. One is about the life of an overseas Filipino worker, or OFW, and the other the life of a Senator.

One is a column written by Conrado de Quiros, award-winning newspaper columnist whose impassioned writings have cultivated for him a large following of readers.  He wrote about the insane conditions under which OFWs work and the government plan to subject prospective OFWs to psychological tests before deploying them to overseas work.

The other item is anonymously written but equally impassioned description of the lives of Senators whose privileges and entitlements are mind-boggling.

Here is an excerpt from De Quiros’s column:

“The question is whether the person you are sending out is loony-tunes or the place he is going to is bound to make him so. Or put another way, the question is whether the person you are sending out is a risk to the community you are sending him out to or the conditions of work you are sending him out to are a risk to the person you are sending out. In many cases, the second is truer than the first. It’s the deplorable working conditions, the verbal, physical, emotional and sexual abuse, the torture, the nonpayment of wages that make OFWs snap and go berserk. That is probably more the rule than the exception. No exam is going to change that.”

xxx

“There is something sublimely absurd about making sure that only sane people are sent out to do insane work. There is something violently contradictory about guaranteeing that people are able to keep their family together by exposing them to conditions that guarantee they will tear their family asunder. There is something maddeningly insane about assuring that people are sufficiently sane to carry out the insane task of keeping a country afloat by sending its people to work abroad.

“I don’t know of any country today that is so dependent on overseas work. That has for its lifeblood overseas work. That cannot survive for one day without overseas work. Absurdity piles up on absurdity. I don’t know of any country today that is so desperate for overseas work it is willing to send its citizens to places God or Allah forgot. I don’t know of any country today that has turned whole universities into nursing schools, or turned entire departments into adjuncts of the nursing one. I don’t know of any country today that doesn’t even mind selling itself, quite apart from its people, to the highest bidder, piece by piece, parcel by parcel, lot by lot, just to survive—or to make its officials happy.”

Here is the item on the privileges of Senators, written in Pilipino or Tagalog. I refuse to translate this to English. I’m sure I would not give justice to the content and all its emotion should I do so.

So here, enjoy:

“ANG SARAP MAGING SENADOR!

“Miriam Defensor Santiago was featured in Correspondents last week.

“Maganda rin naman ang naidudulot ng pagiging prangka ni Senador Miriam Defensor-Santiago. Ayon kay Santiago , marami ang tumatak-bong Senador dahil sa laki ng budget na ibinibigay sa kanila kada buwan.
Lumalabas na P35,000 suweldo nila kada buwan ay pakitang-tao lang sa milyun-milyong budget ng bawat senador. Kada buwan ay may Fixed Monthly Budget ang bawat Senador ng humigit-kumulang P2 Milyon.
Sa opisina pa lang nila ay humigit-kumulang P500,000 ang budget nila sa Maintenance and Operating Expenses (Rental, Utilities, Supplies at Domestic Travels) at P500,000 para sa Staff at Personal expenses. Kaya para makatipid ang ibang Senador, kaunti lang ang staff na kinukuha nila. Nagtataka ka pa kung bakit mayroong mga Ghost Employee?

“Bukod diyan, may P760,000 allowance pa sila kada buwan para naman sa Foreign Travel. At ang masakit pa nito, hindi na kailngan i-liquidate ang mga resibo ng mga gastusin ‘yan kundi Certification lang ang Requirement.

“Heto pa, lahat sila ay Chairman ng mg Komite sa Senado. Ang Committee Chairman ay tumatanggap din ng budget na sinlaki ng tinatanggap ng mga Senador na humigit-kumulang P1 Milyon din! Hindi sila mawawalan ng Komite dahil 24 lang ang ating mga Senador at 37 naman ang Committee sa Senado.

“There’s food for everybody ‘ika nga! Lumalabas na doble ang kanilang benepesiyo at kita kapag sila ay nabiyayaan ng Committee Chairmanship.

“Sa P200 milyon na Budget para sa Pork Barrel ng mga Senador bawat taon, awtomatikong may 10% na S.O.P. o kita ng Senador na P20 milyon. Ito ang porsiyento na ibinibigay ng mga kontratista sa mga Senador na nagbibigay sa kanila ng mga Infrastructure at Livelihood Project.

“Bago matapos ang termino ng isang Senador, kumita na siya ng P100 milyon sa Pork Barrel pa lang. Yung ibang Senador mas gahaman, hindi lang 10% kundi 20 - 30% ang komisyon hinihingi sa mga kontratista.
Pansinin niyo na lang ang pagbabago ng buhay ng ilan sa ating mga Senador simula nang manungkulan sa puwesto. Kung dati ay simple lang ang kanilang pamumuhay ngayon ay nakatira na sila sa mga eksklusibong subdivision, maraming bahay sa Pilipinas at abroad at mahigit lima ang sasakyan.
Ngayon nagtataka ka pa ba kung bakit gumagastos ng daan-daang milyong piso ang mga Senador sa kampanya para sa isang posisyon na P35,000 lang ang suweldo kada buwan? Bawing-bawi pala ang gastos kapag naupo na!

ANG SARAP MAGING SENADOR! ! !
PLEASE FORWARD TO AS MANY OF YOUR FRIENDS AND LET THE WHOLE COUNTRY KNOW THAT ELECTION IS MORE OF PUTTING AMBITIOUS PEOPLE IN POSITION WHO ARE GREEDY FOR POWER, WEALTH & PRESTIGE THAN OF PUBLIC SERVICE… ANG MASAKIT PA PERA NG BAYAN PA RIN GAGAMITIN SA ELEKSYON MALUKLOK LANG ANG MGA BUWAYA SA PWESTO!!!”

There is a burning issue here in Toronto — the case of Juana Tejada, a Filipino caregiver who worked for years in Canada and while applying for resident status, she was diagnosed with cancer. Now she is told that she has to go back to the Philippines because her health condition will be a burden to Canada if she is allowed to stay as a permanent resident.

There was a press conference today Friday, June 20, 2008, in Toronto held by her supporters. There is a statement detailing her situation and the demands of the community in her case. It’s published in the current issue of The Philippine Reporter.

Here is the link:

Justice and Compassion for Juana Tejada