The "Deportability" of Migrants

Migrants face risks crossing the border, including imprisonment or death. But for the migrants that are able to cross the border, what are the difficult realities they may face while living here?

Eloy Rivas-Sanchez, a professor and researcher, who immigrated to Canada from Mexico, now fights for migrant rights through Montreal organization Solidarity Across Borders. Rivas-Sanchez sees the common realities undocumented people face.

Rivas-Sanchez said migrants lives are governed and controlled by their employers, as a result of not having status in Canada, he said employers know they can take advantage of undocumented workers – either through underpaying and/or overworking them. Rivas-Sanchez said sometimes employer don't follow rules and push migrants to do things they don’t want to do by threatening them with deportation.

In the first summer of the pandemic, the Quebec government deemed non-status essential workers in long-term care homes and hospitals as “guardian angels”, meaning they would not be deported. However, this was not legally binding, and undocumented essential workers began being deported that fall.

Rivas-Sanchez said he has a friend from the Ivory Coast who worked in a CHSLD, he contracted COVID-19, then was deported despite being “guardian angel”. Rivas-Sanchez said that the richest countries held a moratorium on deportations during the pandemic, however, Canada for only had a moratorium for 6 months. 

So how does the risk of deportation affect migrants? Rivas-Sanchez coined this term as "deportability", which he says is when this treatment makes migrants feel docile, causes them mental and physical distress, low self esteem and even nightmares.