Filipina migrant rights activist in Canada about to be deported

Gina Bahiwal,42, is well known in the migrants rights activist community for helping convince the Canadian government to rescind the 4-in 4-out rule that disadvantaged temporary migrant workers. FACEBOOK

SAN FRANCISCO– A Filipina temporary worker who successfully campaigned to change an immigration rule that had  disadvantaged temporary migrant workers is ironically now about to be deported from Canada.

Gina Bahiwal, 42, of Toronto, has run out of options and is scheduled for deportation to the Philippines on Sunday, Jan. 15.

Bahiwal lost her status under the former Tory government’s now rescinded “four-in-four-out” rules that banned migrant workers from Canada for four years after having worked here for four.

“I have been inspired by Gina’s dedication and tenacity to fight for the rights of migrant workers. From advocating for their maternal rights to exposing the unscrupulous practices of migrant recruiters, Gina is one of our unsung heroes,” Chris Ramsaroop of the advocacy group Justicia for Migrant Workers, told the Toronto Star.

Ramasaroop credited Bahiwal with helping ban recruitment fees and ending the four-in-four-out rule. “She is a leading voice for a more compassionate, fair and inclusive society,” he said. Bahiwal was invited to speak before a parliamentary committee in Ottawa last year that led to the revocation of the four-in-four-out rule.

Bahiwal is a college graduate who worked as a social worker in the Philippines. She came to Canada in 2008 under the temporary foreign worker program and worked in Ontario and British Columbia in vegetable packing on farms, hotel housekeeping and at a McDonald’s.

She said she paid a Canadian recruiter $5,000 to find her a job packing vegetables but became unemployed when she refused to pay another $2,200 to the recruiter to renew her work permit.

After paying another recruiter $1,500 she was able to work as a housekeeper. But she ended up jobless again for speaking up in defense of a co-worker. She later found work at a McDonald’s in Hope, B.C., and applied for permanent status in Canada under the provincial nominee program; but her earnings did not meet the government’s income eligibility requirement.

Although the Liberal government recently rescinded the four-in-four-out rules, Bahiwal’s work permit expired in October 2015 under the old regulations.

Without a legal status in Canada, Bahiwal has been unable to provide for her 14-year-old son, her mother and a niece in the Philippines. She has applied for permanent residency on humanitarian grounds and was awaiting a decision.

Canadian Labour groups and community advocates have urged Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale and former immigration minister John McCallum to stop Bahiwal’s deportation, which is scheduled for Sunday.