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Carlos Rojas' Facebook wall is a constant flow of information for the community that follows him, interspersed with messages of kindness and actions for climate change. His networks reflect the lifestyle of this Mexican-Quebecer, who divides his days between working from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and volunteering for migrants with precarious status.
Carlos is the co-founder and director of Conseil Migrant, a non-profit organization based in Montreal that helps people with precarious status, asylum seekers, and temporary workers.
But the work of this business administrator trained at Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico's Harvard) goes far beyond that. It is common to see him on his networks asking for help to get a medical appointment for a person without status or participating in demonstrations in favor of the regularization of undocumented immigrants.
This big guy with a warm voice and gentle gestures does not define himself as an activist or activist, but he passionately supports organizations that assume this role in favor of migrants, especially at a time when the Canadian government has Expressed a project to regularize undocumented immigrants.
“There are hundreds of organizations across Canada that have synchronized with positive energy to participate,” he explains about the recent petitions that the organizations have published, demanding from Marc Miller, Canada's Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, details about the regularization plan announced in November and promised by this spring. A program that would however be called into question, we learn on March 25. In this regard, Carlos Rojas warned that “this is a lost opportunity, because [without the regularization of undocumented immigrants] society will continue to have a fictional economy and undocumented immigrants will continue to be victims of abuse.”
These organizations are making their voices heard in a pre-electoral context in Canada, where political discourse has permeated public opinion to the point that, according to surveys, 50% of the Canadian population considers that there are too many immigrants.
“The truth is that immigration has become hostage to political causes and the big problem is that Canada is buying a discourse that does not correspond to it.”
A different life
For this specialist in international trade and climate change, the link with migrants began in the United States, a country where he studied for several years at Columbia University before working at the Mexican consulate. Looking back, Carlos recognizes that he was destined for another professional career.
“I am the first in my family to go to university, thanks to the work of my parents and a scholarship (...). I was heading into a completely different environment in business. When I went to the United States to study climate change, I saw a different way of life. It was there that I discovered my country, strangely enough, outside of Mexico, through the voices of migrants. It was also there that I got to know many countries in the Americas, because I was confronted with migrants from everywhere, who had crossed the desert,” he recalls with a certain nostalgia.
When asked why he devotes part of his life to defending migrants with precarious status, Carlos mentions a story, one of thousands he has collected over more than 20 years.
“When I was in the United States, I moved into an apartment with a roommate. One day, he offered me to go to McDonalds (...). At the end of the meal, he ordered two more meals for the next day. On the way back we were in the car and he saw a man on the roadway. He asked how he was doing, and if he had just arrived (as an immigrant) and the man answered in the affirmative. He asked him if he had a place to sleep and if he had eaten. As that was not the case, my friend then offered to get in the car. He showed him where to get help, where to sleep, and gave him the extra food he had purchased. The exchange ended there. When I asked him why he was doing all this for someone else, he said: because someone did it for me when I arrived ”.
Carlos has as many stories as the migrants he met along the way. Although some of them are public, since he shared them on his networks, he prefers not to specify names or stories “because I don't have permission.” When he talks about the stateless people he interacted with in emergency situations, the circumstances are such that simply recounting the events brings tears to his eyes.
Invisible, but necessary
Emergency situations experienced by migrants with precarious status, including temporary workers for whom Carlos Rojas and his team are mobilizing, are generally linked to health and legal services.
Montreal was declared a sanctuary city in February 2017, which means that all members of a community can access city services without being questioned about their immigration status. However, in practice, it is very difficult for undocumented people to access these services.
According to 2017 data, Montreal was home to some 50,000 undocumented people this year, or 10% of the total number of undocumented immigrants in Canada.
“The very fact that we don't have recent studies shows a lack of interest and a lack of strategic thinking. The only study that was conducted and is still cited by the government, nearly ten years later, indicates that there were approximately 500,000 undocumented immigrants in Canada. That number could be one million today. “You have to be careful with this number, because the idea is not to frighten people,” he says, but rather to show how much immigrants are needed, because they are the ones who make the engine of the Canadian economy work, in part, they are the ones who make the engine of the Canadian economy work. For Carlos, “undocumented migrants are de facto slaves.”
What does he mean by “slaves”? “These are people who have no rights,” he warns. “People and Quebecers don't understand and don't know what these people are doing for them. The tomatoes you eat are bloody. Each year, during each harvest season, three or four migrant workers die and these are preventable deaths. Farm workers are three, four, five times more likely to die. Behind your clean desk is the story of someone who worked all night, a person who maybe had dreams, ideas, desires, etc., and who comes and limits himself to that. When you call your bank and someone answers you, it's probably a professional who hasn't found another job,” he explains. His annoyance at evoking these circumstances can be read on his face.
“We have a very pleasant life, but it is built on the suffering of a lot of people,” he adds.
The profile of these people is not homogeneous, an element that Carlos wants to highlight. “When we talk about people with no status, or with a precarious status, we immediately imagine a very particular type of person. In reality, it's a veritable rainbow of people. We met everything: the partner of a doctoral student in a field of strategic interest for Canada, whose insurance covered only him and not her, people who, due to bureaucratic errors, found themselves without status. Things are not as black and white as many would have us believe.”
“Canada's greatest strength right now is immigration”
Despite the conditions in which thousands of people with precarious status live, for Carlos Rojas, the Canadian immigration system works. It is not that it is optimal, but he considers that if we compare it to other countries, it is a system that works, at least in welcoming migrants. “And we saw it in 2017, with the 50,000 people who came from the United States. We did not see people on the streets. Canada has a good system compared to other countries,” he repeats.
But the director of the Migrant Council assures that work is urgent for the regularization of migrants without status, and for the improvement of the living conditions of temporary workers and all persons with precarious status in Canada.
“International conflicts are forcing countries to reorient their economies. The United States seems to be in a war economy: it is repatriating industries, lowering the requirements for recruiting into the military. Conflicts are the order of the day everywhere. Right now, Canada's greatest strength is immigration,” he said.
In order to reform the Canadian immigration system, more research is needed in this area. “Migration is one of the oldest phenomena, but also one of the least studied. It is a field that deserves a field of study, diplomas in migration integration or even in migration engineering,” he explains.
In addition to experts, it is necessary for society to finally recognize illegal or precarious immigration, which is also what the Migrant Council is working on.
“The public needs to understand that immigration is not a problem as they say. Canada is a country of migrants. And the truth is that the future of the country will continue to develop thanks to migrants. Even though new Canadians have a lot of children, we need more people to come and live in Canada. But we also need to improve the system with a humanitarian vision.”
Without having a crystal ball, Carlos Rojas believes that people will continue to come. And this, despite the evictions and the dangerous journeys to which exiles are exposed, such as Darien, the crossing of the Rio Grande or the extreme temperatures of North America. Hence the importance of acting now, he believes.
“We need to expand the possibilities so that the people who will come anyway are not left behind, so as not to make them invisible. We should not force them to live outside the law. It means giving criminal groups more power. When Roxham Road was closed, the only thing we did was increase the fees in Tijuana for people bringing French-speaking immigrants to Quebec. This is what will happen, for example, with the new visa requirement for Mexicans. We cannot repeat the failed policies of the United States,” he said.
Carlos Rojas is convinced that he lives in a country of opportunities. He himself came to Canada as an immigrant under the skilled worker program. When told that he does not like Quebec because it is critical of the system, he replies that it is because he likes this province and this country; he wants it to get better and better.