When Nina Gonzalez* speaks to the public or the media on behalf of the Women's Committee of the Immigrant Workers Center (IWC), she always wears a mask and glasses.
The idea is that no one can see her face, but you can hear her voice. Like tens of thousands of people in Canada, some 500,000, according to federal government statistics, Nina is living in hiding because she has no papers.
This women's rights activist came to Montreal with her daughter, then 14, in 2008. 16 years later, at 50, Nina looks like a young girl, which matches her clothing style. Her eyes are big, as is her smile, features that people usually can't see.
In Canada, she thought she had won the lottery, she who was discovering the peace she had never known. Victim of physical and psychological violence, abandonment and constant precariousness in Bogota, leaving Colombia gave her a new lease of life.
But enjoying that peace was short lived for this single mom, who moves her hands eloquently when she speaks. Poorly advised by an immigration consultant of Latin American origin, she presented a refugee case that was not real. Her request and that of her daughter were denied.
A chain of events
The day we met, Nina forgot her mask at home. Confident, she decided to continue the interview. It's the first time we've seen her face surrounded by her curly hair.
She is jovial, despite the fact that her eyes show fatigue. We feel that she wants to tell us her story. The more she talks, the more confident she seems to be. In fact, she smiles almost throughout her interview.
Her time with us is running out because she has to go in less than an hour to a house in Outremont where she is cleaning that day.
It is one of the jobs Cash that the activist exercises regularly. However, while waiting for her asylum application to be answered, she managed to obtain a diploma as an attendant, which allowed her to gain experience in caring for the elderly.
Despite the time constraints of our meeting, Nina speaks slowly and frankly. Her emotions are at the forefront. She smiles when she talks about her activism for women and undocumented migrants, a commitment that makes her feel accomplished. Her eyes bear witness to the pain she carries within her.
“I arrived in Montreal in the middle of summer. It was fantastic,” she says, looking out of the café window at the 9 am sun, a spring day that is more like summer.
“I come from a background where there was a lot of violence. Economic, physical and family. Coming to Montreal was an opportunity to try my luck. I had never taken a plane in my life. When the opportunity presented itself, because an acquaintance loaned me money, I did not think twice. The situation in which I lived in Colombia with my daughter was very difficult.”
To come to Montreal, Nina received about 2,000 dollars from this acquaintance, whose identity she prefers not to mention. “It was money that I had never seen, a fortune,” she adds.
Her journey was not direct. She first had to make a stop in Mexico, where she obtained false Mexican documents to be able to travel to Montreal without a visa. Colombians are in fact required to present this sesame to enter the country. Once she arrived at Montreal's Trudeau Airport, she declared that she was Colombian and that she was in Canada seeking asylum.
Recall that the government of Stephen Harper imposed visa requirements on Mexicans in 2009, a measure that was lifted by the Trudeau government in 2016 and imposed again in 2024 by Trudeau himself.
“The truth is that I was not aware of what I was doing. I was 34 and my daughter was 14. I was desperate because I wanted to get out of the violent context in which I was living,” she said.
When she arrived in Saint-Léonard, Nina was happy. “When I saw the city, the social environment, the dynamics of Montreal, I was happy. But I also started to run into difficulties. The first was the scam of the person who advised me on my case. A Colombian who spoke Spanish, which I needed because I had not yet learned French,” says the activist, who now gives press conferences in the language of Dany Laferrière.
“That's what happens to a lot of immigrants,” she adds. “When you come here, you meet a lot of immigration lawyers and advisers, in quotation marks, but they're people who just want to take the money. They have no ethics, no human values, they only harm a person's life and that's what happened to me,” she laments. Her eyes fog up, she tries to hide it by continuing the conversation.
The immigration consultant suggested that she file a fake refugee application (a story that was not real), explaining that she would have a good chance of having her application accepted.
“I know that I am also guilty because I accepted his suggestion and in doing so I made a very big mistake. My credibility is very affected in the eyes of the immigration services,” she regrets.
She thinks out loud: “We come from countries and from a precarious context. Numerous absences. I grew up with my grandmother and she taught me a lot of values, but what happens is that when you meet these people who say they want to help you, they use precariousness, ignorance, and despair and just take your money.” One day, she even paid $100 to have an immigration document read to her in French.
Nina paid this first adviser around 3,000 dollars. “I dare say that at the end of the day, these people are a kind of mafia, because they are ruining your life.”
As is often the case in the lives of asylum seekers, waiting for a response from Immigration is part of daily life; but Nina did not give up. With no experience in the field, she passed a beneficiary attendant certificate and worked in care homes for the elderly. Her daughter went to school and integrated into her community.
“In 2011, I had my hearing and I must say that as an asylum seeker, you are treated like a criminal. I don't know a single person who came to seek asylum who told me that they had been treated well.”
Rejected requests
After the hearing, her asylum application was rejected. Advised by a new immigration lawyer, Nina appealed the decision to federal court and the response was again rejected.
She then submitted a case to the Pre-Removal Risk Assessment (PRRA), which allows people who need to be removed from Canada to seek protection in the receiving country. The aim is to describe the risks they run in the event of expulsion. People who are approved for a PRRA can stay in the country.
For this procedure, Nina relied on a recommendation that another Latin American made to her. This acquaintance told her that he had contacts within the immigration department.
“I am coming back to the same thing and this is advice for people who are going to read your article: you think that here things are the same as in your country, in your society. That there is no need to wait in line, etc... I came in with these beliefs. And that's how I fell into the same trap. I believed this person who told me that they would help me get my residence and who finally stole 13,000 dollars from me.”
It was a very difficult time, admits Nina. “And I'm not talking about money, because at this stage in life, you know it comes and goes. It was the emotional damage that dragged my daughter and me to the bottom,” she laments as she wiped away her tears.
Expulsion order and going into hiding
At the end of 2014, when all possible procedures to remain in Canada were refused, except for the humanitarian residence for which Nina González had not yet applied, the mother and daughter received a summons from Immigration Canada.
“They were cruel enough to set the date of my deportation on the same day as my birthday, in January. I reported what was happening at work because I still had an implied status. My boss, a nurse at the nursing home, got angry and cried with me. I was surprised by this love. She was asking how she could help me, but I didn't really know how.”
Nina did not know that she was eligible to become a foreign worker, because the company she worked for could apply. “It's a solid group present throughout Montreal, but unfortunately I didn't know that I had that opportunity and that's how I disappeared.”
This is how another stage began for Nina and her daughter in Canada, that of going into hiding.
“My daughter couldn't even finish high school and it all weighed on me. She worked, like me. She took care of babies. She worked really hard. At one point she thought that the best thing for her was to go back to Colombia, but the night before the deportation date, we were at home, trying to watch a movie to calm us down. The truth is that we couldn't break up because we were always together. “Whatever happens, mom, we're going to stay together,” she said to me that night,” she recalls, her voice trembling.
The clandestinity and isolation led to a deterioration in the mental health of Nina González, who was suffering from severe depression.
“It's very hard. It is the life of a human being. We are talking about years. Not one, not two, not three, but 10, 15, 20 years that many undocumented immigrants spend in Canada. Personally, I have no roots in Colombia, I don't miss anything there, because I've never been in my place anywhere. There is no family environment, but violence and abuse.”
Picture: Pablo A. Ortiz
Finding a voice in activism
In 2018, Nina González came into contact with the Women's Committee of the Immigrant Workers Center (IWC) through a friend. Like many women she speaks to today in her role as a community leader, gaining trust has been a daunting task.
“When I arrived at the committee, I started to see the dynamic of the work and realized that I could make my voice heard. The committee allowed me to express my pain. I felt recognized,” she says in a relieved tone.
Victim of sexual harassment by a man in one of the jobs she held in Montreal, Nina was able to confide in a group of women. A voice that was part of a set of testimonies presented by the Women's Committee of the Center for Immigrant Workers (CTI) to the Ministry of Labor and to the Commission on Standards, Equity, Health and Safety at Work (CNESST), as part of a brief so that women without status can file a complaint with the bodies concerned.
“It was also very traumatic for me. And I put up with it for a long time because I had no choice. But one day I couldn't take it anymore because the man in question became very aggressive. It reminded me of what I had experienced in Colombia. In the middle of winter, without really knowing what had happened, I quit my job, without putting on a coat, nothing, just my work apron.”
Within the women's committee, Nina learns that there are different levels of harassment and that the victims can be young or older women.
“We have heard about cases of Latinas, African women, women of diverse origins, women in their sixties, who have been victims of abuse. Often we are not aware of what is happening to us. Hearing these stories hurt me a lot and I still can't find the words when it's my turn to say that I was also a victim.”
Regaining trust was also part of Nina's learning curve as an activist.
“It's not easy because I'm always scared. But I was surprised to see that I had abilities. It was thanks to the committee's community coordinator, Viviana, that I discovered it. I have created relationships of trust and I feel happy. I feel fulfilled, I don't feel so alone anymore,” she rejoices, a smile in her eyes.
“Today, I can speak for those who have no voice, for women like me, like my daughter, who are alone, isolated. I have found strength and courage that is not even rage, because of physical violence, government violence, economic violence. It's hard being a woman. It hurts. I am not showing my face, I am not giving my name, but I am giving my voice and my strength.”
A regularization program
Nina is checking the time on her cell phone, she has to go to work soon. She complains of shoulder pain.
“I've been waiting for an appointment for months at Doctors of the World. I've been cleaning for 16 years and I'm already 50. It's starting to weigh on me,” she confides.
The complaint about her pain does not last long. Nina immediately mentioned the regularization program announced by the federal government in 2021 and about which we have no new details to date.
The government has promised to make an announcement on this issue by the end of spring. But May is coming to an end and undocumented immigrants don't know how the measure will be implemented or if it will be approved.
“I don't think people understand that undocumented people don't have bank accounts, that they don't have access to subsidized medical care, that they don't have assistance plans, pension plans. I even used to ride a bike, but I don't want to ride a bike anymore, because two or three years ago, the police started fining bike lanes and I'm at risk, even for such basic things,” laments Nina
Despite that, she's living her life as best she can. “There are days when I'm feeling down. There are times at night when I can't sleep. I am integrated, I speak French. My daughter, who is 29, will get her permanent residence because we separated our files and she applied through humanitarian channels, which makes me happy.”
Nina will continue to be active in her struggle and in the struggle of all people without status. She is not showing her face, but she will continue to make her voice heard.
*Nina González is the alias used by this activist.