Danilo de Leon, chairperson of Filipino migrant workers organisation Migrante Canada, has been scheduled for deportation by the CBSA to the Philippines on August 29, 2022. CPSO echoes Migrante Canada’s calls to “Let Danilo stay! Stop the deportations! Stop the injustice!”
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Danilo came to Canada in 2009 to work, and became undocumented when his application to extend his work permit was denied in 2017. The precarity of his immigration status is a result of Canada’s refusal to provide a safe pathway to migration for all workers.
Thousands of temporary workers like Danilo come to Canada each year to take on work that is dirty, dangerous, demeaning, and difficult. Canada, through its temporary labour migration programs, depends on the mistreatment, exploitation, and eventual deportation of these workers.
We say: “Shame on this system! Good enough to work, good enough to stay!”
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Our understanding of this pull into Canada is balanced with our understanding of forced labour migration from the Philippines. Labour migration is rooted in poverty back home in the Philippines – in semi-feudal conditions in the countryside, and joblessness and forced underdevelopment by the global system of capitalist imperialism.
This is why Migrante Canada and other Filipino migrant workers’ organisations advocate for migrants’ rights abroad, but also connect their calls to national liberation, national industrialization, and genuine land reform in the Philippines.
These demands, for land and industry for the Filipino people, endanger the interests of the Philippine ruling class of sellouts and big landlords, and their foreign capitalist backers.
If deported, Danilo is likely to face harm at the hands of the US-Marcos-Duterte regime. As a known and outspoken migrant rights advocate, Danilo and his family are already targets for terrorist-tagging, harassment, incarceration, and even assassination.
That’s why we support Migrante’s calls: “Let Danilo stay in Canada! Regularise all workers in Canada so that none are left behind! End forced migration rooted in poverty, landlessness, and joblessness in the Philippines!”
Migrante Canada’s statement: https://www.migrante.ca/let-danilo-stay-in-canada