Migrant workers' families suffer from limited access to pandemic-related health care and loss of income.
Protesters attend a demonstration in support of migrant worker in front of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada in Toronto in August 2020.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christopher Katsarov
The federal government must make good on its throne speech language about making it easier for migrant workers to formally become Canadian by instituting a comprehensive regularization plan.
A temporary foreign worker from Mexico plants strawberries on a farm in Mirabel, Que., in May 2020.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes
COVID-19 has proven that prioritizing the economy over the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable should never be an acceptable fix to economic woes.
Temporary foreign workers from Mexico plant strawberries on a farm in Mirabel, Que., in May 2020.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes
Migrant workers are not inherently more vulnerable to COVID-19, nor more likely to be carrying it than Canadians. Yet our treatment of them this year stigmatizes them and puts them at risk.
Police stop migrants from moving in Mumbai during the COVID-19 lockdown on April 28, 2020.
(AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)
During the COVID-19 pandemic, India's Narendra Modi government has been successful in scapegoating, discriminating against and marginalizing minorities, putting lives at greater risk.
A temporary foreign worker from Mexico plants strawberries on a farm in Mirabel, Que., on May 6, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes
Now that the pandemic has made migrant workers visible in Canada, as well as the true value of the work they do, it's time to dramatically improve their working conditions.
Mexican migrant farmworkers sort cherries at one of Canada’s largest cherry orchards in British Columbia.
Elise Hjalmarson
Elise Hjalmarson, Graduate Institute – Institut de hautes études internationales et du développement (IHEID)
COVID-19 may not discriminate, but Canadian policy does. Income support during the pandemic must be extended to everyone, including migrant and undocumented workers.
Singapore, once a success in containing coronavirus, now has the most cases in Southeast Asia. One of the main reasons: the government's neglect of its 300,000 foreign migrant workers.
Migrant workers from Mexico maintain social distancing as they wait to be transported to Québec farms after arriving in April at Trudeau Airport in Montréal.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz
The demands of social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic will make it increasingly difficult for migrant agricultural workers to meet their basic needs.
Money transfer offices in Amman, Jordan reopened in late March.
Amel Pain/EPA
The legislation before parliament discriminates against employers who take on temporary migrants, impoverishes Australian residents and will hold back the fight against coronavirus.
A farmworker picks lemons at an orchard in Mesa, California.
Brent Stirton/Getty Images
The US food supply depends on several million agricultural laborers, who are mostly undocumented, tend to work in close quarters and lack medical insurance.
1.3 billion people in India are in lockdown.
Jagadeesh NV/EPA
More than one-in-16 people in New Zealand is a migrant without residence status. For everyone's sake, to contain COVID-19 we need to ensure those 300,00 people can access health and social services.
A train attendant in Nanchang, China, gestures in solidarity with medical staff departing for the city of Wuhan, Feb. 13, 2020.
STR/AFP via Getty Images
Public criticism of the Chinese government's handling of coronavirus shows that the Chinese people can overcome both strict censorship and a gaping class divide when they get angry enough.
A man stands on the rubble of his home in the Haitian Quarter, after the passage of the Hurricane Dorian in Abaco, Bahamas, Sept. 16, 2019.
AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa
The economy of the Bahamas depends on Haitian labor. But some Bahamians see no place for migrant workers in their country's long, slow recovery from Hurricane Dorian.
Labor wants higher minimum pay for temporary visa holders, but most are already being paid much more.
Shutterstock
Bill Shorten's promise to tighten the visa system for short-term skilled migrants won't do anything for local jobs or wages.
While Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton boast about border protection, just quietly the numbers of asylum seekers have increased to a record 27,931 in 2017-18.
Lukas Coch/AAP
Immigration has featured as an issue in every Australian election since 2001. But the numbers often tell a different story from the political posturing.