Salamanca, Guanajuato.- Carlos Rojas Salazarfounder and director of Migran Consultingt, a support organization for Guanajuato residents living in Canada, said that it is estimated that there are more than 400,000 Guanajuato residents living in that country, and a good part of them will participate in the mobilization that will take place in Montreal on November 2.
In addition, they are preparing for the migrant strike on December 18, in order to demand the regularization of people in a precarious situation, which is estimated to be 1.5 million, including Guanajuato residents, and to recognize that migrants are vital to the economy. of that country.
With the mobilization of November 2 in Montreal they seek to become visible and demand their regularization. December 18 will be a day without migrants: they will not go to work or school, they will not shop, they will not send remittances and they will not carry out any activity so that the absence of migrants, children of migrants and allied people.
“These activities seek to make the Canadian government realize that the migrant community is larger than it thinks and that, by affecting migrants, they are affecting Canadian residents and citizens. It is a show of strength; The idea is that the Canadian government sees that migrants are also organizing. It’s not about hurting the community or the country; We simply seek to apply the laws and rights that exist in Canada, and that migrants are treated as people, just like Canadian citizens,” said the migrant leader in Canada, Carlos Rojas.
He remembered that Canada needs labor, and becoming visible arose after the governor of Quebec published advertisements with the Minister of Immigration, where they seek to restrict students from having work permits, that temporary workers who want to come for three years in a row have to pass the French exam, an exam that few Canadians could pass.
Carlos Rojas Salazar, founder and director of Conseil Migrante. Photo: Special
“Furthermore, it is unrealistic that a person who comes to work 12 to 16 hours a day also has time to learn the French language. They are measures that have been applied without thinking about the people and the impacts that these measures have. Here, as throughout the world, there is this anti-immigrant discourse, and politicians want to follow it because migrants do not vote and are cannon fodder for electoral campaigns, prior to electoral processes,” he stated.
Rojas Salazar said that they want to vilify migrants, but they have already forgotten that in the pandemic they were essential and heroes, because they were the ones who risked their lives when there was a virus about which nothing was known and when there was no treatment. The migrants were the ones who kept and buoyed the economy of this country, but now it turns out that they are attacked, vilified and beaten. This movement was born to defend them and to demand the regularization of undocumented people.
He recalled that, until before February 29, 2029, when a visa was not yet requested to enter Canada, a wave of Mexicans arrived. It is estimated that in the last two years some 250,000 have arrived and stayed to work without documents.
In the case of Guanajuato residents, according to their profile, they tend to be more urban. They arrive as permanent residents, temporary workers or students. According to the statistics available, furthermore, requests for support are becoming more and more recurrent.
Finally, and in the midst of this situation, they hope to know the work plan of the Undersecretariat of Immigrants of Guanajuato in Canada.
“It is not recrimination, it is nothing more than having a rapprochement, because until now there are no programs or support for Guanajuato migrants in Canada,” he lamented.
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