(In our Nov. 30 issue, we reported on Lorna Tolentino who arrived in Canada on June 2008 to work as a caregiver under Canada’s Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP). In October last year she was diagnosed with terminal cancer and admitted to the Burnaby Hospital.) She died on New Year’s Day at 1:30 in the afternoon, alone in her bed at the St. Michael’s Hospice where she was transferred several weeks ago from the Burnaby Hospital. No one in her family was with her – they were thousands of miles away in the Philippines.
My wife and I visited her two days before she died – our third since we learned of her hospitalization through the Migrant Workers’ Ministry of St. Mary’s Catholic Church on Joyce St. Unlike our previous visits, she was no longer able to talk nor respond to us. When I clasped her hand, there was no more life in her and I could sense she was nearing death. I broke down in tears looking at her emaciated face. My tears were as much for her as for others like her who maybe left alone to die in foreign countries because they are not allowed to come with their families. Even her sister Jocelyn was still not able to come despite efforts to bring her two months ago. (As we went to press there was no word yet on when her visa will be issued) I silently prayed that God will take her while we were there but it was not so and we had to leave.
While she came to care for others, she was alone in a hospital bed except for the occasional visits from friends and others who came to know her. Lorna, like millions of Filipinos in the Diaspora, left the Philippines to search for the proverbial ‘better life’ abroad. She came to Canada three years ago to care for two young children of a family friend and townmate from San Miguel, Bulacan. She did that for over two years – taking care of the children, feeding them, taking them to school and perhaps putting them to bed. And oh yes, and cooking, cleaning and other mundane chores a domestic worker is expected to do.
She came under the much-touted Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP) to work and live with her employer for five days a week for a minimum of 24 months. The deal is that if you’re lucky to work continuously for 24 months, you will be rewarded with the opportunity to apply for Permanent Residency (PR). It used to be called ‘Landed Status’ but perhaps the powers-that-be figured that these women (who constitute a majority of LCPers) were not ‘floating’ up in the air before they were allowed to land, so to speak. (Lorna got her PR at the hospital weeks before she died.)
The gambit to apply for permanent residency is the biggest draw for this program – so much so that workers will sacrifice abusive conditions in order to complete the mandatory 24 months of live-in work. The fact is, politicians of all stripes proudly point to this “gimmick” foreign worker program as something that Canada has to be proud of. They routinely say that no country other than Canada allows domestic workers to apply as permanent residents after working for two years.
Our politicians are only one of the many stakeholders in the LCP game that includes governments from the sending country who are more than happy to send their citizens abroad for their much-needed dollar remittances. This remittances that amount to $18.76 billion in 2010 for the Philippines, is the life-blood of the country - propping up its moribund economy.
There are also the rich Canadian families, mostly professionals and business people, who depend on these ‘nannies’ to take care of.
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