A report highlights the difficulties some migrants face in accessing justice to regularize their immigration status. In its recommendations, the legal clinic Solutions Justes reiterates the need to improve funding for legal aid in immigration matters.
Solutions Justes, a program of the Montreal Community Mission (MCM) organization, will present an analysis on Monday about access to justice for migrant women and 2ELGBTQIA+ migrants with precarious or no status.
In collaboration with the organization Agir, the clinic decided to conduct this study, as it is receiving “a worrying number” of domestic violence cases involving migrant women whose immigration status depends on their spouse or partner.
And also because “there are very, very few studies” that have examined the case of these migrants from a legal perspective, explains Catherine Blais-Delisle, project manager for the Solutions Justes-MCM clinic, in an interview. And even fewer in relation to the LGBTQ+ community, “the blind spot of research and community action,” she adds.
The report is based, among other things, on interviews conducted with lawyers, researchers, and representatives from community organizations and women’s shelters.
One of the findings of the analysis is that “legal recourse is very, very limited” for these immigrant populations, explains Blais-Delisle.
One of the issues mentioned is related to the temporary residence permit for victims of domestic violence (PST-VF), created in 2019.
The initiative is “good, but the eligibility criteria are extremely vague” and the one-year duration of the permit is “too short” for a person who has to rebuild their life after experiencing such traumatic events, argues Blais-Delisle.
“This is a permit that is very, very rarely renewed,” she adds. The report notably recommends extending the minimum duration of the PST-VF to three years.
Blais-Delisle wishes to clarify that no statistics demonstrate that domestic violence is more prevalent within immigrant communities. However, immigration status can become a tool for controlling and perpetrating violence against an individual.
Pressure on lawyers and the community
The report also highlights the difficulty these migrants face in finding a lawyer to represent them. Demand is high, and there are few lawyers specializing in immigration law in Quebec.
Cuts in certain services partly explain this increasing pressure on lawyers, says Blais-Delisle.
“The Legal Aid Bureau in Montreal is the only legal aid office to offer information on humanitarian immigration law for the entire province. This is not normal,” she said.
This lack of legal representation impacts community organizations and shelters that find themselves taking on immigration-related tasks. However, these organizations do not always have the expertise and tools to provide adequate support, the report emphasizes.
“As we cut services, there are more vulnerabilities. So there is a greater need for support and that really increases the pressure on community organizations,” argues Blais-Delisle.
The authors of the report recommend, among other things, increasing funding for legal aid in immigration matters and reopening the immigration component of the legal aid office in Quebec City.
They also suggest “improving the remuneration of private lawyers who take on legal aid mandates in immigration matters in Quebec, in order to increase the number of professionals offering these services.”
These recommendations echo those presented last year by Just Solutions in a report more broadly on access to justice for migrants with precarious status or without papers.
While the judicial system can be complex for a Canadian citizen, it is just as complex, or even more so, for someone from outside the country, especially in matters of immigration, Blais-Delisle points out.
“Without representation, serious errors can be made, either through poor representation or even through errors made by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada,” she argues.
A “system that creates precariousness”
Solutions Justes explains that migrants with precarious status have temporary or conditional immigration status, such as temporary foreign workers, sponsored persons who experience domestic violence, and rejected asylum seekers.
For those without papers, the reasons are multiple, such as a refused asylum application or a deportation date that has passed.
Blais-Delisle reports that migrants do not necessarily arrive in the country with one or the other of these statuses.
“The people we support mostly arrived here with valid immigration status, then lost their status because of the violence they suffered. (…) It is really the system that makes these people vulnerable,” says the project manager at the legal clinic.
“These are people who came here to work, who came to join a partner, for example. (…) The people who come to consult us would prefer not to have to use our services,” she continues.
Being in Canada with an expired visa or permit, or returning to the country irregularly, constitutes an administrative offence, not a crime under the Criminal Code, says Blais-Delisle.
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
