This story is part of Welcome to Canada, a CBC News series about immigration told through the eyes of the people who have experienced it.
Monieya Jess never imagined her life in Canada would turn out like this, living undocumented, in the shadows of society. But now she’s risking deportation by speaking out — part of an effort to expose an underground workforce that’s vulnerable to exploitation and likely to grow.
“It’s a nightmare,” she said. “I try to live day by day.”
The 36-year-old from Jamaica left two sons behind in 2021 to pick strawberries at a farm in Nova Scotia on a 90-day temporary work permit. Jess left the farm shortly after she arrived, because she says her employer refused to help her get medical treatment for pain related to her work.
“It’s hard work,” she said. “You have to be on your knees, you have to bow down your head.”
Because her ability to work in Canada was tied to her job at the farm, when Jess moved to Toronto and began to work under the table for cash, she became one of hundreds of thousands of undocumented people in Canada working in a shadow economy. Though Canada’s immigration minister has been asked to explore ways of regularizing status for undocumented workers, public attitudes and political realities around immigration have shifted, leaving undocumented people in constant fear of deportation, with no health care and few protections from labour abuses.
There are an estimated 500,000 undocumented people living in Canada, contributing to an underground workforce doing manual labour jobs many don’t want to do. CBC’s Lyndsay Duncombe examines what it’s like to live in constant fear of deportation, with no health care and few protections from exploitation.
‘You want to try to survive’
In the past three years, Jess worked as a cook, a cleaner and a personal support worker.
“Sometimes, they don’t pay you minimum wage because you’re undocumented. So you can’t complain to anyone,” she explained. “So you have to settle with whatever they have for you because you want to try to survive.”
Jess is currently undergoing testing for ovarian cancer. She worries that if she’s diagnosed with the disease, she won’t be able to get medical treatment in Canada because her undocumented status means she’s not eligible for health care.
No one really knows how many undocumented people are living in Canada, but the federal government estimates there could be 500,000 people living and working in the shadows. The Migrants Workers Alliance for Change suggests there are at least that many, but notes the number could be higher given the increase in temporary work and study permits issued in Canada.
A new CBC-commissioned survey has found that over 80 per cent of newcomers to Canada feel the federal government accepts ‘too many immigrants’ without proper planning.
“I think that most Canadians think this is an American problem,” said Irene Bloemraad, co-director of the Centre for Migration Studies at the University of British Columbia.
She says she doesn’t think people here “have really grappled with the fact that there are undocumented community members living in our neighbourhoods”
Bloemraad says while there’s some irregular entry at the border, most people become undocumented by staying in Canada longer than they’re legally allowed. People may not return home after an asylum claim is denied or they may overstay their temporary worker, visitor or student statuses.
She expects the number of undocumented people in Canada will grow due to the federal government’s plan to reduce spots for permanent residents and U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s plan to deport undocumented people in that country. According to the Center for Migration Studies, there were around 11.7 million undocumented migrants in the U.S. as of July 2023.
“I think it’s definitely going to go higher,” she said. “How much higher, we don’t know.”
From the shadows to the spotlight
Akil Augustine lived in Canada for years without even knowing he was undocumented.
He was born in Trinidad and Tobago in 1982, and his parents brought him to Toronto when he was four, to live with an aunt.
He realized something was wrong as a teenager when his friends started applying for jobs, and his older sister told him he couldn’t legally apply for jobs.
The Current18:33The stories of undocumented migrants in Canada
There could be as many as half a million undocumented migrants in Canada, living and working in the shadows of society. Some of those migrants have shared their stories with the CBC’s Lyndsay Duncombe, from the challenges of daily life to their fight for legal status.
“I finally figured out, I’m undocumented,” he said. “It’s bad news, so it’s scary. Your stomach drops a couple of floors.”
After that, Augustine lived in fear of deportation, keeping his status secret. He was especially worried about getting stopped by police or going to the hospital. He says one of the scariest moments he had was being home alone while sick with a bad flu.
“I was just so out of breath, I couldn’t breathe,” he said. “I knew I couldn’t go to the doctor.”
It took a decade, but Augustine finally became a citizen in 2015. Lawyers he met through friends worked for free, and his Member of Parliament, former NDP leader Jack Layton, wrote a letter of support.
He achieved status under a section of the Immigration and Refugee Protection act that grants permanent residence on humanitarian and compassionate considerations.
He describes his certificate of Canadian Citizenship as the most important thing he owns.
Augustine went on to be a courtside reporter and host with NBA TV Canada. His work on the Toronto Raptors winning 2019 season earned him a championship ring.
“I can provide anecdotal evidence that if you bring a little kid from Trinidad who doesn’t know much and raise him in Canada under the great education system and support systems that we have, he can flourish and add things to our society. That’s what I know.”
Fighting for regularization
In 2021, the mandate letter for federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller asked him to “explore ways of regularizing status for undocumented workers.” That would mean providing a pathway to permanent residence status for people working without documentation.
In 2023, the federal government expanded a pilot project in Toronto to provide status for 100 construction workers in that city. But the minister of Citizenship and Immigration concedes there is no plan to address the status of the hundreds of thousands of other undocumented people.
The Liberal government has announced major cuts to its immigration targets to “stabilize population growth and relieve pressure on the housing market.’ Canada will reduce the number of permanent residents in 2025 from 500,000 to 395,000, a drop of 21 per cent.
“There’s no consensus at this time as to what to do,” Miller told reporters in November.
In fact, the minister said Canada is deporting people in numbers he described as “historic highs”
In an email to CBC News, the Canada Border Services Agency said that in the most recently completed fiscal year, 15,392 people were removed from Canada for non-compliance with immigration rules. That’s close to 6,000 more deportations than the previous year.
“We’re very serious about that,” Miller said of the government’s responsibility to deport undocumented people.
There’s indication that Canadians support sending people home. A recent Leger poll done for the Association for Canadian Studies shows that 48 per cent of Canadians believe that mass deportations are needed to stop illegal migration. That’s just one percentage point lower than the views found in the U.S. in the same study.
Risk of deportation
In an effort to get the government to reverse course on deportations and regularize undocumented workers, Jess went public with her story in a news conference on Parliament Hill in November, organized by the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change.
She knows going public puts her at risk of being deported.
“A lot of people out there [are] fighting for the same thing I’m fighting for, regularization, equal rights,” she said. “Everyone deserves to live as a human being.”
Life in Canada is hard for Jess, who says she has experienced racism, including a person on a bus who told her to go back to where she came from. She also says the house where she lives is infested with rats and raccoons.
But she says she stays in order to send money to her children, who are now 16 and seven.
“If I don’t try, who’s going to try?”
