By Christina Chiu

WHAT kind of society are we becoming?

Anything but kind, or civil - as we make it a crime to be poor, and increasingly allow the rich to devour the poor for profit. People are being forced out of their homes, as landlords raise rents callously - or 'renovate' hotels into places which are out of the price range of most people. Others exploit people for their labour, while giving them no way to legally become citizens of Canada.

Growing numbers of students are migrant workers, who face the realities of being used and abused in Canada's labour force.

More than 200 agricultural workers live close to our ESL school at Kingcrest. They come every year to work in greenhouses and on farms for several months. Many move around several locations in North America, wherever there is work - and return year after year.

They come on work visas, which they only have as long as employers want them - so they are afraid to complain, even if they are mistreated. The survival of their families depends on them.

Following are some of their stories; their names have been changed to protect them.

Gilberto

Gilberto came to Kingcrest with several of his Mexican buddies last term. He told me they get up early and are picked up by a van at 6 or 7 am, to go to a farm in the Fraser Valley.

One week, I had heard on the news that several migrant farm workers had been severely injured when their van had overturned. When these guys did not show up for class, I was worried because of the possibility they had been in this accident. It turned out not to be them; but they said they knew the guys who had been hurt.

Not long after, Gilberto hurt his leg while working - and there was no medical insurance for him. He just continued to work. He said he was lucky it was not a serious injury.

One student brought a young woman from China, who had come to work in Canada as a nanny. After one week, her employer fired her, because she could not learn English; also, she didn't know the city well enough to satisfy the employer. She was weeping, and had no place to sleep.

I am ashamed to say that, of all the churches I phoned, not one offered her a place to stay that night. A student who was not a Christian took this young woman to her home, and told me: "I thought Christians were people who helped other people."

Carolina

Carolina is a nanny from a Latin American country, who came to us crying last year. She had worked for an employer for one whole year; then this employer had unfairly fired her. She was distraught, thinking she had to start all over again to have the two years of full-time work she would need before she could apply for permanent residency.

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She has two small sons, whom she misses terribly. She is saving up to visit them this Christmas; but then she will have to tear herself painfully away from them for at least another two years.

This kind of separation is a common experience of migrant workers. I had a friend whose mother worked as a domestic helper, first in Hong Kong and then Canada. Her mother left her in the Philippines when she was four years old, and finally was able to bring her to Canada when she was 14.

When I was in the Philippines, I saw the reality of tens of thousands of people - flooding into the city from the countryside, trying to make a living wage to feed their families.

Gruelling conditions

These are people trying to escape the gruelling conditions of tenant farmers, who pay more than half of what they grow to callous landowners.

Some landowners also force them to grow cash crops for multi-national corporations (owned by countries such as Canada and the U.S.), rather than food crops with which they could feed their starving families.

These people ended up in the many sprawling squatter areas, where people live on land no one else wants; some live in garbage dumps, where they scavenge what they can to resell. People are dehumanized in tin and wood hovels - whole families, compacted together with other poor families.

This is the reality of millions of people in all of the developing countries of the world. Half the world - nearly three billion people - live on less than two dollars a day.

Meanwhile, we in North America take a disproportionate amount of the world's resources for our excessive lifestyles - and hoard what we have, instead of sharing. There is enough food for everyone's need - but not for some people's greed.

There are also undocumented antastic Four 2workers, working in construction, or cleaning office buildings and houses. There are nannies who work long hours and are paid half what others would get paid, because they could find no other way to support their families or themselves.

They were rejected when they applied for immigration, because they did not have enough points; they will never be able to get enough points, in our discriminatory system.

Others were refused when they made refugee claims, and had to go underground to remain in safety. No one should have to live in hiding, being exploited and afraid, just to survive.

These are the experiences of some of the students we walk alongside at Kingcrest, as we try to show them the love of Christ.

Christina Chiu is ESL program director of Kingcrest, in Vancouver.

July 2007