[WA-News] Unite and heighten our grassroots resistance against Racism

[Jennifer Radloff]

From: Philippine Women Centre <pwc at attcanada.ca>

Unite and heighten our grassroots resistance against Racism
1 September 2001

As overseas Filipino workers, women and youth in Canada, we stand in firm
solidarity with the marginalized and majority of the people in calling on
the Canadian government to correct its racist history and present reality
and show its genuine commitment to eradicate racism.

The Canadian government's cowardly cop out from the United Nations World
Conference Against Racism by retreating its Foreign Affairs Minister John
Manley is a slap in the face to the hundreds of thousands of Filipinos
living and working here in Canada whose daily lives are impacted by racism.
We are outraged that Canada continues to promote itself as the champion of
human rights and the bastion of multiculturalism around the world, while it
pays only token lip service to those of us whose severe underdevelopment and
segregation in Canada is destroying our community.

By backing down on the issue of reparations for Third World countries and on
the apartheid policies of Israel, the Canadian government exposes its weak
political will and feeble stand to genuinely eliminate racism. Reparations
for histories of colonization that have devastated the Third World and
Aboriginal people worldwide would be a step towards correcting racism. The
U.S. imperialist-backed military occupation of Israel should also be
scrutinized and opposed by the international community for the havoc and
violence it is wreaking on the Palestinian people.

U.S. imperialism also lies at the roots of the Filipino people's
exploitation and oppression. With the intensifying economic and political
crisis, the Philippines as a neo-colony of the U.S. remains agriculturally
backward and with no basic industries. Eighty-percent of the people live in
grinding poverty and 50% are chronically unemployed. It is in this context
of dire poverty, that millions of Filipinos are being forced to live and
work abroad. At the active engagement of the Philippine government through
its Labour Export Program, Filipinos are being exported abroad. In this era
of imperialist globalization that thrives off of the cheap and mobile labour
of the Third World, there are over 8 million Filipinos who live and work in
186 countries.

The Filipino community's growing presence in Canada is part of this massive
out-migration. But as more Filipinos migrate to Canada, the community
becomes the target of harsh personal and systemic racism with increasing
intensity keeping us highly-segregated as a pool of cheap labour in Canada.
The racist and anti-woman Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP) of the Canadian
government is a prime example of how racism is used to force our
underdevelopment in Canada. Over the last decade, the LCP has been actively
importing highly-educated and skilled Filipino women to work and live in the
homes of affluent Canadian families under only precarious temporary status.
The LCP, which saves the government from having to institute a national
daycare program, was implemented because no Canadian would take a 24 hour
live-in position in a highly exploitative and oppressive working environment
where they must cook, clean, and care for the children, elderly, and people
with disabilities of middle and upper class Canadian families.

The Canadian government defends this racist and anti-woman LCP as an
'opportunity' for our women to have the 'good fortune' of coming to Canada
with the chance of becoming a landed immigrant. But this good fortune is a
false illusion because we are forced to be modern-day slaves. Even after
our women finish the exploitative and oppressive requirements of the LCP, we
continue to work in low-paying, part-time service sector work that resembles
domestic work because of years of de-skilling and underdevelopment. We are
a community legislated into poverty.

We only need to look at the concrete example of the thousands of Filipino
nurses in Canada who are not practicing as nurses but are stalled in their
personal and professional development. As Canada feverishly pursues the
privatization of its social services, despite the severe nursing shortage,
Filipino nurses brought through the LCP are filling in the cheap labour
needs of the private sector as cheap 24-hour live-in domestic, home care
support workers, and nurses aides.

This severe marginalization of our community runs deep, impacting our youth.
Filipino youth are constantly and systematically being targeted for racist
attacks, beaten up, and verbally abused. We are then criminalized by the
police and blamed by the school administrations who use the lame excuse that
we are becoming more 'visible' in Canadian society. Filipino youth's
demands for safety measures are ignored by institutions like the Vancouver
School Board who claim that "racism does not exist in Vancouver high
schools!" This effectively ignores our highly marginalized situation as
immigrants and children of migrant workers. Racism ensures that our next
generation is kept as a highly-segregated pool of cheap labour for Canada to
exploit.

The racism we experience is deeply rooted in the history and institutions of
Canada. We remain firm in our resolve to resist racism. We also call on
all progressive organizations and individuals to unite in the struggle to
eradicate racism. We call on the Canadian government to prove its
commitment to end racism, take concrete steps to correct its racist history
by actively bringing out and acting on the demands of those most affected by
racism at the UN World Conference Against Racism.

As Filipinos in Canada, we vow to heighten our struggle against racism and
to fully and vigorously fight for the genuine equality, development, and a
just and lasting peace for all Filipinos!

Scrap the racist and anti-woman Live-in Caregiver Program!
End the US-Israeli occupation of Palestine!
End the root causes of racism!
Down with U.S. imperialism!
Long live international solidarity!


Statement of
B.C. Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines
Filipino Nurses Support Group
Filipino-Canadians Against Racism
Philippine Women Centre of B.C.
SIKLAB (Overseas Filipino migrant workers organization in B.C.)
Ugnayan ng Kabataang Pilipino sa Canada-Vancouver/Filipino-Canadian Youth
Alliance
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Celebrating a Decade of Struggle
Philippine Women Centre of B.C.
ph/fax: (604) 215-1103
Check us out at: pwc.bc.tripod.com/
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