Our inaugural dialogue, Confronting migrant injustice in the new era of immigration policy, features leading voices in legal advocacy, research and lived experience to examine what recent immigration policy shifts actually mean, who they affect and what a more just immigration system could look like.
While pathways to permanent residency are narrowing, precarity is deepening. Too often in the public sphere migrants are made the scapegoats for policy failures in housing and health care—while their role as essential members of our workforce and our communities is (conveniently) rarely recognized.
This dialogue traces the links between policy decisions and their effects on migrants’ lived realities—and challenges the harmful, racist, narratives that often surround this topic.
Panelists:
Amanda Aziz, Staff Lawyer, Migrant Workers Centre
Byron Cruz, Sanctuary Health Collective, Vancouver
Syed Hussan, Executive Director, Migrant Workers Alliance for Change
Jennifer Shaw, Researcher, Migrant Care Workers Project
Moderated by Véronique Sioufi, Racial Equity Researcher and Policy Analyst, BC Policy Solutions.
Resources
📰 The Tyee profiled Sanctuary Health’s work: https://thetyee.ca/News/2026/05/15/Sanctuary-Health-Care-Migrant-Worker-Rights/
📑 Find published reports from the Migrant Care Workers Project at: https://understandingprecarity.ca/mcwp/
📣 From Syed Hussan during the panel: “Canada is ‘consulting’ on future immigration levels right now. The deadline is June 14. Migrant Rights Network has created a guide to help thousands of people speak up. Click here to take action— it will only take a few minutes: https://migrantrights.ca/levels2026/”
📮 If you’re interested in learning more about the Migrant Workers Centre’s concerns with Bill C-12, see https://mwcbc.ca/open-letter-eby-billc12/
🌐 Statement from the United Nations Special Rapporteur on modern slavery issued after visiting Canada [pdf]: https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/issues/slavery/sr/statements/eom-statement-canada-sr-slavery-2023-09-06.pdf. Summary: https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/09/1140437.
📖 Related report from BC Policy Solutions: “Rebuilding post-secondary education as public infrastructure in BC (or how we fix the predictable failures of marketization)” by Véronique Sioufi