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Access to Health Care for Precarious and Non-Status Migrants During COVID-19: Ontario and Québec
Abstract
The COVID-19 crisis has tested principles of universal health-care like never before. Even in nations with publicly-insured healthcare, access is formally and practically conditional on citizenship and immigration status. The COVID-19 crisis has prompted a small set of national and sub-national governments to temporarily waive citizenship-based restrictions, either through changes directly to health care policies, or laterally through the issuance of temporary designated status for non-status and precarious status migrants. This paper examines changes to health care policies in the provinces of Ontario and Québec, which effectively bypass tightening immigration policies at the federal level. It focuses on barriers to implementation, which include lack of clarity in provincial policy, inconsistent practices on the front-line, collateral effects of exclusion from social assistance, and the sharing of health information with border officials.
In February 2017, the city of Montreal adopted a policy entitled Access to Municipal Services Without Fear with a view to allowing non-status migrants to access some municipal programs and services without fear of being arrested and removed from Canada. This article offers a critical analysis of the city of Montreal’s policy. We discuss the main barriers to implementation, namely, the limited jurisdictional power and authority of the city in migration matters and the municipal police’s refusal to comply with the policy. We draw on the conceptual framework of the sanctuary city to argue that the municipality crafted creative solutions to barriers as part of its bid to make the city more inclusive.
This open access book discusses the socio-political context of the COVID-19 crisis and questions the management of the pandemic emergency with special reference to how this affected the governance of migration and asylum. The book offers critical insights on the impact of the pandemic on migrant workers in different world regions including North America, Europe and Asia.
The book addresses several categories of migrants including medical staff, farm labourers, construction workers, care and domestic workers and international students. It looks at border closures for non-citizens, disruption for temporary migrants as well as at special arrangements made for essential (migrant) workers such as doctors or nurses as well as farmworkers, ‘shipped’ to destination with special flights to make sure emergency wards are staffed, and harvests are picked up and the food processing chain continues to function.
The book illustrates how the pandemic forces us to rethink notions like membership, citizenship, belonging, but also solidarity, human rights, community, essential services or ‘essential’ workers alongside an intersectional perspective including ethnicity, gender and race.
In Canada, urban centres have been especially hit by the Covid-19 pandemic and this public health crisis has generated particular risks for non-status and precarious migrants. Using official data and published research, this chapter explores how city sanctuary policies in Canada have addressed these pandemic risks and, more broadly, the future for Canadian sanctuary policies in the post-Covid-19 recovery. We highlight the specificities of sanctuary policies in the Canadian context and document that while cities have not rescinded these interventions during the pandemic, they also have not built on them when developing COVID-19 responses for urban residents. We propose that this demonstrates the need to maintain pressure for reforms that increase the resources and capacities of cities in Canada so that they can be in a better position to implement and institutionalise policies for non-status and precarious migrants.
Cities across the world are contending with the human rights and policy consequences of exclusionary national and international migration regimes. Those in federal states have distinctive opportunities to create safe and inclusive (sub-)urban environments and to provide access to sub-national social services, like health, housing, and social assistance. But doing so risks provoking hostile reactions from national governments that can carry serious political and fiscal consequences. This is certainly true of cities in the United States, but it has not been true of Canada whose short history of sanctuary is defined by a desire on the part of levels of government to avoid overt jurisdictional conflict. Not once has the federal government taken an official stance on the legality of sanctuary city policies, while Mayors and City councils have avoided provocative policies that might jeopardize local integration and settlement initiatives. This strategy serves governments, but it does not serve the interests of non-status migrants, who require local public institutions to defend robust policies of inclusion.
Drawing on empirical research on Toronto, Canada, this chapter reflects on the practical and political failings of Canada's cautious (if not conciliatory) sanctuary policies. Set in the context of struggles for control over data, legal space, and political identity, Toronto’s experience with sanctuary has been defined by the absence of political stewardship in the face of novel questions of authority of citizenship, belonging, and rights.
Peru and especially the capital, Lima, is one of the principal destinations for Venezuelan migrants. This migratory phenomenon has made this urban space more diverse, dynamic, and complex, in a context in which Lima often operated as a place of exclusion for different groups. At the same time that the Venezuelan population arrived in Peru, a national migration policy began to emerge that sought to respond to immigration from a human rights perspective. This policy underwent numerous changes and setbacks in a very short time. Although the asylum legislation provides guarantees, few Venezuelan are recognized as refugees and there have been a series of restrictions on the right to asylum over the last year. Without a comprehensive urban policy that includes the migrant population, municipal authorities have reacted to these new migration patterns in various and sometimes contradictory ways. This chapter aims to analyze these local policies with respect to the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion of the migrant population in the city of Lima through the lens of national migration and asylum policies.
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