Last Updated on: 27th February 2019, 08:45 am
I feel for people like Emilio Carro. He came to this country looking for a better life. He’s been working hard, trying to do the right things. And now, through what appears to be no fault of his own, he’s left hung out to dry by the system.
Emilio Carro was just days away from finalizing his application to become a permanent Canadian resident when his life suddenly changed.
Carro is one of more than 800 employees of Erwin Hymer Group North America (EHGNA) who were suddenly terminated after the Cambridge RV company filed for receivership on Feb. 15.
Now, after living and working in Canada for more than six years, Carro is worried about his family’s future in the country.
Carro came to Canada from Spain, and has been living Canada on a work permit. He was in the process of applying for permanent residence through the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program as a foreign worker for EHGNA, when the company suddenly closed its doors.
“It seems that automatically everything is like, ‘Okay, the provincial nomination is gone, your work permit is gone,'” he told CBC News.Carro said he is now working with an immigration lawyer in Toronto to find out if the provincial nomination program will grant him a grace period.
In the meantime, he can’t get a new job to support his family because his work permit is tied to EHGNA.Jennifer Roggemann, an immigration lawyer based in Kitchener, said there are two types of permits for temporary workers in Canada.
An open permit allows someone to work for any employer and in any province, while a closed permit is tied to a specific employer, job and location.
When someone with a closed permit loses their job, they can still live in Canada temporarily, but they cannot simply find a new job.
Under the rules he wasn’t quite eligible for one of the open permits, but why are there not protections built into the laws so that we don’t have to tell people like him tough shit? Bankruptcies and plant closures aren’t exactly new concepts. Stopping the clock and assisting these people with finding new work and providing for themselves just feels like common sense.