Domestic deportation

>> Pregnant nanny battles the boot

By GEORGE MADDUX and FRANK HAYES

Can a woman be deported for getting pregnant? Immigration Canada has ordered Filipino nanny Melca Salvadore to pack her feather duster after she informed her employers that she was expecting a child.

"I know another domestic who was encouraged by her employers to get an abortion, they even found the doctor to do it," she says. "I

didn't want to do that." Fired for good cause or not, agencies and consulates inevitably advise dumped domestics to comply with deportation decrees. But Salvadore appealed. Five years and $4,500 in legal bills later, Salvadore--who's since become president of the Filipino Women's Organization of Quebec and mother of a Canadian-born son--has again been ordered out.

The outrageous expulsion order proves that the live-in caregiver program is rotten, says Marie Boti, a documentary filmmaker who has organized a committee in Salvadore's defence. "The program brings in Third World women to be modern slaves in private homes," Boti says. "In reality, these women work 70 to 80 hours a week and have no security. They can be fired on a whim at any time." The domestics, who are paid $271 for 49 hours of work, need more rights, she adds. "They're not free to change jobs or be normal human beings or workers here. The program de-skills them. Many of these women have useful skills but they're forced into subservience."

Salvadore's Mount-Pinatubo-like personality hasn't made for a malleable maid. "She doesn't take shit. When they try to push her around, she says, 'Excuse me, you can't treat me like that,'" says her lawyer, Bill Sloan. "They [employers] consider her an uppity nigger."

Sloan's attempt to beat Salvadore's deportation order has been boosted by a 1998 Supreme Court decision that overturned orders to deport Mavis Baker, a Jamaican who gave birth to four children in Canada. The Baker ruling apparently supports Salvadore's cause, as courts now recognize that Canadian-born children of uncertified immigrants have an interest in their parents' situation.

The lawyer points out that other immigrants with needed skills can seek work as they please, whereas the domestic program forces workers to stick with an employer. Sloan says he knows of cases where employers have physically abused, raped and even robbed their maids. "The system forces the domestics to eat dirt for two years in hopes of getting into the country."

Until her case is decided, Salvadore cannot work or even re-enter the domestic program. The Labour Board refuses to hear her case for wrongful dismissal and her son has been denied Medicare, even though he's a Canadian citizen. And Salvadore says there are others as badly off. "Another domestic I know fulfilled her obligations under the program but was denied immigrant status when it was discovered she had developed breast cancer," she says. "The [live-in caregiver] program is systemic racism and I want to help all domestics by getting it scrapped."

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