Migrante Canada May Day Statement

May 1, 2025

May Day Statement 2025 | Migrante Canada

On this International Workers’ Day, Migrante Canada joins hands with workers across the globe to raise our collective voice against exploitation, racism, and precarity. May Day is a time not only to celebrate workers’ resistance but to renew our commitment to the struggle for genuine economic and political liberation -- for all workers everywhere.

Today, we stand in militant solidarity with the millions of Filipino migrant workers around the world, and especially here in Canada, who continue to face systemic discrimination, economic exploitation, and political marginalization. We are the hands that feed, care, build, and clean -- yet we are treated as disposable.

We do not migrate simply by choice -- we are forced to leave.

Migration is not a privilege. It is a survival strategy. Millions of Filipinos have left home not out of desire, but out of desperation to flee poverty, joblessness, landlessness, and displacement. These are not accidents of geography, these  are the direct results of imperialist domination, neoliberal economic policies, and the failure of the Philippine state to provide decent livelihoods. The Philippines’ labour export policy systematically pushes workers abroad to help prop up an economy dependent on remittances, rather than investing in land reform, national industries, and national sovereignty.

Migrante Canada, with it’s 14-member organizations all across Canada, stands in unwavering solidarity with the Filipino workers and labour unions across the Philippines in their just and legitimate demand for the P1,200 National Minimum Wage. This demand reflects the P1,200 Family Living Wage that a family of five requires to live decently and meet their daily basic needs.

We also stand with them as they continue to demand the protection of their rights as workers to unionize, organize, do collective bargaining, and strike, when needed.

We also stand with them as they continue to demand the protection of their rights as workers to unionize, organize, do collective bargaining, and strike, when needed.We call out this migration for what it is: forced migration driven by global systems of exploitation that benefit countries like Canada. Canada exploits migrant labour yet  refuses to grant migrant workers equal rights. From the Temporary Foreign Worker Program to the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program and the Caregiver Program, migrants are locked into a system of tied permits, temporary status, and exclusion.

This May Day, we call not just for “Status for All” but also for the recognition of our rightful place in society: status as workers with full and  equal rights to work, organize, and live in dignity.

We reject the framing of migrants as merely “temporary” or “guest” laborers. We are workers, not commodities. We demand:

• Status as workers with equal rights—not contingent, not conditional, but permanent and protected.

• An end to employer-specific and occupation-restricted work permits—no more modern-day indentureship.

• Status as workers with equal rights—not contingent, not conditional, but permanent and protected.

• An end to employer-specific and occupation-restricted work permits—no more modern-day indentureship.

• Full recognition and support for worker-led organizing, including for undocumented, racialized, and precarious workers.

• A migration and labour system that does not separate families, suppress voices, or commodify care.

As inflation, housing crises, and wage stagnation grip Canada, it is the most marginalized workers -- migrants, racialized laborers, and those in temp or gig work -- who bear the greatest burden. These conditions are not isolated; they are connected to the same global capitalist system that uproots people from their homelands.

To truly achieve justice, we must fight both here and at home. We must address the root causes of forced migration -- imperialism, militarization, and state abandonment -- and build a future where migration no longer is a necessity for survival.

Migrante Canada reaffirms its commitment to building solidarity across communities, from migrant farmworkers to care workers to Indigenous land defenders, climate justice activists, and organized labour. The struggle for workers’ rights is inseparable from the fight against colonialism, racism, patriarchy, and global capitalism.

On this  May Day, we declare:

We are not temporary. We are not invisible.

We are workers. We are organizers.

We are part of the working class, and we demand justice.

Makibaka, huwag matakot!

Mabuhay ang manggagawang migrante!

Mabuhay ang uring manggagawa!

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For reference:

Chris Sorio, Secretary General, Migrante Canada

migrantecanada@gmail.com