Nellie on the Importance of Supporting Migrants through Anti-Racism Action

Note: Interview has been shortened for brevity and clarity. 

We sat down with Nellie Alcaraz, a social work and social justice advocate to discuss the importance of supporting migrants through anti-racism action. 

Lionel: Tell me about yourself and how you got involved in this type of work? 

Nellie: I am a social worker by trade and I was an activist in the Philippines. Then I came to Canada and became involved with migrant workers. 

Migrant work involves anti-racism work. Migrant workers are overwhelmingly still in the low paid low wage sectors and segregated in that occupation. And it's not just when they come to Canada, it's throughout their lives even in the second generation. The City of Calgary released a report in 2009, about inequality in Calgary and racialization of poverty, providing the facts that racialized people are overrepresented in the poverty scale. The overwhelming majority of people who are suffering from poverty are Black, racialized and Indigenous people. 

Of course, the temporary foreign worker program, which as I mentioned during the anti-racism consultation with the council is slavery, it's modern-day slavery. It is indentured labour. And the first slaves that went to America were indentured workers. They were not even called slaves. And the temporary foreign worker program is indentured labour and even the government acknowledged that. So, it is modern-day slavery. 

Lionel: What is one word to describe your hopes for tomorrow?

Nellie: Children. It’s important in any decision in any action or inaction to think about the future generation. I think they deserve a better place in a better world. They deserve a better community and dignity. Every migrant person did this for their children - I didn’t come to Canada for myself but my future. Every social justice advocate is doing this for their kids especially for People of Colour, Indigenous and Black people they don’t want their children to inherit this society. That’s why I am in this field.

Lionel: Are there any resources you would recommend? 

Nellie: For migrants’ advocates there is a website Migrante Alberta and the Migrant Workers Resource Center as well.