An interesting story about migrant workers has come out of Ontario. Glendon
Sanchez, of Trinidad and Tobago, has been coming to Canada under the Seasonal
Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) for 14 years. A long-time contributor to EI (like all migrant workers),
Sanchez decided to apply for parental benefits in 2009.
(Migrants have been generally ineligible for regular EI benefits
(because they are not available in Canada for work when unemployed) but were
eligible for special benefits such as parental leave because there was no
residency requirement attached to them.)
Then a typical bureaucratic snafu ensured. The Employment Insurance was willing to accept claims dating back as far as 1990 from migrant workers who didn’t
realize they were eligible but the EI Commission turned him down, saying he
waited too long to apply (???). His appeal (along with appeals from 102 other
migrant farm workers) will be heard in federal court today.
The workers stand to win between $3,000 and $8,000, each. But future
workers are ineligible for parental benefits (due to a federal rule change) even
thought these workers must continue to pay EI premiums.
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