Mexico City, Dec 18 (EFE).- A group of Mexican agricultural workers sued President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to pressure the Canadian government to be considered for permanent residency in the North American country .

According to a letter published by the association “Nobody is illegal”, the group of Mexican agricultural workers in Canada asks the Mexican president to take responsibility for the abuses, unfair dismissals, deportations, ill-treatment and, above all, intimidation.

“Because without permanent status in Canada, we have to endure all of the above with the vague hope that we will return next year,” the Mexican workers say in their letter.

According to this group, the letter will be delivered to President López Obrador by Leonel Nava, a temporary worker who ventured into the Christmas tree business in Nova Scotia in Canada.

Among his main demands to President López Obrador is “to ask the Canadian government to grant permanent resident status to all immigrants upon arrival, including seasonal agricultural workers”.

The group explained that the “Program for agricultural workers”, in force since 2020 in Canada, does not give access to migrant workers to apply for permanent residence, so they considered that “essentially, in this program, workers are blocked from integrating into a society for which they produce and work”.

In addition, they demanded to ensure that they have free representation in the negotiation of employment contracts, as well as to guarantee greater job security and an end to the practices of observation by employers. which are not real and which result in the expulsion of workers from the program without the consent possibility of recourse or transfer.

They also asked for an anonymous system to be able to report abusive employers and bad practices in their workplace and access the benefits they are credited with for the payment of deductions and taxes such as: unemployment insurance and insurance -life, parental and tax benefits, the pension, to which every Canadian is entitled.

“Lobbying the Canadian government to change our status and surprise consular visits to farms to see the reality of the precariousness of living in overcrowding and sometimes even plagues, as well as zero interest in health from employers,” they say in the missive.

In this sense, Mexican migrants in Canada asked López Obrador “to be part of history and to be part of the social justice that we deserve and to give us the place that we deserve in Mexico and Canada”.