In January 2025, Amnesty International published a report analysing the structural conditions of Canada’s migration policies that exacerbate “racial subordination” and labour rights violations. It focuses on the human rights impacts of the country’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), which supplies migrant workers to several sectors in the country, including agriculture, food processing, healthcare, and domestic service. The report is based on in-depth interviews with 44 migrant workers from 14 origin countries, in Ontario and Quebec.

The report argues Canada’s TFWP creates discriminatory outcomes for migrant workers that violate the country’s international human rights obligations, particularly due to the use of employer-tied visas, which increases migrant’s dependence on their employers to access several of their rights, including their right to fair working conditions, adequate housing, health and social security. The report argues tied visas “target racialised people from the global south”.

The report argues tied visas put migrants at higher risk of labour rights violations by giving employers power over both the labour conditions and migration status of the workers. Tied visas also form a barrier to accessing remedy by making it difficult for migrant workers to complain due to risk of employer reprisals.

The report emphasises that the TFWP disproportionately impacts racialized migrant workers as it targets “low-skilled” workers from low- and middle-income countries in the global south, who are mostly racialised.

The report goes on to argue that the abuses created by the TFWP are systemic and the programme is inherently discriminatory. It calls for – at a minimum – the abolition of tied-visas and the creation of a new visa programme that enables migrants to change jobs.