A Brazilian man says he was cheated to work illegally in Winnipeg based on the promise that he would eventually get a work permit.
Ighor Santos, 27, says he was ordered to leave the country after blowing the whistle about the man who already recruited him other foreigners for construction work in the neighborhood of Leila North of the city.
Santos said he came to Canada in March 2023 and worked on the site for almost five months. He and his family communicated for the first time with the authorities later that year.
On May 31, 2024, he went to the border crossing in Emerson, Man., To request a valid work permit through another company.
Santos said he provided information to the officials of the Canada Border Services Agency that indicated that he had been convinced to work illegally, but after an interview that continued for several hours, a border agent told him that he had to leave the country because he had violated the law.
“I was, of course, sad because I tried [do] The right thing … prevent this from happening to me, because none of this was my intention, “Santos said in an interview by São Paulo.
I wasn’t satisfied, he said, “because at the end of the day, wrong people are still there.”
Gurwinder Singh Ahluwalia, 43, De Winnipeg declared himself guilty of an unauthorized job charge of foreign citizens in the contravention of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Law as part of a guilt that prevented additional charges from being presented against him last week.
He admitted during an Audience of the Provincial Court on April 2 that hired foreign citizens to work on the development of Templeton Heights in the Leila North area, which he administered as a general contractor for a construction company for a period of two years from 2022.
The court heard that at least 14 foreign citizens were illegally employed on the site.
Ahluwalia, who had been living in Canada since she moved from India in 2010 and became a Canadian citizen in 2019, was sentenced to 20 months of house arrest and was ordered to pay a fine of $ 50,000, as recommended in the guilt agreement. The maximum prison sentence for the crime is two years.
‘Come today, because we need people’
The Canada Border Services Agency said in a press release on Tuesday that the investigation began in August 2023, after the agency received information about employment and abuse of unauthorized workers. The search warrants of the Ahluwalia house, the truck, the construction site and an immigration consulting firm were granted in May 2024.
Last week, the court heard that a Brazilian citizen had presented the agents of the Border Services of Canada with evidence that Ahluwalia had advised him to go to Canada under a visitor visa and work illegally, after having asked about opportunities in the country.
Santos said he was the worker who contacted border services. He said he was in his last year of school in Ireland when he contacted Ahluwalia, after a relative told him that Ahluwalia was looking for workers.
Santos said he liked the idea of coming to Winnipeg, a place where he had a family and had visited years before to study English.
“I said … could you wait, how, for me to make my endings?” Santos said. “He was like, ‘no, we need people right now … if you [have a visitor visa]They only see today, because we need people ‘”.
Santos said he came to Canada with the expectation that he would not work until he obtained a work permit through an impact assessment of the labor market. However, when Santos arrived with a friend who also wanted to work in Canada, Ahluwalia made it clear that they wanted them to start working immediately.
Santos said Ahluwalia told him that he would only have to wait two weeks for his permission. He said that every time he complained, Ahluwalia invented excuses why he still had no permits.
“I wasn’t really talking to [the other workers] On this, you know, because from my point, I thought everyone had their own documents, “he said.
He only discovered that others were in the same situation “when he saw something worse and worse every week,” he said, referring to how workers were treated.
‘I left everything behind’
The prosecutor of the crown, Matthew Sinclair, said during the hearing last week that many of the people who work on the site did not know the Canadian laws that would protect them, which made them vulnerable to exploitation.
The workers endured bad conditions, obtained low wages or lost payments, and lacked health and safety protections in the workplace granted to those who work legally, said the prosecutor.
Santos said that Ahluwalia had offered $ 32 per hour while she was still in Ireland, but the promised wages continued to fall until she received her first payment, when she received $ 15 per hour for her work.
Ahluwalia uploaded her salaries up to $ 18 per hour after she complained, Santos said. At first they paid him in cash, but later he received electronic transfers.
The Brazilian man said that payments arrived regularly and foreign workers, from Mexico and Brazil, were often asked to work at overtime and were subject to verbal abuse.
Santos said he worked nine to 10 am a day, mostly lifting heavy objects. He said he did not get protective equipment as gloves until he asked. The money for gloves was taken from his salary, Santos said.
“I knew it was illegal. I didn’t feel comfortable, but again, I left everything behind,” he said. “I left my university, I left my life and everything. And I had the promised money.”
Canada’s border services said in a statement on Wednesday that it cannot comment on the details of the elimination of saints, because the details of the individual cases are protected by the Privacy Law.
Any person looking for the entrance to Canada “must appear to the CBSA and can be subject to a deeper exam,” said the agency.
Its admissibility “Case decides on a case case and is based on the information available at the time of the entrance,” he said.
Hiring the workers was “the only option,” said the court
The prosecutor of the Crown Sinclair told court workers on the site delayed medical treatments for labor injuries for fear of lost work, and some of the people who worked legitimately were also poorly paid.
Marty Minuk, a lawyer from Ahluwalia, said the construction company that supervised the Templeton Heights project had run out of people to work on the project, and Ahluwalia was at risk of breaching an organized loan to build the project because work was not happening on the site.
“My whole family invested in the project,” said Ahluwalia in the Court. “Around 50 families would have bankrupt … This was the only option.”
The workers “enjoy all the benefits,” he said. “They are paid. They get money for accommodation, and here we are.”
The judge of the Provincial Court, Rachel Rusen, told Ahluwalia that part of the statement was that he accepted responsibility and expressed regret for committing a crime.
“These are vulnerable people, sir,” he said. “They come here without protections, they have no resource, they are certainly afraid of reprisals for things that can go wrong.”
Santos said “nobody enjoyed” working illegally on the site.
“Winnipeg was in my heart because that was where I learned English, where I meet friends,” he said.
“I just returned there to try to … live the same memories [through] People I thought I could trust. “
Canada’s border services said in an email on Friday that no other person faces charges at this time.
