Women are extremely vulnerable, U of T study reveals

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Childbirth, celebrated as a great moment for most, can bring disaster to women with no legal status in Canada, academics told a Rosedale press conference this week.

A study by the University of Toronto's Centre for Urban and Community Studies shows women without status are "extremely vulnerable" to having their lives thrown into crisis by pregnancy and childbirth, which drives many into shelters with their babies and young children.

Other research for the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education shows such women face a shocking threat of abuse. Of 155 surveyed by social worker Soheila Pashang, 140 reported sexual abuse, most often by employers or landlords.

Of these, 15 were raped and 10 got a sexually transmitted disease, but Pashang said the women did not report the crimes to police or seek out health care because they weren't legal residents.

Nicole, one of the 91 women in the U of T study, came to Canada as a visitor from a Caribbean country and stayed. She became pregnant and involved in an abusive relationship, she said Thursday, July 24, at the Toronto YMCA on Woodlawn Avenue.

She finally left her partner but repeated the pattern with another man. Injured at work, she left her under-the-table job and soon could not afford her basement apartment.

Though Nicole was a high-school graduate, her lack of status left her no alternatives, she recalled.

"I couldn't work, I couldn't go to school. I couldn't do anything."

Seven-months pregnant, she took her daughter to a shelter, where she fought through depression and decided to "regularize" her status.

But getting her work permit took three years. Outside the shelter and paying rent, Nicole went through jobs but couldn't make ends meet. "There were many times when I went hungry."

Employers learning of her non-status "looked down their noses at me," recalled Nicole, now a community college student.

"It's not that we're here to leech off the system. (Canada) is promoted as a country of opportunity. I just want to come here and get a chance like everyone else," she said.

Centre director, Prof. David Hulchanski, said U of T researchers interviewed 91 women in Toronto family shelters, including the Red Door in East York, following up with 57 through a full one-year period.

About half the women were born in Canada.

Though there was "no happy ending" for most, women seeking refugee status or those with no status at all were particularly vulnerable, Hulchanski said. "They're in the deepest poverty, they have the worst housing instability."

The study, Better Off in a Shelter?, noted women without status "are required to try to regularize their status" once they go to a shelter.

But the study says not many can qualify as refugees or to stay in Canada on compassionate grounds. "Some are deported, while others wait years and spend substantial sums" in fees before they and their families can live stable lives, the study said.

YWCA Toronto officials say despite the requirement, the organization has a "don't ask, don't tell" policy on status.

The YWCA will help women start the process if they want but it does not want to act as an arm of the federal government, said Amanda Dale, communications and advocacy director, arguing no woman should face deportation because she wants to get out of a violent situation.

"We don't want to be in the position of reporting women."

Joan White, the organization's housing and shelter director, said the YWCA sees vulnerable women without status all the time but added that sometimes sponsorship "is held over their heads" by an abusive partner and documents are taken from them.

The 77 YWCA units on Pape Avenue are rent-geared-to-income apartments with a long waiting list, she said. "We consistently have to turn women away."

No informed government estimate exists of people in Canada without status but some 40,000 face deportation, said Pashang, who represents a group called the Rights of Non-Status Women Network and is doing her doctoral disertation on non-status women in Toronto.

"There's no easy answers here," warned Bernitta Hawkins, executive director of Red Door, which runs one of the largest family shelters in Toronto and one exclusively for women fleeing violence.

She said she hoped to use the U of T report to improve services and join in advocacy for families without status.

People without status or recently-arrived immigrants do not have health insurance in Ontario, but can get medical help through community health centres in their area.