VANCOUVER—When Joy Ortiz arrived in Canada, she had already been away from her three young daughters for six years, working in Hong Kong as a live-in nanny.

With that experience on her resume, she planned to work in Canada as a nanny until she could apply for permanent residency and bring her kids over. Canada, she hoped, would mean a better life for her children.

Soon after she arrived under the now-defunct live-in-caregiver program, Ortiz found she had to fight to stay here — an ordeal that included her arrest and an ensuing legal battle with her former employer.

Earlier this month, a B.C. court ordered the former employer to pay Ortiz seven months’ wages in severance. The decision means employers of migrant caregivers, who are rarely taken to court, could face legal consequences if they violate employment contracts.

Ortiz hopes it will also inspire other migrant workers to follow in her footsteps.

“I want them to be brave and fight for all your rights as a nanny,” she said in an interview with StarMetro on Tuesday. “Just don’t let them ruin your life.”

Ortiz found a job as a nanny in Canada in late 2014, and arrived in Vancouver under a live-in-caregiver work permit. But when she got here, the employer told her she was no longer needed, which made Ortiz’ work permit invalid.

So, on the advice of a family member, she looked for another job in Canada, even though her permit only allowed her to work for the family she was initially hired by. This led to her being hired as a nanny by Vancouver woman Sandy Shokar, who runs the diamond dealership Diamond Deals.

Their arrangement was “under the table,” since Shokar needed a nanny right away, Ortiz needed a job, and the application for hiring Ortiz, which Shokar submitted, would take months to process.

It was a good job, Ortiz said: Shokar and her husband were kind and “the son, he was really a lovely boy. We get along really good. Even if it was my day off he’d still look for me.”

But before Shokar’s application to hire Ortiz came through, the Canadian government began a crackdown on foreign nationals who were in the country on invalid work permits. That’s when Canada border service agents came to Ortiz’s door and arrested her.

“They looked like police to me,” Ortiz said. “I just didn’t know what to do. I just tried to work for my kids — that’s all. I didn’t do any crime.”

The agents took Ortiz in a black car to an immigration holding centre, where she spent the night.

Three days after the arrest, Shokar took Ortiz’s name off her application to hire a foreign-national nanny. Months later, according to court documents, Shokar told Ortiz: “This isn’t going to work.”

“I thought this is the end of it — I’m going to go back to the Philippines,” Ortiz said. “I can’t fight for it anymore.”

With help from the Migrant Workers’ Centre, a not-for-profit agency that advocates and provides legal support largely for caregivers, Ortiz sued Shokar, claiming she had been fired without cause and was owed severance.

A B.C. court ruled May 2 that Shokar fired Ortiz without cause. Ortiz was awarded seven months’ pay, at a rate of $10.50 per hour.

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It was a rare case that dealt with the question of what employers are obligated to do when they terminate migrant workers employed in their homes.

Bethany Hastie, assistant professor at UBC’s Allard School of Law and an expert in precarious labour, said the decision could set an important precedent.

“There haven’t been many court cases that have determined the validity and scope of what’s enforceable under those contracts,” said Hastie. “It could result in more cases where there have been violations under those contracts coming before the courts.”

Within the decision, Hastie said, the judge helps build a “more nuanced and more contextual understanding of the status of migrant workers and the obligations that employers take up” by hiring them.

Part of that was the judge’s decision that Ortiz was owed severance pay not only on the basis of her without-cause termination, but also because, as a temporary foreign worker, it would take her between three and six months to get a new valid work permit.

Natalie Drolet, executive director and staff lawyer of the Migrant Workers Centre, said the case helps expand the public record of the precarious circumstances arising from work permits attached to single employers.

“Hopefully this case will send a strong message to employers that they have a responsibility to abide by the ... rules,” Drolet said.

Ortiz is ready to move on. She now lives with her husband, who sponsored her to get a Canadian open work permit. She’s hoping to go to nursing school, the discipline she pursued when she was in the Philippines.

More importantly, after 10 years away from them, Ortiz’ three daughters are coming to Canada.

“I’m very very much excited because after 10 years of being away from them this is it,” she said.

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