XINHUA

Some 600 Mexican day laborers are set to travel to Canada this week for seasonal work on farms as part of a cooperation agreement between the two countries, Mexico’s Labor Secretariat said.

The Temporary Agricultural Workers Program “is a model of bilateral cooperation for maintaining a circular, legal, orderly and safe migratory flow of laborers,” the Labor Secretariat said in a media statement.

Under the program, laborers live and work in different parts of Canada for periods of four to eight months.

Program officials help place them, arranging both travel and work permits.

In 2019, a total of 26,399 job contracts were provided by some 2,000 Canadian businesses, the press release said.

“Nearly 80 percent of the agricultural workers sent … have been requested by their (Canadian) employers on more than one occasion, and are, on average, hired for 6.2 months,” it said.

Workers earn an average of 13.6 Canadian dollars (about $10.5) per hour.