As countries around the world consider giving immigration status to some migrants as 'reward' for their 'service' during #COVID19 - it is crucial to interrogate rights to citizenship status as a privilege or a gift.

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For most people, citizenship status (or landed status or stable status) is not about staying in a country. These programs are for migrants already living and working here rather it is about access to services conferred by citizenship. Crucially..

healthcare, education, labour protections, family unity are commonly understood as RIGHTS and not a gift that can be denied to some or only granted to those that have excelled. Many go to great lengths to either insist that migrants have the same rights as others, or to...

Insist that basic and essential rights are only rights for those that pay for it, i.e. tax payers. We must take these in turn. (1) Denial of permanent status primarily results in forcing migrants into jobs where can be exploited more (migrants have fewer rights) and..

(2) Basic services are human rights regardless of ability to pay taxes. For eg, labour protections, equal wages, etc are not tied to taxes. Taxation is a mechanism to fund and distribute services that are rights +more, not a 'fee' for services.

In Canada, some healthcare workers who applied for refugee status now have a quicker path to apply for full status as 'acknowledgement of their service'. But drivers, cleaners, security guards are excluded. It's a gesture of symbolic generosity rather than systemic change...

.. keeping in place the system of exploitation where 1.6 million people (1 in 23 people in the country!) don't have full status and are exploited for their labour, and excluded from services. This isn't a 'step in the right direction' but a deeply nefarious one ..

.. with long term consequences. Rights, one of the few protections for individuals in liberal capitalism, are being transformed into gifts. And we accept this idea at our collective peril.