Page - 409 - in VULNERABLE - The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19

409Migrant Health in a Time of Pandemic: Fallacies of Us-Versus-Them these government measures are directed at migrants, they have been primarily aimed at regulating migrants’ admission into the country, as opposed to safeguarding migrants’ health and well-being.4 The suggestion that migrants are “of risk,” despite their being “at risk” in actuality, both reflects and reinforces the “othering” of migrants in receiving societies.5 Through the process of othering, an in-group exploits its privilege to define who belongs and rationalize the status loss of those deemed deviant.6 With regard to migrants, this process is advanced by the narrative of public health threat, which pits them against the native-born: allegedly, their exotic diseases endanger our health. This notion of us-versus-them in turn dulls receiving societies’ sense of responsibility for the protection of migrants and instead steers public health policies toward the protection of society from migrants. In this essay, I set out to problematize the othering of migrants amid Canada’s COVID-19 responses. I begin by offering a counter- narrative to the typical portrayal of migrants as a threat, in which I lay bare migrants’ heightened risk of COVID-19 infection in Canada. Next, I show that irrespective of migrants’ vulnerability, many con- tinue to be excluded from government health care and income sup- port programs in the wake of the pandemic. Even when migrants do qualify for these programs, there remain concerns about accessibility because of the government’s insufficient assurance that service utili- zation will not negatively affect migrants’ ability to stay in the coun- try. Such an insistent divide between citizens and migrants as us and them, I argue, is especially problematic in a time of a pandemic. Not only does it disregard migrants’ belonging in Canadian society, but it also undermines the pursuit of public health. Migrants as a Vulnerable Population Canada has long relied on migrants, including an increasing num- ber of temporary foreign workers, to alleviate its labour shortages.7 4. See e.g. Minimizing  the  Risk  of  Exposure  to  COVID-19  Coronavirus  Disease  in  Canada  Order  (Prohibition  of  Entry  into  Canada), PC 2020-0157. 5. Natalie J Grove and Anthony B Zwi, “Our Health and Theirs: Forced Migration, Othering, and Public Health” (2006) 62 Social Science & Medicine 1931. 6. Ibid at 1933. 7. Alan G Green & David A Green, “The Economic Goals of Canada’s Immigration Policy: Past and Present” (1999) 25:4 Can Public Policy 425; Myer Siemiatycki, “Marginalizing Migrants: Canada’s Rising Reliance on Temporary Foreign Workers” (2010) Can Issues 60.