A community built largely by domestic caregivers who came alone first
Filipino Toronto
Much of Toronto's large Filipino community traces back to a federal caregiver program that brought Filipina women to Canada as live-in domestic workers, who later sponsored family members once permanent residency became possible.
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Toronto's Filipino community grew substantially from the 1980s onward, significantly shaped by Canada's Live-In Caregiver Program, a federal immigration stream that recruited largely Filipina women to work as live-in nannies and domestic caregivers, with a path to permanent residency after completing a required period of service. Many caregivers arrived alone, working for Toronto-area families for years before qualifying to sponsor their own spouses and children to join them.
A community built through family sponsorship
That caregiver-first migration pattern gave Toronto's Filipino community a distinctive shape, with later arrivals often reuniting with family members who had already spent years establishing themselves in the city. The community grew into one of Toronto's larger immigrant groups, with concentrations particularly in Scarborough and North York, building churches, community organizations and businesses that reflect both the caregiver-program roots of much of the community's original migration and the broader wave of Filipino immigration to Canada that followed.
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