[antiwar-van] News and Events

[No One is Illegal-Vancouver]

NEWS AND EVENTS

1) Safe Third Country Regulations
2) West Coast Warriors Society Event
3) Sanctuary at St Michaels
4) Immigration Minister's Sanctuary Proposal
5) Immigration Report Masks Truth


The final version of the Canadian safe third country regulations have been
published in Part II of the Canada Gazette.

http://canadagazette.gc.ca/partII/2004/20041103/html/sor217-e.html


================================================


November 11th, West Coast Warriors' Society Presents:
Indigenous Revolution Film Screening/Concert

West Coast Warriors: The Early Years - A Video by Terry Dorward
Musical Performances by:
Aztlan Underground from LA (hip-hop / tribal rock / punk)
Donna's Boy (Aboriginal folk-rock group http://www.powow.com/donnasboy1/main)
Ricanstruction from NY (http://www.ricanstruction.net)
Manik (Aboriginal hip-hop artist)

Doors @ 7, $10
Waldorf Hotel's Grove Pub
1489 E. Hastings

For more information contact db Entertainment: 604.874.4669 or Terry -
westcoastwarriors at hotmail.com / 250.731.4271


===========================================

Sanctuary at St. Michael’s
By SEAN CONDON

ON a wall in St. Michael’s Anglican Church on East Broadway, there is a
collection of Post-it notes with different names and different dates. This
is a pool started by some congregation members on when they think Amir
Kazemian, the Iranian refugee who has been given sanctuary at the church,
will finally be granted release.

Most of the dates are relatively soon, but a few have started to put down
guesses for next year. Considering it was thought Kazemian was only going
to be at the church for a few weeks when he first arrived last June, there
is an unnerving sense that he might be here for a while. But Kazemian says
he’s willing to wait it out because if it weren’t for the sanctuary at St.
Michael’s, he’d be dead.

“Here has changed my life totally,” says Kazemian. “I’ve never received
this kind of kindness in my life. They are my guardian angels. I am in the
danger and my life is in danger. If they send me back, no one can hear
me.”

Despite the pain and worry Kazemian suffers from being locked up in a
small room at the church for four months, there are other sanctuary cases
in Canada now entering their second year. There are now a total of five
cases in Canada. The lack of action by the Canadian government has
prompted churches across Canada to declare October 17-24 as Sanctuary Week
in hope that the government will address these cases and fix Canada’s
broken refugee system.

The debate over church sanctuary was vaulted into the political hot seat
last March when Quebec City police did the unimaginable and pulled an
Algerian man out of church—violating the sanctity of a centuries-old
tradition. In July, Immigration Minister Judy Sgro pushed it one step
further when she said that churches should stop acting as a “back door”
for refugees. But despite the increasing pressure from the government to
give up sanctuary, St. Michael’s isn’t backing down.

“I think religious leaders in the best traditions have always stood
separate from the authorities,” says Rev. Emilie Smith, the junior priest
at St. Michael’s. “I think there are cases where there’s not really an
option. You have to stand with those in danger of death.”

Kazemian’s case exposes the serious flaws within Canada’s refugee system.
He came to Canada in 1997 after being imprisoned and tortured by Iranian
authorities for eight months. His crime was that his father was a member
of a democratic opposition party, who was put in jail and tortured for
seven years. But Kazemian’s refugee claim was denied on the grounds that
the judge didn’t believe him. However, three years later Kazemian’s mother
made a refugee claim, in which Kazemian acted as a witness, and her claim
was accepted on the exact same grounds.

The problem is that Canada does not allow refugee claimants to make an
appeal based on merit. They can only get an appeal if there was a
technical or legal error during the trial. It also doesn’t take into
account the lack of legal resources refugees have or translation problems,
both of which played a big factor in Kazemian’s case.

Smith says when St. Michael’s—which had never offered sanctuary to a
refugee before—learned the circumstances surrounding his case, the
decision was easy. But Kazemian and the four other cases in Canada are the
lucky ones.

“Even though sanctuary is important, those five refugees represent
thousands of refugees that don’t have sanctuary,” says Harsha Walia, a
member of the refugee advocacy group No One Is Illegal. “It’s not enough
to demand sanctuary, but we need a complete overhaul of the refugee
system.”

Canada has become increasingly hostile to refugees since 9/11. It has
initiated a number of repressive laws, including the recent Safe Third
Country agreement with the United States, which will send roughly
one-third of its refugees back to the US. Sgro promised to hold talks with
each of the five churches and make a decision at the end of this month,
but Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan made a similar promise during this
year’s election and no one has heard a thing. In the meantime, Kazemian
will have to try and get comfortable-he may be at St. Michael’s for a
while.


================================================================


Toronto Star

Sgro comes under fire for sanctuary proposal
Immigration minister offers churches a deal on refugee claimants
Critics say it would force religious groups to do department's job

BRUCE CAMPION-SMITH
OTTAWA BUREAU

OTTAWA-Immigration Minister Judy Sgro is in hot water after offering
Canada's church leaders a secret deal to review the cases of refugee
claimants who have sought sanctuary in their buildings.

While publicly shooting down a long-promised refugee appeal process, Sgro
quietly tried to make a side deal with religious leaders to enact a
special process to give these claimants another shot at staying in Canada.

But Sgro said she would review no more than 12 such cases a year, church
officials said.

Opposition MPs yesterday denounced the proposal as "morally offensive" and
accused Sgro of holding the churches "hostage."

Church leaders rejected Sgro's idea, saying she was trying to make them do
the work of the immigration department.

"She said she would not look at our cases unless we agreed to a proposal
that we think frankly is not good for her, for the department or for the
churches," Heather Macdonald, national refugee staff person for the United
Church of Canada, said yesterday.

"It was a proposal where we felt that we would be doing the government's
work. We did not have the capacity or the training or the resources of the
department to become the only avenue of appeal in the country."

But late yesterday, there were signs the proposal was still alive after
Macdonald and other religious leaders met with Sgro, followed by an
hour-long afternoon meeting with immigration officials.

"I think we're on the process now of having fairly productive talks,"
Macdonald said afterwards.

Still, with the prospect of special treatment for refugee claimants who
take shelter in churches, religious leaders fear they would be inundated
with desperate families. "Our congregations can't look after all of them,"
Macdonald said.

About half a dozen individuals, most of them failed refugee claimants, are
being sheltered in churches across the country. There are about 30,000
refugee claimants in the system.

Yesterday, Sgro defended her proposal, which was developed over the fall
during talks with the church representatives. Sgro said she wanted to take
a second look at "exceptional" cases presented by church leaders to ensure
that "no injustices" were occurring.

If the 10-day review produced a favourable decision and the church agreed
to be a sponsor, Sgro said she would grant the refugee permanent resident
status.

"It was to be for those very rare cases that the churches feel compelled
to deal with," Sgro said.

"I worked this idea out with the department. It was a bit of an unusual
move for a minister," she said, denying there would be any cap on how many
cases a year would be reviewed.

And in a signal that church leaders are split on the issue, Archbishop
Andrew Hutchison, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, this week
thanked Sgro for her proposal.

Still word of the offer, under wraps until this week, had Sgro on the
defensive yesterday when she appeared at a Commons immigration committee
meeting.

NDP MP Ed Broadbent (Ottawa Centre) took Sgro to task for suggesting
"morally inappropriate" quotas. "Why not six? Why not 18? Why not 30? How
do we know how many such cases there will be?" he said.

"I'd like the minister to explain the logic and the morality behind this
proposal."

Later, Broadbent said Sgro was trying to silence the churches that have
been outspoken in their demands that Ottawa make good on its promise to
enact an appeal process for refugees.

"The churches are very active, they're very vigorous, they do their
homework. And they bring attention," Broadbent said.

"If she could have reached a settlement with them, she may have well have
concluded that things will settle down. It's a terrible bargain, it's a
terrible imposition to say to the churches you must do my job for me."

Broadbent said Sgro should exercise her authority to review the sanctuary
cases now.

Sgro left no doubt yesterday the appeal process - promised since 2001 -
was dead in the water. "Bringing in ... that particular appeal at this
time would simply add more and more roadblocks," she said.

During the summer, Sgro urged churches to abandon the time-honoured
practice of providing sanctuary to people under the threat of deportation.

In other business at the committee, Liberal MP Colleen Beaumier (Brampton
West) urged the immigration minister to adopt an amnesty for the thousands
of illegal immigrants living and working in the country.  Sgro agreed to
consider the request.  "Those of us who are from the Greater Toronto Area
know of the challenges there and the fact there are a lot of people
working in an underground economy," Sgro said. "I think we have to start
talking about the amount of people in the country who do not have status."

==============================================


Toronto Star
Nov. 8, 2004
Immigration report masks truth

CAROL GOAR

The Canada depicted in Immigration Minister Judy Sgro's annual report to
Parliament does a laudable job of absorbing newcomers, getting them
settled and offering them a better future.

The minister adds a couple of small caveats: It takes too long for
foreign-trained professionals to get their credentials recognized. And
some immigrants need better language training to find work in their field.

But by and large, Sgro says, the system is working well. Canada is meeting
its immigration targets, replenishing its talent pool and protecting
people fleeing war and persecution.

That may be the way things look from Ottawa. On the ground, things look a
bit different.

Six out of every 10 immigrants in Toronto are not doing the work for which
they were trained. It's not merely that they can't get their credentials
recognized. Employers won't hire them without Canadian experience.

Nearly every building contractor in southern Ontario relies on illegal
immigrants. Under Ottawa's tough new eligibility rules, skilled
tradespeople — the kind of workers who built this city — no longer qualify
for admission. The construction industry is begging the minister to
declare an amnesty.

The advanced language courses that already exist are under threat. At the
Dundas Adult Education Centre in Toronto's west end, Anna Opanasyuk and
her classmates are begging the Catholic school board not to cancel their
English-as-a-second language program. The school board says it has no
choice when attendance falls below 15. The students say they're struggling
to balance shift work and classes.

Humanitarian groups that apply to sponsor refugees living in squalid and
often dangerous camps spend an average of 28 months snarled in immigration
paperwork. The process is so discouraging that many lose patience and lose
hope.

Family reunification can take years. According to Gordon Maynard, a
Vancouver lawyer who speaks for the Canadian Bar Association on
immigration issues, it typically takes 35 months to bring in a parent from
South Asia, 27 months from the Far East and 22 months from South America.
The problem is a lack of resources, he says. Many of Canada's 90 visa
offices simply don't have the staff to handle the workload.

Ottawa's refugee determination is cumbersome, expensive and inhumane. Two
years ago, the government promised to put in place a simple appeal process
for rejected refugee claimants. It still hasn't done that, leading some
asylum seekers to hide in churches. The minister wants the churches to
stop sheltering these migrants. The churches refuse, claiming Ottawa has
not
lived up to its commitment to give individuals facing deportation a fair
hearing.

Human trafficking, though no longer in the headlines, continues apace.
According to an internal government document obtained by the Canadian
Press last summer, more than 15,000 people are smuggled into the country
every year by international criminal organizations.

It would be unfair to blame Sgro, who has only been immigration minister
for 11 months, for all these problems.

It was her predecessor, Denis Coderre, who turned an open immigration
system into an elitist one, requiring economic immigrants to have at least
one university degree and fluency in English or French. Thanks to
Coderre's reforms, Canada now has a shortage of skilled tradespeople and a
surfeit of newly-arrived professionals who can't break into highly
regulated job markets.

It was the Mike Harris/Ernie Eves government that failed to reach an
immigration agreement with Ottawa, leaving Queen's Park with no direct
role in the recruitment and selection of immigrants. Ontario is the only
province in the country without such an accord. Sgro and her provincial
counterpart, Marie Bountrogianni, are working to get one in place by next
May.

It was the government of Jean Chrétien that chronically underfunded
immigration, creating backlogs, bottlenecks and adjustment problems for
newcomers.

But Sgro does have to accept responsibility for presenting Parliament with
a 39-page report that hides more than it tells, glosses over serious
issues and pre-empts the kind of debate this country needs.

There is a serious mismatch between the kind of immigrants Canada is
recruiting and the kind of jobs that are open to newcomers. Policy-makers
need to talk about that.

Canada is no longer a nation that welcomes immigrants with manual skills
and a strong work ethic. They have to sneak in as tourists, students or
refugee claimants. The public needs to talk about that.

An immigrant underclass is developing in Canada. A growing proportion of
the poor in cities such as Toronto and Vancouver are newcomers. More
ominously, their children are struggling in school, creating the
conditions for intergenerational poverty. The nation needs to talk about
that.

Sgro intends to improve her department's website and offer newcomers
enhanced language training. That's nice. But Canada's ailing immigration
system needs much stronger medicine.


-- 
To subscribe to our low-traffic email annoucement list, please email
noii-van at resist.ca

No One is Illegal- Vancouver
noii-van at resist.ca
(604)682-3269 x 7149

The No One is Illegal campaign is in full confrontation with Canadian
colonial border policies, denouncing and taking action to combat racial
profiling of immigrants and refugees, detention and deportation policies,
and wage-slave conditions of migrant workers and non-status people.

We struggle for the right for our communities to maintain their
livelihoods and resist war, occupation and displacement, while building
alliances and supporting indigenous sisters and brothers also fighting
theft of land and displacement.