[antiwar-van] NOII statement- Press Conference Friday April 22

[No One is Illegal-Vancouver]

Immigrant Groups Respond to Citizenship Immigration Minister Volpe's
Policy Announcements

Community Press Conference

With Association of Chinese Canadians for Equality and Solidarity Society,
Vancouver Status of Women, No One Is Illegal, Iranian Federation of
Refugees, Kalayaan Centre (Philippine Women Centre), South Asian Network
for Secularism and Democracy, Rainbow Refugee Committe, and independent
trafficking advocates.

Friday, April 22nd, 2005 at 12:15 PM at Vancouver Public Library

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

STATEMENT ON BEHALF OF NO ONE IS ILLEGAL VANCOUVER
April 22, 2005


Joe Volpe stated in a press release dated April 18, 2005 “Canada’s
immigration system is a model for the world.” We sincerely hope that
Canada’s immigration system, which is a self-declared fortress against
newcomers, does not become a model for the world.

Reducing application times, exemptions for the language requirements for
the citizenship test, and issuance of visitor visas, as per Joe Volpe’s
recent policy announcements, are band-aid solutions that do not begin to
scratch the surface of systemic problems with the immigration and refugee
system in Canada. Furthermore, all of the changes introduced by the
Minister address the economic needs of the government and the country. 
The $550 application-processing fee is considered to be a major source of
profits for the federal government. The Minister needs to prioritize human
rights ahead of his quest for profits. Even more disturbing is that the
Minister appears to view the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as an
obstacle for his immigration agenda.  As Minister Volpe stated in a recent
Globe and Mail interview, “The Charter of Rights gives certain rights to
everyone that sets foot in this country, and we have to deal with this.”

In recent weeks and months, the government and media have portrayed the
refugee system as one plagued by abusers. The prevalent discourse behind
this is one that re-articulates the war on migrants and aims to lay blame
for a deeply flawed system on its own victims. Borders and nation-states
are historically specific social systems that shape distinctive cultures
and identities. There are those who are Canadian and those who eternally
remain as hyphenated citizens- Indo-Canadian, Chinese-Canadian, just never
quite Canadian enough. With the events of 9/11, the identities of
Canadians versus those of the terrorists are being further re-defined and
there is the increasing public perception that migrants are terrorists or
criminals whose ability to remain in Canada must be curbed.

Such calls for “border control” create more vulnerability, abuse and
terror in the lives of those who are already the world’s most vulnerable,
most abused and most terrorized people. Today, an estimated 150 million
people are in migration. Increased migratory pressure over the decades
owes more to the dynamism of international capitalism rather than to the
growing size of the population of Third World countries. Those colonial
forces are the same forces that have caused and continue to perpetuate
genocide and dispossession of indigenous peoples within the colonial
territories of North America. The very conditions that spawn migration
into the countries of the North—war, poverty, unemployment, destruction of
the rural economy, dispossesion—are fueled by G-8 policies on free trade
and western-style "development"; the same G-8 nations then refuse any
semblance of life and dignity to those migrants who can get to the
territories of the North.

What follows is not merely a laundry list of grievances; these are real
and systemic issues that affect the lives of thousands of people. Every
day, thousands of migrants and their families struggle against the
uncertainties and fear created by the current processes and policies of
Immigration Canada. Nonstatus and other migrants are forced underground
and rendered highly vulnerable and exploitable; threatened with detention
or with deportation; and subjected to discriminatory legal standards. The
system creates a vulnerable community of non-citizens, which all
industrialised states use as temporary, cheap, and hyper-exploitable
labour. This apartheid system of assigning criminal status to "illegals"
means that they are treated as a flexible pool of workers without rights
of settlement or political enfranchisement.

The racist scapegoating and criminalization of migrants has also meant an
attack on basic civil liberties. Canada’s Secret Trial Five are five
Muslim men whose lives have been torn apart by accusations that they are
not allowed to fight in a fair and independent trial. All five men were
arrested under "Security Certificates," that have been described by
Amnesty International as "fundamentally flawed and unfair". They are
imprisoned indefinitely without charges on secret evidence and face
deportation to their countries of origin, even if there is a substantial
risk of torture or death. The shameful history of Japanese-Canadians being
interned and deported from Canada during World War II and the "red scare"
of the McCarthy era should stand as warnings to us.

The governments covert and overt endorsement of racial profiling in the
9/11 climate is further demonstrated through policies such as the creation
of the Canada Border Services Agency that handles enforcement of removals
and reports to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness.
Having refugee claimants processed by an enforcement agency sends the
racist message that refugee claimants are a threat to public safety.
Operation Thread has been a clear example of gross human rights violations
resulting from Canadian immigration policy.  In August 2003, newspapers
reported the arrest and detention of 22 Pakistani and 1 Indian student as
suspected terrorists.  The incriminating evidence at the time was as
simple as young men living together in sparsely furnished apartments,
something that is common among college students.  The RCMP and immigration
eventually backed away from all of the allegation but the detainees were
already publicly labeled as terrorist and most have since been deported.

In a similar vein, Muslims in Canada this week expressed their
disappointment and outrage upon hearing that Canada voted against an
important United Nations resolution which seeks to protect the rights of
Muslims and stem the tide of Islamaphobia in the world. The UN resolution
expressed concerns regarding "the intensification of the campaign of
defamation of religions, and the ethnic and religious profiling of Muslim
minorities, in the aftermath of the tragic events of 11 September 2001 and
expressed deep concern that Islam was frequently and wrongly associated
with human rights violations and terrorism." Canada was one of 16
countries that voted against this important resolution, giving the
impression that it actually supports or condones racism and intolerance.
Canada's NO vote is a sad testimony on the Government of Canada and we
call on the Canadian Government to reverse its decision.

The announcement by Mr. Volpe provides no assistance to the tens of
thousands of migrant and temporary workers in Canada who are employed
under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program or Live in Caregiver
Program, whose contributions to our society go unrecognized. For example,
migrant farm workers from the Caribbean, Mexico and Guatemala work in
Canada’s agricultural industry for up to 25 to 30 years with no social
and/ or economic mobility rights. We call for Permanent residency status
to be provided for temporary migrant workers and that a program of
regularization that is comprehensive, inclusive and equitable be initiated
for all non-status peoples in Canada.

The current refugee system is also plagued with a disregard for the rights
of asylum seekers. No One is Illegal, along with the Iranian Federation of
Refugees, has for example, struggled with Haleh Sahba, an Iranian
women’s-rights activist, who was deported in December 2004. The Canadian
government, in deporting Haleh, assured her of her safety in Iran. Yet it
is now widely reported that she was detained and faced serious charges.
There is no reason to believe that Haleh is an exception in our refugee
process and that the Canadian government appropriately concerns itself
with the risk that asylum seekers face in their countries of origin.

Contrary to public perception, there are not an infinite numbers of
appeals that a refugee can access in Canada. For the overwhelming majority
of claimants, refugee determination in Canada is a one-step process
because there is in fact no full merit based appeal in Canada. For
example, one of the limited avenues in the refugee process, the
Pre-Removal Risk Assessment, had an overall national acceptance rate of
less than 3% in the year 2004. If Canadians have the right to appeal a
parking ticket, then certainly refugees facing potential torture or death
should have the right to appeal the decision of a single,
politically-appointed decision in a process that has been called a
“lottery system”. We call for an immediate implementation of the Refugee
Appeal Division as promised and as provided for by the (ironically-titled)
Immigration and Refugee Protection Act 2002.

Despite the popularly perpetuated myth of a “border rush ”, the number of
refugee applications in Canada has actually declined 41% since 2001. Those
numbers are expected to drop even more sharply this year due to the Safe
Third Country Agreement. Canada and US signed an agreement that took
effect Dec. 29, 2004 disallowing refugees from seeking asylum in Canada if
they first arrived in the U.S. This major attack on asylum seekers mimics
historic Canadian immigration policies such as the “None is Too Many”
policy against Jewish refuges, the Continuous Journey policy implemented
to exclude South Asian migrants, and the Chinese Exclusion Act. History is
grossly repeating itself and we call for a repeal of this racist and
exclusionary Agreement.

Simultaneously, removals from Canada have increased from 8946 removals in
2001 to over 10,000 removals in 2004.

These are the issues and policies that need to be addressed. The survival
and dignity for people must be first and foremost. Token solutions will do
little to quell the growing resistance that demand systemic transformation
to Canada’s current immigration system. Contrary to reformist approaches
to this reality of global apartheid that accepts colonial and imperialist
control, No One is Illegal sees strength in our unity as immigrants,
refugees and non-status people build greater trust in visions of an
alternate world and organize, educate, act and fight for their own
self-determination.


- By Harsha Walia and Harjap Grewal




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No One is Illegal- Vancouver
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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.